Let me also express my satisfaction that this meeting takes place here,\nin the wonderful city of St. Petersburg, a city resonating with so many associations\nof modern history of (not only) world theatre, and with names from Vera\nKomissarzhevkaya and Meyerhold, to Georgy Tovstonogov, Lev Dodin and, of course,\nValery Fokin. I remember that it was here that one of the two presentations of\nthe Russian edition of Postdramatic\nTheatre<\/em> took place. The translation and publication were initiated by Anatoli\nWassiliev, whose work has had so many points of contact with the postdramatic<\/em>. I want to send out a big\nhug and a great thank you to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to say here a special thank you to the one person who stood\nbeside me and often sat beside me in the theatre through all these twenty years,\nliving next door to Postdramatic Theatre<\/em>.\nI speak of course of the incomparable Eleni Varopoulou. I know, Eleni, that\nthis was not always easy. Let me say: without you as my beloved wife, my critical\ncompanion and inspiration, I would not be here today to receive the Thalia\nprize. So, thank you for everything in this moment, Eleni Varopoulou. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The recognition, which finds expression in the award twenty years after\nthe first publication of the book, and 26 translations later, gives me great\nencouragement to continue my work. It was not even in my dreams to think of\ntheatre in Brazil, or Japan for instance, when I was writing the book. The fact\nthat the book could, in spite of this limitation, become productive in these\ndifferent theatre cultures, is perhaps due to a certain discipline. I insisted on\nthe rule that you do not allow yourself to write about things you do not really\nknow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The task of the critic today is without doubt transcultural. In this\nsense, he has large shoes to fill. However we should not misunderstand this\nchallenge as a license to go for strolls in exotic theatre landscapes like\ndilettantes. Only if we read performances, as indeed all art, as answers of artists\nto problems\u2014problems they come across in their attempt to articulate the\nreality of our world\u2014do we have a chance to understand what is \u00e0 l\u2019ordre du jour<\/em> (the order of the day)\nin other regions of our world. And, emerging works give us a truer sense than\nseason highlights do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us be warned not to fall prey to the trap Walter Benjamin pointed\nout with the remark that he, who wants to always be up to date, is for that\nvery reason damned to be always a step outdated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generally speaking, the concept \u201cpostdramatic\u201d seems to work in many countries,\nbeyond theory, as an encouragement especially, for younger theatre people to deviate\nfrom customary ideas and conventional practices, in order to find and affirm\ntheir own \u201ctone.\u201d Politically speaking, it was, and still is, regarded as a \u201ccompagnon de route<\/em>\u201d in the struggle\nagainst the overwhelming norms and rules of the dramatic model of theatre\u2014norms\nthat were institutionalized not without a certain cultural imperialism,\npractically around the world. For this reason, in Latin America, \u201cpostdramatic\u201d\nwas often identified with \u201cpost-European.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, this conflict has emerged in strange time lags. For example,\nin China, a heated controversy has erupted over the allegedly overarching\ninfluence of contemporary \u201cWestern\u201d theatre. And by Western they mean postdramatic.\nNow, the book, translated by Yinan Li, is really very popular in the Chinese\ntheatre world. It is already in its third print, since its first publication,\nin 2010. I was offered the chance to publish an essay on the issue in the journal\nof the Shanghai Theatre Academy and I accepted. I was glad about the\nopportunity to intervene is this controversy on a somewhat official level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I argued against the accusation that artists and curators who give space\nto postdramatic theatre were allowing too much \u201cWestern\u201d influence, by turning\nthe tables on the polemic. I pointed out: \u201cWhat has been blooming worldwide\nunder western influence\u2014or more precisely western cultural imperialism\u2014wasn\u2019t\nthat exactly the dramatic set-up of European theatre?! Wasn\u2019tit this\ndramatic mode with its privilege for readable meaning, dramaturgy, protagonists\nwho play through conflicts, and decisions in dialogue, that were exported to or\nimposed on the whole world? Therefore, the truth is just the contrary: to\nstubbornly cling to the dramatic model is actually a position that amounts to\nadvocating the continuing subordination of one\u2019s culture to \u2018Western\u2019 culture.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n I certainly hope that I do not have to insist before this audience that\nthe term postdramatic theatre<\/em> does\nnot mean theatre without text. And that not all text written for the stage is\n\u201cdramatic.\u201d Following the dialectical approach of my admired teacher Peter\nSzondi, I simply propose more precision and terminological clarity in the use\nof the term \u201cdrama.\u201d Yet, when I wrote on the \u201cpostdramatic,\u201d I was conscious\nof the fact that contemporary theatre takes place in an environment deeply\ninformed by media culture, a culture of images, and in a digital world. This\ngeneral development was bound to have an effect on the status of the literary\ndimensions of theatre. Here, the status of the text is obviously reduced. This\nshift is taking place before our very eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It can be seen as an effect of a more general transformation: from a\nconcept of culture which is embodied in \u201cworks\u201d to a concept of culture that\nfinds expression in \u201cperformances,\u201d in the widest sense of the term. A\nwell-known German feminist theatre group has chosen the name \u201cShe She Pop.\u201d\nThey do not wish to make a secret of their consciousness. Their way of\nthinking, feeling and making experiences, is deeply impregnated by pop culture\nmore than by the tradition of literary culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are people who may dislike this fact but it is a stubborn reality,\nwhich will not go away. Some of us like culture to stay the way we have known\nit. It is as if culture is set in stone. Bertolt Brecht\u2019s little poem is a\ntongue-in-cheek expression of resistance to change:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKeep silent! Postdramatic writing can be of the highest literary order. I mention\nonly names from the German-speaking world here: Heiner M\u00fcller, Peter Handke,\nRen\u00e9 Pollesch, Elfriede Jelinek. The dwindling relevance of the literary\ndimension in the present world does not imply a disdain of the great tradition\nof dramatic texts\u2014which is at the center of my book Tragedy and Dramatic (!) Theatre<\/em> (2016). <\/p>\n\n\n\n The usefulness of terms and concepts are best measured by criteria that\nhelp open up new perspectives of the phenomena they describe. The term \u201cpostdramatic\u201dhas stood this test. For example, it\nopened new ways to think about the hotly disputed theme: if there is a place\nfor tragedy at all in our world. If you distinguish between tragedy as drama and the tragic\nexperience, which is about venturing into the unknown, overstepping given limits, defiance of\ndisaster, you can say that, in our times, this tragic experience has\ntaken forms beyond drama and even beyond the traditional dramatic idea of\ntheatre, in general. For example, in the Brechtian Lehrst\u00fcck<\/em> (even if\nthis view of Brecht might be surprising); in Beckettian standstill; in a wide\nrange of postdramatic theatre; and performance practices from Kantor to Fabre,\nfrom Einar Schleef to Romeo Castellucci. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Please allow me a short remark in\nclosing that concerns the political dimension of\ntheatre. I want to touch upon it in order to let you on my next writing plan.\nUp to the present day, postdramatic theatre is created under the more or less\nexplicit demand to be \u201cpolitical.\u201d But it seems to me that there is a growing\nawareness that, as a rule, the political can appear in the theatre only, so to\nsay, modo obliquo<\/em>, as a fundamental questioning of our being together in a polis<\/em>,\nrather than taking positions on concrete political issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If\nthis observation is correct then theatre will again, probably, be what it was\nmostly throughout its long history\u2014more philosophy on stage than staged\npolitics. I think often of the wonderful prophecy that Robert Wilson made about\nHeiner M\u00fcller. He said, \u201cIn 400 years, people will read Heiner\u2019s texts not as\npolitical texts but as philosophical texts.\u201d That was a further stimulus for me\nto begin writing a small book. I promise it will be small. The working title is \u201cA Small Philosophy of the\nTheatre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With\nthe Thalia prize\u2019s help I hope to see it printed in 2019, before an event we\nare planning in Berlin; an international conference at the Academy of Fine Arts,\nfrom November 21 to November 24, 2019, on the subject \u201cTwenty Years of Postdramatic\nTheatre<\/em> Worldwide.\u201d We hope to bring together dozens of speakers from all\nover the world; artists, dramaturges, curators, critics and academics will be\ninvited to discuss their experience with the theory and practice of postdramatic\ntheatre and performance. I warmly invite everyone to join us there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s\nabout it, folks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank\nyou again for the Thalia prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank\nyou, thank you! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear colleagues and friends, I am hardly able to convey my joy and pride for the honour of the Thalia prize 2018. First of all: I humbly say, thank you. My joy is immense because the Thalia prize is the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1178,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thalia-prize","","tg-column-two"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pam472-iZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2019\/01\/Lehmann1-1.jpg?fit=600%2C398&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1241,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions\/1241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2019\/01\/Lehmann1-1.jpg?resize=600%2C398&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2019\/01\/Lehmann2-1.jpg?resize=600%2C398&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2019\/01\/Lehmann3-1.jpg?resize=600%2C398&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2019\/01\/Lehmann4-1.jpg?resize=600%2C399&ssl=1\")
What do you think will change easier?
A stone
Or your opinion about it?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2019\/01\/Lehmann5.jpg?resize=600%2C399&ssl=1\")