17221 Hauptseminar

Manfred Pfister

The Corporeality of Contemporary Drama

The theatre has always staged bodies: that is part of its appeal and power.

In comparison with periods in which this staging of bodies was controlled by considerable restraint - just think of the principle of 'klassische Dämpfung' operative in French classical tragedy or on Goethe's Weimar stage! - the contemporary theatre, however, is frequently excessive in its display of the body: it tends to let body language upstage verbal language and to foreground the physical and sensous aspects of language (sound, voice, gesture) as opposed to reference and meaning, it often demands of its actors a dancer's or an acrobat's command over their bodies and highlights corporeality through focussing on violence, mutilation, monstrosity, obscenity or the abject.

In Performance Art it has evolved a new theatrical genre that can do without language altogether, and even where it stages texts from the classical canon, amongst them prominently those of Shakespeare, they tend to be recast as often shockingly corporeal performances.

In our seminar we are going to ask ourselves, why this is so and in which ways this new 'performative turn' has inscribed itself into contemporary British plays.

The plays discussed will stretch from Beckett's 'theatre of the absurd' (Endgame 1957) to Howard Barker's 'theatre of catastrophy' (Golgo 1989) and will include Edward Bond's Saved (1965), Joe Orton's farce What the Butler Saw (1969) and Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine (1979) as well as relevant plays the Berlin theatre will offer during term. The plays are all available in paperback and should have been read a first time before term begins.

There is no immediate introduction to our particular concerns, but Marvin Carlson's Performance: A Critical Introduction (London (Routledge) 1996) might serve as a useful eye-opener.

All participants, those who need a 'Hauptseminarschein' as well as guests, are expected to contribute a presentation backed by a paper, the 'Hauptseminarschein', preferably in English, has to be submitted before the beginning of summer term.