The
Postdramatic Theatre of Richard Maxwell
[2003]
(Markus
Wessendorf, University of Hawaii at Manoa)
In their
attempts to conceptualize and classify the ingenious theatre language of the
35-year old playwright, director and songwriter Richard Maxwell, critics and
scholars often struggle for words that would appropriately describe his
aesthetics. However, established terms such as experimental theatre,
postmodernism, neo-avantgarde, minimalism etc. only serve to describe the most
obvious surface structure of Maxwells theatre productions. A more promising
strategy for mapping out Maxwells plays conceptually may be to examine it from
a postdramatic perspective. To approach Maxwells work as an example of
postdramatic theatre may not only help to shed new light on Maxwells signature
style as dramatist and director but may also have the advantageous side-effect
of introducing the concept of postdramatic theatre to an Anglo-American public.
Even thought the notion of postdramatic theatre is not radically new (Richard
Schechner first used the term post-dramatic theater in the 1970s to describe
happenings[1]),
it has only recently been developed into a comprehensive theory by Hans-Thies
Lehmann, one of Germanys foremost theatre scholars and critics.[2] The 1999-publication of
Postdramatisches Theater[3], Lehmanns book-length study on the subject, immediately established
the concept of postdramatic theatre as the widely accepted terminological
upgrade of current theatre-aesthetic discourse. In January 2000, Lehmanns
book was featured on the cover of the German theatre magazine Theater heute,
not usually considered a spearhead of advanced theatre theory these days.[4] The success and
popularity of Postdramatisches Theater cannot only be explained by its very
accessible presentation of highly complex theoretical issues (from Hegels
aesthetics to Kristevas semiotics) and its insightful analyses of a wide range
of theatre productions and performances (from Robert Wilson to German director
Einar Schleef), but also by the plausibility of the concept of postdramatic
theatre itself. Even though the concept of postdramatic theatre is in many ways
analogous to the notion of postmodern theatre, it is not based on the
application of a general cultural concept to the specific domain of theatre,
but derives and unfolds from within a long-established discourse on theatre aesthetics
itself, as a deconstruction of one of its major premises. Lehmanns book is
mainly a response to Peter Szondis Theory of the Modern Drama from 1956 which interpreted the history of modern drama
from Ibsen through Arthur Miller as so many responses to the crisis of drama,
by which Szondi meant the widening gap between a historically conditioned
Aristotelian form of drama and a modern content for which that form was no
longer suitable. Szondi defined the drama of modernity as a historical formation
that arose in Elizabethan England [] came into being in seventeenth-century
France and was perpetuated in the German classical period.[5] As a specific
literary-historical event[6] the concept drama reflected the aesthetic discourse of
those periods: in its insistence on the absoluteness of drama as a
self-positing and self-propelling entity; the adherence to the unities of
place, time, and action; the dominance of dialogue and interpersonal
communication; and the notion of dramatic time as always being in the present.
Szondi argues, however, that this self-enclosed universe of drama from which
any trace of authorship as well as any reference to concerns external to the
plot must be absent, began to crack under the conditions of modernity. It was the
intrusion of a historically inevitable Epic dimension into modern dramaturgy
that playwrights like Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, etc. had to contend with
while still trying to do justice to the formal demands of well-crafted drama.
The history of modern theatre for Szondi is a history of mostly failed
compromises between the requirements of absolute drama on the one hand and
modern themes and subject matter demanding an epic treatment on the other hand.
Lehmanns book in many ways seems a continuation of Szondis project, but a
continuation that is at the same time based on a major revision and
reassessment of Szondis predominantly Hegelian model. Postdramatisches
Theater, if compared to Szondis essay, is also indicative of the major
paradigm shift that has occurred in theatre studies since the 1960s, mostly as
a result of changed theatre practices, but also of the increasing impact of
performance studies on theatre scholarship. Lehmann regards performativity, not
rootedness in a dramatic text, as the major constituent of theatre. The notion
of postdramatic, however, does not imply that theatre no longer uses texts or
that writing plays would no longer be possible (or relevant), it only implies
that the other components of the mise en scne are no longer subservient to the
text. There are many contemporary plays (from Heiner Mller to Suzan
Lori-Parks) that could be considered postdramatic since their dramaturgy is
already a response to the fundamental changes in theatre practice and theory
that have occurred since the 1960s. Different from Szondi who only discusses
modern theatre in negative termsas an art form in crisis, a
becoming-problematic of dramaLehmann maps out an affirmative aesthetics of
postdramatic theatre and provides a catalogue of ideas that allow describing
and analyzing that kind of theatre in positive terms. There is no space her for
a detailed examination of the manifold aesthetic theories that Lehmann brings
up in his discussion of postdramatic theatre, but the major achievement of his
book lies in providing a thorough analysis and conceptualization of the theatre
sign, the aesthetics of time, the aesthetics of space, the representation of
the body, and the use of media in postdramatic theatre. Three of the concepts
that inform a lot of postdramatic theatre may be particularly helpful in
elucidating the dramaturgical and directorial strategies of Richard Maxwell.
The following pages will discuss one of Maxwells recent productions, Drummer
Wanted, with regard to what Lehmann refers to as hypernaturalism, the
intrusion of the Real, and the a-thetic dimension of theatrical
representation. Drummer Wanted, which was first performed at New Yorks P.S.
122 in November 2001, is a two-person play about the relationship between a
mother, who is a real estate agent in her late forties/early fifties, and her
only son Frank, who may be in his late twenties.
Lehmanns
notion of hypernaturalism as a characteristic of many postdramatic theatre
productions is heavily indebted to Baudrillards concept of the hyperreal.
Baudrillard, in his book Symbolic Exchange and Death[7], claims that cultural
discourses in consumer society have shaped reality to such a degree that the
real can no longer be distinguished from its reduplication, reproduction or
representation. According to Baudrillard, we have come to desire the hyperreal,
which means that whatever we believe we desire has only been suggested to us by
advertising, the media, etc. and has, in fact, buried if not altogether
replaced our natural needs. Under the conditions of consumer culture, the
traditional hierarchy of original and copy is inverted and signs (as images of
our desire) come to exist before the things they refer to. Reality,
traditionally conceived as primordial (the original blueprint on which any
representation is based) becomes a second-order reality in the process, a
universe of signs that only point to each other, cut off from any external
referents. Baudrillard claims that today reality itself is hyperrealist[8], that what we experience as reality is only a simulation
of reality, or the aesthetic hallucination of reality.[9] In his discussion of
hyperreality, Baudrillard also refers to 19th century realism. Baudrillard
claims that
[r]ealism
had already inaugurated this tendency. The rhetoric of the real already signals
that its status has been radically altered (the golden age of the innocence of
language where what is said need not be doubled in an effect of reality).[10]
Lehmann
does not fully accept the idea of a complete disappearance of the real into
hyperreality, particularly not since his notion of the real is informed by
Lacan (for whom the Real, by definition, escapes representation).
Nevertheless, Lehmann uses Baudrillards notion of the hyperreal to explain the
seemingly paradoxical return of naturalistic elements in postdramatic theatre.
There is
a return of naturalistic traits in postdramatic theatre that was not to be
expected in the wake of such theatre forms as Epic, absurdist, poetic and
formalist theatre. (If one were to follow Baudrillards radicalism, there would
no longer be any distinction between original and copy. If only the
simulacrumthat is the artificial fabrication of the originalis left, then
the Real can no longer be distinguished from a perfectly functioning
simulacrum, which implies that naturalism is no longer an option.) Naturalism
can be found in theatre forms that at first sight dont seem to offer more than
a somewhat entertaining 1:1 reproduction of everyday life. However, one has to
distinguish the new forms of a heightened and reflective naturalism from what
Adorno called the pseudo-realism of the culture industry. What has been
perceived as naturalistic in theatre productions since the 1970s, often under
the impression of photo-realism, is also a form of derealization, not of
perfect representation.[11]
Lehmann
refers to the postdramatic use of naturalism as hypernaturalism. Different
from traditional naturalism, the hidden, or abject, truth of reality (and
Lehmann names the trivial, the ludicrous, expenditure, etc. as examples) are no
longer clinically represented in hypernaturalism, but come to charge the
dynamics of hypernaturalist performance itself with an almost sacred intensity.[12]
Hypernaturalism
as a charged representation of mundane occurrences as well as a derealization
that reveals reality to be inherently splituncannily similar to itself but
without referentalso characterizes the plays of Richard Maxwell. Naturalistic
elements appear in Maxwells work on two levels. Though Maxwell is primarily
known for his flat, anti-expressive directing style, the raw stage presence and
performance of his actors have a naturalist dimension, similar to what Bonnie
Marranca, in her Theatre of Images, referred to as the extreme naturalism[13] of Richard Foremans
early work, with its emphasis on nonvirtuosic[14] acting and the use of the performers natural, individual
movements.[15]
More suggestive of naturalism in the traditional sense, however, are the plot,
theme and diction of most of Maxwells plays. Drummer Wanted is a good example
for this tendency in Maxwells work. At the very beginning of the play Frank
(in the original production played by Pete Simpson), who plays drums in various
local bands, breaks his leg in a motorbike accident. Since he is still living
at home, his mother (Ellen LeCompte) takes care of him. She also takes care of
the insurance situation and involves a lawyer-friend of hers who eventually
succeeds in getting a high compensation for the son. The insurance claim and
Franks demands for an ever-increasing reimbursement sum put the relationship
between middle-class mother and slacker-son to the test, with the result that
she finally kicks him out of her house.
Maxwell,
in Drummer Wanted, achieves the hypernaturalistic effect of derealization not
by establishing a 1:1 reproduction of everyday life but by setting off one type
of naturalism against another: traditional naturalism as a reproduction of
real-life situations and speech (the domestic conflict between Frank and his
mother) against the extreme naturalism of the signifying body itself that
refuses to recede into the dramatic fiction that it is supposed to embody by
pointing instead to its own material presence onstage. The clash of these two
kinds of naturalism in Maxwells production exemplifies and renders theatrical
what could be considered one of the major themes of Maxwells work: the
characters inevitable failure to ever match up, or to get on the level with,
the hyperreal. As if to illustrate Baudrillards claim that we live in a world
of simulacra, Maxwells characters inhabit a world of circulating signs, codes,
gestures, phrases etc. that echo the world of television (Franks repeated ha
ha ha reminds of the raucous laughter of Beavis and Butthead, while the
conflict between mother and son has aspects of a soap opera). If the hyperreal
sign always already precedes the desire that it supposedly articulates, we find
a similar situation in Drummer Wanted: the characters seem to use gestures, phrases
and vocal patterns as quotations, as fixed signs that, since they signify
specific emotions, attitudes, etc., endow the characters with those qualities
retroactively, but superficially, schematically. The most striking metaphor for
the hyperreal in Drummer Wanted is the karaoke bar that mother and son go to.
Since the protagonists cannot express their emotions directly, they have to
take recourse to prefabricated songs to indicate their feelings and create the
semblance of an inner life. What is interesting about Maxwells staging of the
karaoke scene, however, is that the way in which the characters perform their
songs at the bar is in no way different from their general performance
throughout the play. Even though the signs produced (or better: reproduced) by
the characters in Drummer Wanted, are marked as hyperreal, the characters seem
not able to quote those signs with the necessary smoothness and ease to merge
seamlessly into hyperreality themselves. Under the conditions of a postdramatic
universe that reveals everything to be a simulation, Maxwells characters fail
at simulating hyperreal characters.
In
Drummer Wanted the potential hyperrealism that the production could otherwise
achieve is consistently punctured and obstructed by frequent pauses and
interruptions. During those pauses, the stage action comes to a halt for a few
seconds and we are compelled to look at the actors who no longer seem to
participate in the make-belief world of the play, but also dont seem to be
fully their private selves. It could be argued that the characters in Maxwells
play fail in their quest for the hyperreal because the extreme naturalism of
their physical appearance onstage intervenes. This intervention as a momentary
suspension or lapse of meaningful action; as a stage sign without referent; as
a moment of real time that seems to disrupt the overall time matrix of the
performance is also called intrusion of the Real by Lehmann who describes it
as another frequently used concept in postdramatic theatre.[16] However, the intrusion
of the Real (of real time, but also of the performers body) in Drummer Wanted
neither marks the glorious return of first-order reality into the context of
a hyperrealist stage narrative nor does it suggest the charged intensity of the
banal as it does in hypernaturalism. What intrudes in Drummer Wanted is the
pure and disconnected sign of hyperreality itselfhyperreality unplugged,
uncharged, so to speak: a sluggish and passive body, not that comfortable with
itself; a body that seems self-referential and illegible and quite incapable of
experiencing any intensity or ecstasy, not even Baudrillards total euphoria
of simulation.[17]
If, on the bodily level of performance, Drummer Wanted
deconstructs a naturalism of the signified by pitting it against a naturalism
of the signifier, the play achieves something similar with regard to space. The
dialogue in Maxwells production of Drummer Wanted, despite its frequent
interruption by pauses, is staged in a way that suggests temporal continuity,
one unit of duration. This impression, however, is deceptive since the dialogue
itself hints at changes of location and major jumps in time that always come as
a surprise to the spectator, as a realization after the fact, since no scene or
lighting changes suggest such major progressions in time or space. The set for
Drummer Wanted is similarly deceptive since it evokes a sparsely furnished but
believably naturalistic space, lets say the music room in an upper
middle-class home: upstage we see a piano chair at stage right; a drum set at
the center and a piano lined up with the stage left wall; downstage of the
piano are two chairs that are also lined up with the wall and that are mirrored
by two chairs on the other side of the stage. The wooden chairs with their
white covers, a small picture above the piano and the paneling of the stage
walls suggest a distinguished taste for uncluttered interior design. The
seemingly coherent space, nonetheless (a room in the mothers house), is not
used naturalistically but as a unit set the different areas of which come to
signify various locations that the characters pass through in the course of
their conversation. The performers physical journey, their one clockwise
movement around the stage which it takes them the entire performance to
complete, however, comes to mean something quite different in the context of
the plays narrative: the performers small changes of location in a seemingly
homogenous space become symbolic of a succession of heterogeneous places that
the characters traverse: home, car, karaoke bar, some real estate, etc. This
wouldnt be unusual in a pantomime or various non-realist Asian performance
traditions, but different from those theatre forms the actors in Maxwells play
indicate those changes not by highly theatrical and therefore instantly
identifiable mimic action but by casual gestures that can easily go unnoticed
(when the actors, for example, walk from the piano area to the chairs downstage
left the specific change of location from the house to the car is established
by one subtle gesture: the mothers picking up of her purse from the piano and
dropping it next to the chair which through this gesture becomes a seat in the
car).
The
a-significant pauses that occur so frequently in Maxwells plays are indicative
of another aspect of postdramatic theatre, an aspect in which Lehman sees the
political potential of postdramatic theatre: its a-thetic dimension of
representation.[18] Lehmann borrows the notion of the thetic from Julia Kristeva who defines the term as the positing
structure in the signifying process that is the basis not only for any kind of
linguistic proposition, identification and judgment but also, finally, for the
formation of subjectivity.[19] Theatre, for Lehmann, is the privileged art form to
subvert established modes of signification and to create an opening for new,
polyvalent cultural meanings. Since the political discourse in particular is
identified with law, order, judgment, and rulesnamely, with the power of
propositionalitytheatre can deconstruct the latent authoritarian nature of
politics with artistic means, particularly by questioning and undermining the
authority of the dramatic text, the most thetic and propositional component of
traditional theatre production. The pauses in Maxwells productions are a good
example for the a-thetic dimension of postdramatic theatre since they fracture,
disrupt and question the prepositional structure of the dramatic dialogue
preceding them.
Maxwells
theatre work overall combines hypernaturalist elements, the intrusion of the
Real, and a-thetic performativity to generate minimalist and highly elliptical
configurationspostdramatic performance texts that disintegrate traditional
notions of character-dramaturgy and unity (of action, time and space) by
splitting the common binary oppositions of presence-versus-representation,
semiotic-versus-symbolic, signifier-versus-signified etc. into their opposite
terms and playing those terms off against each other in performance.
[1] See Richard Schecher, Performance Theory, rev. and exp.
ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 1988), 21.
[2] Lehmann is currently the chair of the theatre department
at the University of Frankfurt.
[3] Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater (Frankfurt am
Main: Verlag der Autoren, 1999).
[4] Postdramatisches Theater has also been widely translated
so farinto Japanese and Kroatian, for exampleand will soon come out in an
English translation (with Routledge).
[5] Peter Szondi, Theory of the Modern Drama, trans. Michael
Hays (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1987), 5.
[6] Ibid
[7] Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans. Iain
Hamilton Grant (London: SAGE Publications, 1993). Trans. of LՎchange
symbolique et la mort (Paris: Gallimard, 1976).
[8] Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, 74.
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid, 72.
[11] See Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, 210. (Trans. Markus
Wessendorf).
[12] See Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, 211.
[13] Bonnie Marranca, The Theatre of Images (New York:
Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1977), 3.
[14] Marranca, Theatre of Images, xiii.
[15] Ibid
[16] See Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, 170-78.
[17] Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, 74.
[18] See Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, 262-63, 449-50,
456-60.
[19] See Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans.
Margaret Waller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 43: We shall
distinguish the semiotic (drives and their articulations) from the realm of
signification, which is always that of a proposition or judgment, in other
words, a realm of positions. This positionality [] is structured as a break in
the signifying process, establishing the identification of the subject and its
object as preconditions of propositionality. We shall call this break, which
produces the positing of signification, a thetic phase. All enunciation,
whether of a word or of a sentence, is thetic.