Les mises en scène récentes de T. Ostermeier explorent les liens entre littérature et art théâtral pour questionner, à l’aide d’un réalisme complexe qu’il réinvente, ce que les œuvres ont à dire de la réalité politique et sociale de notre présent. Il privilégie toujours pour cela des espaces entre qui permettent de briser la rigidité d’un respect littéral étouffant et de faire dialoguer le passé et le présent, l’actuel et le virtuel, le proche et le lointain. A la surface visible, son réalisme articule la profondeur invisible qui dédouble le réel en explorant sa spectralité à travers les personnages eux-mêmes, leur mémoire, leurs fantômes ; leur langue qui, entre traduction et retravail, crie le non-dit, le refoulé, l’absence ; l’espace des lieux-seuils, des (non)-lieux et des passages, des images du hors-scène, trop présent, ou de l’intime, insaisissable ; et même la musique dont les échos démultiplient les réseaux de sens. C’est dans la hantise de ces doubles que T. Ostermeier cherche à reconstruire un sens qui ne fasse pas abstraction des fêlures ni des fractures. Son travail doit être analysé comme une œuvre autonome qui convoque l’œuvre littéraire support pour la faire parler à nouveau, lui faire dire à nos oreilles d’aujourd’hui la douleur intemporelle du réel et l’espoir politique de reconstruire ce présent. La « déterritorialisation » constante du théâtre de T. Ostermeier, assumée, donne corps aux spectres qui sont l’autre nom de notre réalité pour que nous, spectateurs, puissions, finalement, nous en saisir. Refusant un théâtre et une littérature qui ne font qu’interpréter le monde, il s’agit pour T. Ostermeier de faire dialoguer l’un et l’autre pour le transformer. / In his recent productions, T. Ostermeier investigates the links between literature and drama with complex, renewed realism to question what insights the works of the past can give us into today’s political and social reality. He always favours the in-betweens which enable him to break through the stifling inflexibility of literal interpretation and initiates a dialogue between the past and the present, the actual and the virtual, what is close at hand and what is distant. His realism connects the visible surface of reality to its invisible depth – its double. He delves into this spectrality by focusing on the characters’ memory, their ghosts; on their language, hanging between translation and reworking, as their unsaid, repressed words speak loud; on space viewed as space between – thresholds, somewhere/nowhere, passages, pictures of all too present off-stage scenes or of elusive intimacy; on music too, echoing meaning in multiple layers. These ghost-like doubles are T. Ostermeier’s material to rebuild a meaningful present without ignoring its cracks and fault lines. His productions should be analysed as an autonomous oeuvre which calls on literary works to make sense afresh, to voice the painful, timeless experience of the real and the political hope to rebuild the present. His constantly ‘deterritorialising’ theatre substantiates our ghosts – the flipside of our reality – so that we, spectators, may finally get a grasp on them. T. Ostermeier will not confine theatre and literature to merely interpreting the world, he wants them to dialogue in order to transform it.

The influence of new media on theatrical practice over the past fifty years has spurred a movement towards theatrical forms which are increasingly organized around the sensory elements of performance. This change is most noticeable in the visual approaches to theatre, and it has produced what I have labeled a theatre of visuality. This thesis argues that the tendencies for visualization found in visual media have extensively marked the performance strategies of contemporary theatre practice, resulting in a shift away from the logocentric dramatic text and towards theatre performance organized around the visual. Looking at four contemporary productions of Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck –Thomas Ostermeier’s Woyzeck (2005), Vesturport’s Woyzeck (2005), Robert Wilson’s Woyzeck (2000), and Josef Nadj’s Woyzeck ou l’Ébauche du Vertige (1994)– this thesis produces a preliminary typology of four distinct visualities/theatrical forms which make up the theatre of visuality: hyperrealism, synesthesia, superficiality, and visual narration. This thesis contributes to the conceptualization and understanding of postdramatic theatre by linking the theatre’s rejection of the text to the increased centrality of the visual in performance, and by tracing these shifts to the influence of visual media.

The influence of new media on theatrical practice over the past fifty years has spurred a movement towards theatrical forms which are increasingly organized around the sensory elements of performance. This change is most noticeable in the visual approaches to theatre, and it has produced what I have labeled a theatre of visuality. This thesis argues that the tendencies for visualization found in visual media have extensively marked the performance strategies of contemporary theatre practice, resulting in a shift away from the logocentric dramatic text and towards theatre performance organized around the visual. Looking at four contemporary productions of Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck –Thomas Ostermeier’s Woyzeck (2005), Vesturport’s Woyzeck (2005), Robert Wilson’s Woyzeck (2000), and Josef Nadj’s Woyzeck ou l’Ébauche du Vertige (1994)– this thesis produces a preliminary typology of four distinct visualities/theatrical forms which make up the theatre of visuality: hyperrealism, synesthesia, superficiality, and visual narration. This thesis contributes to the conceptualization and understanding of postdramatic theatre by linking the theatre’s rejection of the text to the increased centrality of the visual in performance, and by tracing these shifts to the influence of visual media.

The influence of new media on theatrical practice over the past fifty years has spurred a movement towards theatrical forms which are increasingly organized around the sensory elements of performance. This change is most noticeable in the visual approaches to theatre, and it has produced what I have labeled a theatre of visuality. This thesis argues that the tendencies for visualization found in visual media have extensively marked the performance strategies of contemporary theatre practice, resulting in a shift away from the logocentric dramatic text and towards theatre performance organized around the visual. Looking at four contemporary productions of Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck –Thomas Ostermeier’s Woyzeck (2005), Vesturport’s Woyzeck (2005), Robert Wilson’s Woyzeck (2000), and Josef Nadj’s Woyzeck ou l’Ébauche du Vertige (1994)– this thesis produces a preliminary typology of four distinct visualities/theatrical forms which make up the theatre of visuality: hyperrealism, synesthesia, superficiality, and visual narration. This thesis contributes to the conceptualization and understanding of postdramatic theatre by linking the theatre’s rejection of the text to the increased centrality of the visual in performance, and by tracing these shifts to the influence of visual media.