In his plays, Heiner Mller uses postdramatic techniques to challenge audiences. Adaptations of his work tend to either engage with these techniques or attempt to make his work more comprehensible for audiences. In this thesis, I will investigate examples of Mller adaptations from different geographic locations outside of Europe. Each example uses a play by Mller to explore contemporary political issues. I will first cover the trend of adapting Mller textually, and the problems inherent in this process. Then I will provide an in-depth analysis of El Perifrico de Objetos Mquina Hamlet. This production, which is an Argentinean adaptation of Mllers seminal play Hamletmachine, uses postdramatic techniques that place spectators at the forefront in the production of meaning. As a result, Mquina Hamlet is able to link Mller not only to the political history of Argentina, but also to the history of violence in the world.

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A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English at the University of Zululand, 2017 / Athol Fugard and Maishe Maponya both used the postdramatic theatre, which was largely anti-elitist, anti-text, experimental and collaborative, at certain point in their literary careers. They rebelled against established conventions, and, in their own ways, produced a type of theatre that suited their context and literary and ideological leanings. The rebellion and transformation of the theatre was not peculiar to them, but was a universal phenomenon at the time this thesis examines. As such, it manifested in works of artists who appropriated the new dramatic techniques to represent their different contexts and emerging socio-political trends. The thesis examines the collaborative process of Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona in view of the critical debates about identity, politics, role play, and Fugard’s claim to primary authorship of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island. Collaboration is not a fixed term or practice. It depends largely on the play, play-making situation, and intention. It also changes even with the same artists involved in the collaboration. The devising process that led to The Coat, for example, differed from that of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island. Even the collaborative process of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island differs despite that the plays were produced around the same time. Fugard’s collaboration with the Circle Players (late 1950s) also differs from his collaboration with the Serpent Players (1960s) and that with Kani and Ntshona (early 1970s). Collaboration meant different things at different times for Fugard. He seems to have ridden on the coattails of black actors, although he successfully toured the plays around the world. Maponya’s idea of collaboration differs from that of Fugard. Although Maponya did not officially collaborate with actors, he used them as conduits into their lived experiences (The Hungry Earth) and professions (Umongikazi). This play-making technique is in many ways collaborative and similar to Fugard’s collaborative pattern during his work with the Circle Players in the production of No-Good Friday and Nongogo. Maponya lifts up the black artist but suffers the consequences. Fugard and Maponya used the actors in different capacities and utilised fairly similar, but different, collaborative techniques. They both utilised experimental, improvisational, and workshop-based methods differently, and at different times. The white South African playwright Fugard prepared the ground for radical experimentation with form and content in South Africa. Fugard enjoys a place of honour in the South African (and more generally African) canon. His reputation as a great writer, creative collaborator and director, and as a person who was able to create a unique theatre that blended African and Western forms of performance, has been acknowledged globally. His work with black actors, notably John Kani and Winston Ntshona, enabled this feat. He adopted a multidimensional approach to art, retained his literary leaning and identity, collaborated, and assisted in training and directing of black actors, and so contributed in his own equally potent way to the struggle against apartheid through the theatre. He promoted a belief in “the personal is political” through plays to be examined herein. The Coat (1966), Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973) are selected because they are Fugard’s most political plays and because they were devised in collaboration with actors. The Hungry Earth (1979), Gangsters (1984) and Jika (1986) also pass the litmus test because they are Maponya’s most radical indictment of the apartheid regime and because they were also devised through experiments with actors who provided material and acting. In contrast to most writing on Fugard and Maponya, which are anchored to either a literary interpretation of the plays or performance discourse, this study offers a literary and performative analysis of the selected plays, demonstrating that this must be done together. This thesis also offers a comparative analysis of the selected plays. Maponya is a black artist and bitter playwright of the Struggle. His works are multifaceted, open to differing interpretations and are fairly universal and timeless because of their concern with general themes such as capitalism, subversion and containment; so also for their relation with more universal works, and their demonstration that the local and immediate experiences can have global legs. His concern with Black Consciousness and resistance however confined his status to a black ideologue. Maponya’s dramas nonetheless resist the accustomed standard of categorisation as plays by a black South African dramatist. The sharp cataloguing between white and black and major and minor playwright begins to fall apart when comparing Fugard and Maponya in terms of theatre practice and experiences. The reception of Maponya’s plays – both at home and abroad – reveals that he was an equally theatrically-aware and successful artist of the struggle, although he cannot be evenly matched with Fugard in terms of literary craft and outreach. This reductionism has also affected Fugard, who many regard as a liberal white writer. His colour was a handicap and a saving grace since it allowed him to work with black actors despite the laws banning interracial relations. The discourse of commitment in the plays to be examined – as well as in the dramatists’ practice of theatre – is centred on the relation between intention, context and text. The study examines the artists’ contribution(s) to the struggle; and how effective that contribution is, considering the complicated context and events they wrote about. To my knowledge, no other work, specifically, examines these two quite different playwrights, particularly in the context of their writing methods, their political reception in South Africa and abroad, and their ideas about play-making. New Historicism is chosen for the analysis of the selected plays because they are produced in history and for the theory’s concern with historical situation; because it is more of a practice than a set of doctrines or theory (Greenblatt 1990); and because it is concerned with intention and choice of genre (Bressler 2000). The theory, or rather practice, is also chosen because it promotes the study of both major and minor authors, thereby blurring the distinction between them (Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000); and because it accords more place for collaborative works (Greenblatt 1989) – which is one of the main concerns of this study.

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With basis in critical theory, as defined by Theodor W. Adorno, as well as Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory on postdramatic theatre this study investigates the ethic and aesthetic processes of negation in Christina Ouzounidis theatre texts. Analyzing the ways in which the postdramatic form serves as a negation of classical dramaturgy, as well as reading the negative statements as representants of the very challenge of portraying utopia, the studie examines three main themes: the notion of postdramatic theatre text, the postdramatic adaption of classical texts and the political postdramatic.

This dissertation examines contemporary responses by Austrian theatre makers from the free theatre sector, that is, those working outside of the state theatre establishment, to the outcome of what came to be known as ‘the big lie’ on which Austrian national identity was built following liberation from German rule by the Allied forces in 1945. The ensuing problem for the post-war generations of having to claim a past that was buried under the carefully constructed official version of history but mediated through the silence of their parents and grandparents – shaping their (inner) lives – and possibilities for representing such experience through the medium of theatre are core issues explored in this study. The main focus of the dissertation is analysis of a selection of three pieces of theatre produced by two free theatre companies in Austria, Auf der Suche nach Jakob / Searching for Jacob / Szukajac Jakuba, and Pola, both by the Projekttheater Studio based in Vienna, and Speaking Stones: images, voices, fragments… from that which comes after by Theater Asou in Graz, Styria. Apart from contextualization of the central thematic concerns of the selected pieces of theatre within the historical events of 20th century Austria, and discussion of the theoretical framework within which the pieces are analysed, this study also offers a consideration of the phenomenon of the free theatre sector in contemporary Austria as a complement and an alternative to the state theatre sector, its roots and development since the post WWII period through to the early 21st century. Interviews with theatre artists, arts administrators and a Holocaust eye witness are also drawn upon to investigate how free theatre can provide a medium though which memory-work, the subtleties of damage and the inexpressible, and the difficult task of claiming the past can be explored.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

In 1985, the East German playwright Heiner Müller (1929-95) spoke of the importance of a ‘democratic’ theatre: for Müller, the theatre was to be a space in which audience members are free to produce their own interpretations of the material presented on stage. In turn, the audience is encouraged to question the composition of its material reality but is not presented with a solution. Müller explicitly related this practice to his own production of his three texts Der Lohndrücker (1956-57), Der Horatier (1968), and Wolokolamsker Chaussee IV: Kentauren (1986) together at the Deutsches Theater in 1988-91. As this thesis demonstrates, Müller foregrounds instigating audience participation and the means of creating ‘democratic’ theatre from the very beginning of his career. In studying the composition of Müller’s texts, the historical contexts in which they were written, and their premières we gain new perspectives on the ways in which the possibility for political theatre is anchored in Müller’s texts and just how this political theatre aims to engage its contemporary, implied audiences; indeed, this thesis argues that the politics of Müller’s theatre can be best defined as ‘democratic’. In the introduction, I establish how Müller understands the term ‘democratic’ and how his understanding differs from interpretations of democracy contemporary to him; in doing so, I borrow critical vocabulary from the contemporary French philosopher Jacques Rancière. The introduction also elaborates a methodology for studying both implied and real audiences. While each of the prevalent semiological, phenomenological, or materialist theories of audience response has its strengths, in order to pay sufficient attention to the multiple influences upon and aspects of audience interaction, we must take a more holistic approach to audience research. I therefore articulate a new materialist phenomenological approach to audiences, drawing on Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology. In the following chapters, I study Der Lohndrücker, Der Horatier, and Kentauren in their historical contexts and consider how they were both composed with their contemporary audiences in mind and staged in their premières. This approach sheds new light on each text in question: not only do all three texts demonstrate a concern for a lack of democracy in material reality, but each also contains strategies for engaging audience involvement in a piece of ‘democratic’ theatre. My final chapter analyses Müller’s own staging techniques in Der Lohndrücker in 1988, arguing that they enhance the production’s democratic political potential and contribute to our understanding of Müller’s political theatre. While the productions discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 have largely been overlooked by theatre scholarship to date, they provide important insights into the politics of Müller’s texts and the possible limits of writing political theatre texts. This thesis draws on a wide range of both published and unpublished materials, including rehearsal notes, stage manuscripts, audience letters, newspaper reviews, theatre programmes, records of reactions to Müller’s works within the GDR’s statecraft, and Müller’s own notes for writing his texts. Through this wealth of material we not only gain an insight into the ways in which Müller’s texts were written for his audiences but we also recognise the parameters for his audiences’ responses. In offering a fresh perspective on Müller’s works, this thesis demonstrates both a compelling model for audience research and that a synthesis of textual/performance analysis, historical contextualisation, and audience research provides us with a very adept tool for analysing the making of political theatre and the politics of making theatre.

Selon différents théoriciens (Guénoun, Lehmann, Ryngaert, etc.), la fin du vingtième siècle se caractérise par l'émergence de nouvelles formes théâtrales, marquées par la contamination des pratiques spectaculaires. Hans-Thies Lehmann reprend la notion de "théâtre postdramatique" proposée par Richard Schechner pour qualifier ces formes métissées de spectacle vivant La thèse défendue est la suivante : le théâtre postdramatique trouve sa spécificité non seulement dans la transgression des codes dramatiques mais surtout dans des processus de réception spécifiques qu'il importe de définir, à l'aide d'outils notamment sémiotiques. Ces processus sont situés et construits par rapport à différents modèles interdisciplinaires.

José Sanchis Sinisterra met en œuvre une poétique des intercesseurs qui déborde le drame conventionnel et l'entraîne vers son dehors, là où il est possible d'instaurer des zones de voisinage avec d'anciennes traditions théâtrales et d'autres domaines de création. Cette recherche passe par l’actualisation d'un théâtre baroque populaire tel qu'il se manifeste en Espagne au XVIIème siècle. Il s'agit de revendiquer une conception carnavalesque du drame faisant échec au « bel animal » aristotélicien. En pratiquant l'adaptation, le dramaturge cherche également à confronter la théâtralité à des œuvres porteuses d'un renouveau formel au profit d'une déconstruction remettant en cause les procédés dramatiques traditionnels. Son intérêt pour l'écriture de Kafka participe de ce mouvement général : l'adaptation lui permet d'importer dans le champ théâtral une poétique du discontinu qui déroge aux principes de cohérence, d'unité et de complétude de l'aristotélisme. Poussant cette recherche au-delà des limites littéraires, José Sanchis intègre également les sciences(notamment la physique quantique et la médecine) à sa réflexion afin de faire évoluer les conceptions admises du temps, de l'espace et de l'observation. On remarque que ces trois notions,qui sont celles que la physique quantique redéfinit en marge de la pensée cartésienne, sont généralement traitées au théâtre comme des réalités immanentes. La supposée unité de l'espace-temps marque un seuil au-delà duquel la forme théâtrale ose rarement s'aventurer. Or, c'est cette frontière que le dramaturge souhaite repousser, en développant une représentation du monde inspirée de conceptions scientifiques. Celles-ci constituent dès lors un nouvel intercesseur à même d'alimenter cette déconstruction théâtrale. / José Sanchis Sinisterra builds an intercessor poetics which brims over conventional drama pushing its boundaries beyond the theatre and overlapping with ancient theatre traditions and other creationfields. This search involves updating popular baroque drama, namely as it unfolds in XVII century Spain, claiming a carnival drama conception as opposed to the Aristotelian “beautiful animal.” Through dramatisation, the playwright also aims to confront theatricality to other works bearingformal novelty in favour of a deconstruction that questions traditional drama writing processes. The attention brought to Kafka's works forms part of this general approach: dramatisation allows the author to bring a poetics of discontinuity into dramaturgy, breaking with the Aristotelianprinciples of coherence, unity, and completeness. Sanchis then takes his search beyond literary boundaries as he brings science (quantum physics and medicine in particular) into his thought tomake current conceptions of time, space, and observation evolve. These three concepts, that quantum physics redefines outside the Cartesian logic, are usually dealt with in drama as immanent realities. The assumed space-time unity draws indeed a threshold drama rarely dares to cross. However, this is the very limit the playwright seeks to overstep by building a representation of the world based on scientific conception. These three concepts form thereon a new intercessor likely to fuel this drama deconstruction.