A study of the re-assignment of roles and attitudes towards text within Postdramatic Theatre, (Lehmann 2006) using as subject: 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane (2001)

Introduction

In this essay I use Hans-Thies Lehmann’s study of postdramatic theatre (2006) as theoretical framework from which to analyse the nature of a text written for theatre that is no longer “text centred,”  and how this might imply a different attitude towards text, method of writing and form. I question the role of the writer within theatre that is moving away from a writer-director dichotomy and towards devising and shared authorship. I am concerned with how “the new theatre and the diversity of its theatrical means [...] in the light of postdramatic aesthetics” (Lehmann 2006, p.26) affects the role of a postdramatic writer and their text.

What is Postdramatic theatre?

Postdramatic theatre shifts away from the unities of Aristolian drama, as well as Brechtian epic drama. It moves away from dramatic theatre that is “subordinated to the primacy of the text” and from staging that was primarily “declamation and illustration of written drama.”  (ibid p.21) In Postdramatic Theatre Lehmann demonstrates that “theatre and drama as such have drifted apart in the second half of the twentieth century.” (Jürs-Munby in Lehmann 2006, p.3)

Lehmann focuses on what happens in performance (rather than on playwrights and texts) and divides his study into aspects of performance such as text (seen as “the body-text” and “textscape”), space, time, body and media. He gives equal emphasis to these elements, reflecting their equal importance within postdramatic aesthetics.

Lehmann suggests that “postdramatic theatre” is a preferable term to “devised theatre” and “postmodernism” as it places contemporary performance within a lineage of dramatic theatre and “older aesthetics, including those that took leave of the dramatic idea in earlier times, be it on the level of text or theatre.” (ibid p.27) He uses the term to encompass postmodern and devised theatre, as well as performance that may not fall into those categories, “Postdramatic theatre knows not only the ‘empty’ space but also the overcrowded space.” (ibid p.25) In effect Lehmann widens the field while narrowing the terminology in order to place this genre of performance in reference to its cultural heritage and establish a term that is only applicable to theatre and performance

Although postdramatic theatre may exist without a writer or a pre-written text, a postdramatic play is only fully realised in performance, and as the landscape of performance is changing, so is the performance of postdramatic texts. However, the lack of reference to playwrights other than Heiner Müller in Lehmann’s study suggests that text in postdramatic theatre is mainly created through devising methods or by the deconstruction/adaption of existing dramatic texts, as is the case with The Wooster Group’s Hamlet. (2006)

Can the writer become a more prominent part of Postdramatic Theatre while leaving room for the other elements of performance? The playwright Phyllis Nagy states that plays “have and always will have primacy in our theatre. Because without texts, our collaborators have nothing to do.” (2002, p.81-82) Does the fact that many writers are unwilling to give up the supremacy of their text and vision force postdramatic directors and companies to look for alternative methods of generating text?

A postdramatic text: 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane

Lehmann states that “4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane would almost have to be invented as one of the great texts in analogy to postdramatic theatre if it did not already exist.”( 2006, p.ix)

Using the term “postdramatic” to describe 4:48 Psychosis is perhaps preferable to other labels (such as “In-Yer-Face Theatre”), (Sierz 2000)  as it connects the work to its heritage and influences, “Kane’s drama is informed and influenced far more closely by classical and modern European theatre than ‘rave culture.’” (Saunders 2002, p.7)

Lehmann lists typical characteristics of postdramatic theatre and identifies reoccurring themes. He describes scenarios and aesthetics recurrently seen in the work of  groups such as Goat Island, Forced Entertainment, The Wooster Group, Gob Squad, Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods, (and those that emulate them), but his descriptions often cannot be applied to Sarah Kane’s play as a text, and a performance that introduced typically postdramatic aspects would distract from the play’s intent, which suggests that a postdramatic text does not necessarily result in a typically postdramatic performance.

Lehmann cites “Playing with coldness” as a significant trait of postdramatic theatre, but Kane’s work asks for a very different kind of expression. As Saunders observes, within her writing Kane seemed to seek a “theatrical language [...] that is able to provoke a strong emotional and intellectual reaction.” (2002, p.14) “Playing with coldness” or filtering emotions through a “film and media aesthetic” (2006, p.118) would be counterproductive to the content of the play.

Lehmann describes Kane’s work, alongside other postdramatic playwrights, in terms of the use of language, which “appears not as the speech of characters – if there are still definable characters at all – but as autonomous theatricality.” (2006, p.18) He also suggests that “the step to postdramatic theatre is taken only when the theatrical means beyond language are positioned equally alongside the text and are systematically thinkable without it,” (ibid p.55) rendering the text only one element within performance.

Kane strove to create 4:48 Psychosis only through language, “all there is are language and images” (Kane 1998 cited Saunders 2002, p.111) and “all the images are within language rather than visualised.” (ibid. loc. cit.) By not including stage directions or characters she passed on those decisions to the director or company staging the work. Perhaps by leaving the work so open Kane implies that “the theatrical means beyond language are positioned equally alongside the text.” (Lehmann 2006, p.55) However, a production that gave equal importance to movement and technology (for example) risks distracting from the images that are inherent in the text and could create a confusing sign-system for the audience and a contradiction of forms. Within the play itself Kane suggests that the word is all that is needed: “just a word on the page and there is the drama.” (2001, p.213, line 24)

In 4:48 Psychosis the experimentation on the page must be translated into performance. Perhaps there is greater satisfaction in deconstructing a dramatic text than actualising a postdramatic one, perhaps even a postdramatic text is not open enough, as the director or company is still being asked to actualise the writers vision, whereas now devising text is part of the making process for many companies. However I believe that writers do have a place in postdramatic theatre, but it is a role that may need to shift to accommodate postdramatic aesthetics, working methods, and attitudes towards what a text for performance might consist of.

Form

The subject of 4:48 Psychosis is a “psychotic breakdown and what happens to a person’s mind when the barriers that distinguish between reality and different forms of imagination completely disappear.” ( Kane 1998 cited Saunders 2002, p.112)

Kane aimed to reflect this subject matter in the form of the play: “Formally I’m trying to collapse a few boundaries as well; to carry on with making form and content one." (ibid. loc. sic) Form had been a focus of Kane’s work since her first play, Blasted, “much more important than the content of the play is the form. All good art is subversive in form and content.” (Kane in Stephenson and Langridge 1997, p.130)

4:48 Psychosis is divided into twenty-four short sections, or scenes. There are no stage directions or indications of how many characters are in the play or how many actors are needed to stage it. In some scenes dashes are used to denote speech and silences of varying lengths are indicated in brackets. Other sections include long chunks of text in the first person and  poetic texts that play with spacing on the page. She also re-contextualises texts taken from other sources. (Evans in Saunders 2002, p.178) There are two sections with numbers placed on the page, the first scattered through space, the second in a list, and one scene consists of the text “RSVP ASAP” (Kane 2001, p.214, line 7)

Collage, or cut-up techniques were made popular by William Burroughs in the sixties. This method is shared by many writers, or “literary kleptomaniacs.” (ibid p.213 line 17) Tim Etchells describes that the second phase of Forced Entertainments’ work “was centred on collage,” using juxtaposition, and “structured in a way that owed a lot to the metaphor of TV channel-hopping.” (2004, p.77) Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson and The Wooster Group have all used collage methods to create texts and performances; in all cases the effect has been linked to channel hopping. (Silva, 2007) This differs to 4:48 Psychosis in which the technique serves to reflect a mind that has lost its grasp of reality and is an example of her aim to make form and content one.

Although the writer’s role is changing in postdramatic theatre, it is worth noting that Forced Entertainment does work with a writer (Tim Etchells) who is also the director. There is no writer-director dichotomy because the director is the writer. Postdramatic theatre does not necessarily get rid of the writer but reassigns roles and attitudes towards text. “What we tend to do is to create a set of personas who have then, it appears, created the show. We kind of blame it on them – there is the deferral of authorship.” (Etchells 2004, p.92). Their performances are unique to the company and authored by the group, (or characters they create). This conflicts with Nagy’s opinion; she defends the traditional role of the playwright, commenting that collaboration is needed “in the creation of theatre, but not in the creation of text.” (2002, p.81) It is perhaps this view within dramatic theatre, which implies that theatre and text are separate, which is one of the fundamental premises postdramatic theatre seeks to address.

Nagy states that when many people share authorship of a text the point of view and “excitement is usually diluted and dulled,” (ibid p.82) implying that collaboration occurs at the expense of the text. A collaborative or devised text has a different quality to a text authored by one writer. There is often no overriding message, or plot. The text is fragmented, a struggle for communication apparent in performers trying to speak, stuttering, and lacking the words, their failure portraying a “conflict between body and word.” (Lehmann 2006, p.147) It is these aspects that result in a particular aesthetic being associated with postdramatic theatre, and is perhaps why Kane’s text often fails to fall within postdramatic parameters as put forward by Lehmann. Kane herself said that realising her own images is “one of those things I can never make any concessions about.” (Stephenson and Langridge 1997, p.134) Postdramatic theatre, as opposed to the staging of postdramatic texts, requires that the writer has a relaxed attitude towards authorship and ways in which their texts are used; Richard Foreman posts his writing online, inviting performance makers to use and adapt it as they wish, only notifying him so he knows if the material is “stimulating anyone.” ([26 lines] n.d)

The goal of making form and content one is not listed by Lehmann as an attribute of postdramatic theatre. It is perhaps this struggle for the unattainable that defines Kane’s work. Her bedtime reading at the time of writing the play included Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus; parallels could be drawn between Sisyphus’ impossible task and Kane’s aim with her writing.

The director needs to actualise the experimentation with form in 4:48 Psychosis, while retaining the quality of the text; the rhythm, assonance, rhyme, and alliteration found within it. The openness of the text allows for many different performances.  4:48 Psychosis becomes a shared composition between writer, director and the actors (and spectator, as Barthes elaborates.) (1977) The text gives many possibilities of scoring, assigning multiply voices to some lines, and using choral techniques.  Through doubling voices, and sharing parts within a large ensemble, language is experienced more as sound and voice is separated from body, becoming the voice of consciousness rather than a specific character. Different ways of “thinking and representing the individual human subject” that is portrayed in the text are opened. (Lehmann 2006, p.18) These techniques accentuate the play’s multiplicity while its inherent monologic structure and a sense that the text is, as Urban puts it, “the product of a singular, albeit divided, self,” remains intact. (2001, p.44)

Part of the challenge for postdramatic writers lies in providing sufficient visual experimentation and stimuli to enable directors to translate their vision into performance. For example, space within the text will very likely be translated into performance as silence, but how does this differ from a more precise length of silence dictated by stage directions? How in performance can the positioning of words in relation to each other be staged? For example:             

   
      True      Right    Correct

      Anyone   or       anybody

      Each      every     all            (Kane 2001, p.223, lines 6-8)

“Right,” “or” and “every” are placed directly beneath one another. Is this layout for poetic effect on the page, or because its equivalence could be portrayed in performance? There are countless examples such as this throughout the play. On paper, the text lends itself to being read in several ways, not only in a linear fashion, but how can this be demonstrated in performance? If it should not, or cannot be represented in performance, why did she do it on the page? Should the numbers be spoken or visualised? If they are spoken, how can the different page layout of the two sets of numbers be portrayed? Was she treating the play as a page based poetic text rather than a score for a performance? Nagy calls Kane’s later plays “viable works of experimental literature rather than viable works of drama.” (Nagy in Saunders 2002, p.160) She suggests that “when you abandon character you abandon drama, so for me she has effectively abandoned drama.” (ibid p.159) Does the statement that Kane has abandoned drama suggest that her plays cannot be dramatized? Is a speaker in 4:48 Psychosis part of an “autonomous theatricality,”  as suggested by Lehmann? (2006, p.18)

Kane collapsed formal boundaries within her work, opening it to interpretation, but perhaps also limiting it; she effectively passed the role of creating stage directions and assigning roles and voices to the director; “collapsing boundaries” on paper does not necessarily mean collapsing them on stage. On the page the text reads like a poem that is innovative in its use of space and challenges linear ways of reading, but by assigning text to performers and in losing the complex layout of text on the page, the play can revert to a more traditional format. Was her experimentation partly untranslatable? To reflect what Kane does on the page perhaps an alternative type of stage directions, notation, or  guidelines on how the text could be used in performance might be needed. In other cases Kane was not willing to compromise the images that occurred on stage, so I wonder whether she would have been happy with any of the many possible staging of 4:48 Psychosis. On the other hand, by containing images within language Kane secures her vision while opening possibilities of staging, allowing for various forms of (postdramatic) stagings of the text.

What happens after this break from form? This is something Kane herself questioned, (1998 cited Saunders 2002,  p.112) and asks within her text: “how can I return to form, now my formal thought has gone?” (2001 p.213, lines 5-6)

The writer’s role within postdramatic theatre seems to be shifting towards collaboration and an alternative approach to authorship and methods of writing. However, it could also go another way, towards playwrights experimenting with forms that give space for interpretation and other elements of performance without compromising their individual vision. For example by integrating “paralinguistic features” as outlined by Whitmore (1994, p.72) within the text or stage directions.

[W]hen the Author has been found, the text is ‘explained’ – victory to the critic.” (Barthes 1977, p.147) Kane’s death did not remove her from authorship, and renders her static, easily “found,” and the text easily explained due to the nature of her death. Perhaps rather than viewing the text as a suicide note (as many critics do) it is more productive to see her suicide as a removal from authorship, and to treat the text as something more permanent than her death, a text that attempts the impossible, and in that struggle paves the way for future writers to create texts that push boundaries of form, on the page and in the theatre. To conclude, with text that (naturally) negates the above:

      the only thing that’s permanent is destruction

      we’re all going to disappear

      trying to leave a  mark more permanent than myself (Kane 2001, p.241 lines 1-3)

Bibliography

ASTON, A., 2003. Feminist View on the English Stage, Women Playwrights, 1990-2000. Cambridge University Press
BARTHES, R., 1977. The death of the author In R.BARTHES Image Music Text. London: Fontana Press, p142-148
BERTENS, H., 1995. the idea of the postmodern, a history. London and New York: Routledge
CALLENS, J (Ed)., 2004. The Wooster Group and Its Traditions. Brussels: Peter Lang
ETCHELLS, T., 1996 Diverse Assembly: Some Trends in Recent Performance. In: T. SHANK, ed. Contemporary British Theatre. 2nd ed. London and Hampshire: Macmillian Press, p107-122
GOVAN, E, NICHOLSEN, H and NORMINGTON, K., 2007. Making a Performance, Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices. London and New York: Routledge
HARDING, J M. (Ed) 2000. Contours of the theatrical Avant-Garde, Performance and Textuality. University of Michigan Press
HELMER. J and MALZACHER,. F. (Eds)., 2004. Not Even a Game Anymore, The Theatre of Forced Entertainment. Berlin: Alexander Verlag
KANE, S., 2001. Complete Plays. London: Methuen
LEHMANN, H., 2006. translated by Karen Jürs-Munby. Postdramatic Theatre. London and New York: Routledge
MOCK, T., (Ed) 2000. Performing Processes, Creating Live Performance. Bristol: Intellect
NAGY, P., 2002. Hold your nerve: notes for a young playwright. In: M. DELGADO and C. SVICH, eds. Theatre in Crisis? Performance manifestos for a new century. Manchester University Press, p. 74-82
SAUNDERS, G., 2002.  Love me or kill me, Sarah Kane and the theatre of extremes. Manchester University Press
SIERZ, A., 2000. In-Yer-Face Theatre, British Drama Today. London: Faber and Faber
SILVA, H., 2007. An interdisciplinary research into the use of voice and text in performance. Dissertation (BA (hons)), Plymouth University
STEPHENSON, H and LANGRIDGE, N., 1997. Rage and Reason, Women playwrights on Playwrighting. London: Methuen
WHITMORE, J., 1994. Directing Postmodern Theater, shaping signification in performance. University of Michigan Press

Journal Articles

URBAN, K. 2001., An Ethics of Catastrophe: The Theatre of Sarah Kane. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 36-46.

Live Performance

LECOMPTE, E and The Wooster Group. (2006) Hamlet by William Shakespeare [viewed 20th November 2006, Hebbel Theater, Berlin]

Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods and Tim Etchells., (2006) It’s Not Funny [viewed December 2006, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

ZARRILLI, P. (dir.) 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane [work in progress showing, December 2007 University of Exeter]

Websites

FOREMAN, R., n.d. Ontological-Hysteric Theater [online]. Available from: http://www.ontological.com/RF/notebooks.html [Accessed 10 December]

SIERZ, A., n.d. In-Yer-Face Theatre [online] Available from: http://www.inyerface-theatre.com/ [Accessed 10 December]