From the 'New Wave' to the 'Unnameable'
post-dramatic theatre & Australia in the 1980s & 1990s

"The object of this dissertation is to re-assess Australian examples of 'performance' in light of discourses and directions in dramaturgy that have emerged since the 1970s internationally. The thesis applies Hans-Thies Lehmann’s comprehensive theory of post-dramatic theatre to explicate examples of departures from dramatic theatre in view of the expansive field of inquiry implied by the description ‘performance’ or 'new media arts' and general cultural-political theory. To examine the de-centralisation of text specific to post-dramatic theatre the dissertation analyses firstly, material devised collaboratively at all stages of creative development in its case studies of the Sydney based companies The Sydney Front (1986-1993) and Open City (1987 -); and secondly, Heiner Müller’s concept of 'literature' written for the theatre and in opposition to its convention. In addition, the analysis of Müller serves as an introduction to a comparative analysis of a dramatic (literary) theatre project by a group of Aboriginal artists based on a post-dramatic text by Müller." [Information des Anbieters]