Jelinek in Practice : German Directors’ Theatre, Politics and Aesthetics

Nobel prize laureate Elfriede Jelinek is one of the most important contemporary authors writing in German and one of the most performed dramatists on German speaking stages. ‘Theatre would have to be a kind of refusal’, she once proclaimed. Despite the fact that her no-longer-dramatic, intertextual and punning theatre texts are considered demanding, major directors have tackled them in highly innovative and acclaimed productions that ‘refuse’ theatre as usual.

This book provides the first systematic exploration of the dynamics between Jelinek as a writer of political and increasingly open texts and the diverse postdramatic approaches of directors such as Einar Schleef, Jossi Wieler, Christoph Schlingensief, Nicolas Stemann, Karin Beier and Johan Simons. Through detailed analyses of the relationships between text, direction, dramaturgy, scenography, media, performance and spectatorship in exemplary productions it articulates their methods and political stakes. In doing so it also provides a corrective to a prevalent understanding of postdramatic theatre as primarily ‘non-text-based’ theatre, showing that texts can drive and be driven by creative postdramatic directorial approaches that help to shape contemporary theatre.