A Lecture by Hans-Thies Lehmann

working with tragedy in the theatre today - examples from Germany, England, Belgium and Greece

Hans-Thies Lehmann, born in 1944, was professor of theatre studies at the Goethe University in Frankfurt from 1988 until his retirement in 2010. Guest lectureships took him to the universities of Amsterdam, Paris III, Paris VIII, Vienna, Cracow, Tokyo, Madison, Berkeley and Kent. He has published numerous books on contemporary theatre, on the theory of the theatre, on aesthetic theory, on Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller and, most recently, an opus magnum of more than 700 pages: “Tragödie und dramatisches Theater” (Alexander Verlag, Berlin, 2013). He was a guest dramaturg for “Mount Olympus”, Jan Fabre’s 24-hour project on Ancient Greek mythology, which will see its world premiere at Foreign Affairs.

The notion of postdramatic theatre was established by Hans-Thies Lehmann in his book Postdramatic Theatre, summarizing a number of tendencies and stylistic traits occuring in avant-garde theatre since the end of the 1960s. The theatre which Lehmann calls postdramatic is not primarily focused on the drama in itself, but evolves a performative aesthetic in which the text of the performance is put in a special relation to the material situation of the performance and the stage. 

Co-sponsored by the Program in Dramatic Literature in the Department of English and Theatre Studies.