engleski

Dramatic Representations of Contemporary Terror: Genres of (Post)modern Tragic Theatre?

According to 20th century death-of-tragedy theorists like George Steiner, Northrop Frye and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, tragedies are unfit for today's world. Does this mean that terror and tragic events such as depictions of war have completely disappeared from the modern stage? No. This paper shows that mass as well as individual tragedy is very much present on the stages of contemporary theatres, but in genres different than the traditional tragedy. The paper looks at various examples of genres like documentary or verbatim theatre, tragic comedy and poetic theatre, showing some of the ways that 20th ct. playwrights deal with issues of terror(ism) and violence. E.g. Peter Weiss' The Investigation, which will be discussed as a representative of the documentary theatre, uses original transcripts from the Auschwitz process after the 2nd World War in the form of an „Oratorio in 11 Cantos“ to show its terrible events. Furthermore, Henry Adam's play The People Next Door was, on the other hand, triggered by the events on 9/11 showing, in the form of a tragic comedy, the paranoid climate and the way individuals on both the Christian and the Moslem side had to deal with tragic events thereafter. Moreover, Chris Thorpe’s Safety shows how the terrors of war influence individuals who are indirectly connected with tragic events, through Michael, a well-known photographer specializing in war zones, who suffers tremendously after his family life falls apart because of the things he had seen. The scenes from his family life are intertwined with scenes showing him in Bosnia during the 1990s war.

terror(ism) ; violence ; trauma ; (post)modern theatre ; genres ; tragedy ; comedy

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