Beyond Drama: Writing for Postdramatic Theatre

Abstract

The article begins with a short description of the current situation in Polish theatre where the traditional understanding of a dramatic text has made the reception of formally innovative European playwriting difficult. On the basis of recent German plays by Rainald Goetz, Dea Loher and Roland Schimmelpfennig, which have been translated into Polish and published but have not yet received significant productions, the article tries to answer two important questions. Firstly, how the postdramatic texts written for avant-garde, feminist and postcolonial theatre during last three decades have influenced plays written for and put on the mainstream stages in the 1990s. Secondly, in what ways the new texts, which in many respects go far beyond the borders of traditional drama, have changed the existing definitions of theatrical mimesis and theories of drama