A Paradigm of Dramatic and Postdramatic Tragedy: Simon Stephens’s Motortown
A Paradigm of Dramatic and Postdramatic Tragedy: Simon Stephens’s Motortown

Summary/Abstract: Tragedy has been studied and reworked by theorists from ancient Greece through Renaissance and into the modern age. Hans Thies Lehmann examines task of tragedy in his last work Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre (2016). In his detailed study, Lehmann classifies periods of tragedy such as predramatic, pure dramatic and postdramatic. In the beginning of twenty first century dramatic and postdramatic tragedies have been placed with the plays of Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, and Simon Stephens. Simon Stephens’s play Motortown (2006), written over four days, represents signs of dramatic and postdramatic tragedies. The play consists of eight scenes which have structural order with each other; however Simon Stephens, choosing monologues, deconstructs hierarchical structure and diverges from the dramatic text. Stage structure of the performance is deconstructed by the explanation at the beginning of the play: “the play should be performed as far as possible without decor”. At this point, Motortown puts forth a new approach to tragedy in dramatic theatre, which conventionally depicts overt physical acts and suffering on stage, and in postdramatic theatre which unconventionally depicts overt non-hierarchical structure and irruption of the real.

• Details
• Contents