Target group

Members of the Doctoral School of Arts, Humanities and Law

Level

All PhD students

Lecturers

Hans-Thies Lehmann (Professor, Emeritus, J. Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main)

was assistant lecturer at the Department of Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin. He was also instrumental in establishing the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen as well as the Theatre, Film and Media Studies Program and the MA Program for Dramaturgy at the University of Frankfurt, where he has been a professor of Theatre Studies since 1988. He has been a visiting professor and lecturer at universities in Amsterdam, Vienna, Tokyo, Paris, Cracow, Kaunas, and Charlottesville, and he has worked as a dramaturge for various theatres. His publications (on ancient Greek tragedy, Brecht, and Heiner Müller) are internationally recognized. His book on Postdramatic Theatre (1999) has been translated into more than ten languages and has become a standard reference work in the discussion of contemporary theatre. He has also co-edited (with Eiichiro Hirata) Theater in Japan, a collection of essays on contemporary Japanese theatre (Berlin 2009).

Richard Cave (Professor, Emeritus, Royal Holloway, University of London)

Over the years he has researched, published and taught in many areas of theatre studies: renaissance theatre (especially Jonson, Webster, Brome), romantic drama, nineteenth-century melodrama, Irish theatre (particularly Yeats as playwright, Friel, McGuinness), the history of stage design, contemporary drama in performance, dance drama and forms of movement training. It was on his initiative that physical theatre was introduced to the portfolio of MA programmes offered by the department. He has studied to qualify as a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method and now works regularly with actors in the Royal Shakespeare Company, which develops the experience he can bring to teaching voice and body awareness to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. A continuing interest is exploring new ways of relating theory and practice of theatre, especially in order to illuminate theatre history.

Koen Augustijnen (Choreographer, Les ballets cdelab)

Working closely with Les Ballets C. de la B since 1991, initially as a dancer in performances staged by Alain Platel, Hans Van den Broeck and Francisco Camacho, as of 1997, Koen Augustijnen has become one of the dance company’s house choreographers. Outside of Les Ballets C. de la B. he sometimes works as a choreographer, joining forces with dEUS or working with Ivo Van Hove (Toneelgroep Amsterdam), Arne Sierens (compagnie Cecilia) and Stalker Theatre Company to name but a few. In 2009 he also made a choreography for a big mass of people for the video clip 'Dance for the climate' by Nic Balthazar.

Programme

The notion of "postdramatic theatre" has been established by the German theatre scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann in his 1999 book with the same title, summarizing a number of aesthetic tendencies and strategies occurring in avant-garde theatre since the late 1960s. The theatre which Lehmann calls postdramatic is an inventive response to the emergence of new technologies, and is not primarily focused on the drama in itself. It evolves a performative aesthetic in which the text of the drama is put in an equal relation to the material situation of the performance and the stage. Thus postdramatic theatre is more striving to produce an effect amongst the spectators than to remain true to the text. Hans-Thies Lehmann made the important observation that while the dialogue on the stage is fading, dialogue between stage and audience returns with a new emphasis (Lehmann, "From Logos to Landscape: Text in Contemporary Dramaturgy." Performance Research, Vol.2(1), 1997, p.58).

In this new constellation, the role of the actor changes substantially. The dramatic aesthetic favours a traditional, psychological approach that fits the paradigm of representation and make-belief. The actor's body is subjected to role-playing, repressing its materiality, while the postdramatic actor deconstructs its representation of a character by the means of self-reflexive acting, or by way of exposing the materiality of the body. To separate the actor from his role has led to the recognition of the actor's body as cultural text. The repositioning of dramatic text in performance hence creates a critical interplay between text, reader, and culture. This material exposure of the body raises critical questions about the nature of acting itself, or on a larger scale, the nature of presence in theatre. Theatre as an art form has often been associated with notions of presence. The 'live' immediacy of the actor, the unmediated unfolding of dramatic action and the 'energy' generated through an actor-audience relationship are among the ideas frequently used to explain theatrical experience and all are underpinned by some understanding of 'presence'. The notion of live presence, however, is being challenged in postdramatic performances that employ new technologies in order to juxtapose "presence" and "absence," "live" and "mediated" performance.

Hans-Thies Lehmann writes about a shift in the perception of the body on the postdramatic scene. In the dramatic theatre, the body is a sign which is meaningful. In the postdramatic theater "the central theatrical sign, the actor's body, refuses to serve signification. Postdramatic theatre often presents itself as an auto-sufficient physicality, which is exhibited in its intensity, gestic potential, auratic 'presence'" (2009:95). Later in his book, he writes: "The dramatic process occurred between the bodies; the postdramatic process occurs with/on/to the body" (165). How can we implement this analysis in the actor's training? Can the actor train his 'auratic presence', is this innate or the result of a consciousness-raising process?

Following theatre scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte, the experience of being 'presence', being 'transparent' is something which can be trained. She defines 'presence' as "the actor's active ability 'to command both space and the audience's attention" through a "mastery of certain techniques and practices to which the spectators respond" (2008:96). Next to that she also distinguishes  a second form, namely "the innate 'sheer presence' of the actor's phenomenal body" (Ibid.).

The aim of this seminar is to examine the actor's "auratic" presence in the postdramatic performing arts from a practical and theoretical point of view. Its aim is a profound Postdramatic Perspective on the Body and Corporeality.  This course will work out the above mentioned questions on two levels: in theory, with the reading sessions and the lectures of  H.T. Lehmann and Richard Cave, and in a practical constellation, where the participants are observing or doing training exercises of the Feldenkrais method (Richard Cave). The last day, a group session with Koen Augustijnen (Les Ballets C de la B) will connect the seminar conclusions with the experiences of master students of drama of HoGent, who have worked separately in an artistic research seminar on the same topic.

Week 1: reading seminar (Prof Dr Christel Stalpaert)

11, 12, 13 May 2011, 10:00-13:00
Location KASK – HoGent: Bijloke

Reading material:

• Hans-Thies Lehmann (2006) Postdramatic Theatre. (translated by Karen Jürs-Munby) New York: Routledge.
• Cormac Power (2008). Presence in Play: a Critique of Theories of Presence in the Theatre. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

This reading seminar aims at a close reading and discussion of the two books, with theoretical back-up by Prof Christel Stalpaert. Insisting that the physicality of many contemporary performances argues for a new understanding of acting and auratic presence, this reading seminar not only examines the acknowledged luminaries of postdramatic theatre, but offers a new lens through which the physical and visual practices of the twentieth-century actors and theatre makers can be viewed. Next to the reading sessions, video registrations of performances that trace the roots of physical performance in postdramatic theatre will be viewed and discussed in group.

Hans-Thies Lehmann's groundbreaking study of the new theatre forms that have developed since the late 1960s has become a key reference point in international discussions of contemporary theatre. Postdramatic Theatre offers a historical survey combined with a unique theoretical approach, illustrated by a wealth of practical examples, to guide the reader through the new theatre landscape. Lehmann considers these developments in relation to dramatic theory and theatre history, and as an inventive response to the emergence of new technologies and a historical shift from a text-based culture to a new media age of image and sound. Engaging with theoreticians of "drama" from Aristotle and Brecht to Derrida and Schechner, the book analyses the work of recent experimental theatre practitioners such as Robert Wilson, Tadeusz Kantor, Heiner Müller, the Wooster Group, Forced Entertainment, Theatre de Complicite and Societas Raffaello Sanzio.

The book Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence in the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey and analysis of theatrical presence, published in 2008. Excerpts from this book will help us to understand what precisely is meant by presence in the theatre. Encompassing ideas from semiotics and phenomenology, Presence in Play puts forward a framework for thinking about presence in theatre, enriched by poststructuralist theory, forcefully arguing in favour of 'presence' as a key concept for theatre studies and theatre practice today.

Christel Stalpaert (°1971) is Professor of Theatre, Performance and Media Studies at Ghent University (Belgium). Her main field of study is performing arts, dance and new media at the crossroads of Gilles Deleuze's aesthetics of intensities and Luce Irigaray’s corporeal philosophy. She has published a.o. in Arcadia, Mosaic, Performance Research, Text & Performance Quarterly, Contemporary Theatre Review and Dance Research Journal. She is a member of the editorial board of Documenta, Studies in Performing Arts and Film (Academia Press Ghent) and Theater Topics (Amsterdam University Press). She edited Deleuze revisited: Contemporary Performing Arts and the Ruin of Representation (2003) and No Beauty for Me There Where Human Life is Rare: on Jan Lauwers' Theatre Work with Needcompany (2007). She is director of the research centre S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts and Media) and promoter of the AOG research group Postdramatic Aesthetics: Word, Sound, Image.

Week 2:

16 May 2011

• 10:00-13:00 and 14:00-17:00: Lecture by Prof Dr H.T. Lehmann: Postdramatic images of the body

17 May 2011

• 10:00-13:00: Lecture by Prof Em Richard Cave & Prof Dr H.T. Lehmann: On Physical characterisation
• 14:00-17:00: Seminar by Prof Em Richard Cave: Awareness to movement

18 May 2011

• 10:00-11:00: Seminar by Prof Em Richard Cave: Awareness to movement
  
• 11:00-17:00: Presentation of individual research project

19 May 2011

• 10:00-13:00 and 14:00-17:00: Seminar by Koen Augustijnen (Choreographer, Les ballets cdelab) & Prof Em Richard Cave

Number of participants

12

Language

English

Credits (doctoral training programme of 60 ECTS)

3

Evaluation criteria (doctoral training programme)

Presence + Active participation

Time schedule

• 11, 12 and 13 May 2011, 10:00-13:00
  
• 16 May 2011: 10:00-17:00
• 17 May 2011: 10:00-17:00
• 18 May 2011: 10:00-11:00 & one hour between 11:00 and 17:00
• 19 May 2011: 10:00-17:00

Venue

KASK, to be confirmed

Registration fee

Free of charge for members of the UGent-Doctoral Schools

Registration procedure

To register, send an e-mail to doctoralschools@UGent.be, mentioning your first name, surname, student number, Doctoral School, department and the title of the course. Your registration will be confirmed by e-mail.