A Paradigm of Dramatic and Postdramatic Tragedy: Simon Stephens’s Motortown1

Özet

Tragedy has been studied and reworked by theorists from ancient Greece throughRenaissance and into the modern age. Hans Thies Lehmann examines task oftragedy in his last work Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre (2016). In his detailedstudy, Lehmann classifies periods of tragedy such as predramatic, pure dramatic andpostdramatic. In the beginning of twenty first century dramatic and postdramatictragedies have been placed with the plays of Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, andSimon Stephens. Simon Stephens’s play Motortown (2006), written over fourdays, represents signs of dramatic and postdramatic tragedies. The play consistsof eight scenes which have structural order with each other; however SimonStephens, choosing monologues, deconstructs hierarchical structure and divergesfrom the dramatic text. Stage structure of the performance is deconstructed by theexplanation at the beginning of the play: “the play should be performed as far aspossible without decor”. At this point, Motortown puts forth a new approach totragedy in dramatic theatre, which conventionally depicts overt physical acts andsuffering on stage, and in postdramatic theatre which unconventionally depictsovert non-hierarchical structure and irruption of the real. This paper considers how traits of dramatic and postdramatic theatre are determined and how aspectsof dramatic and postdramatic tragedy are experienced in Simon Stephens’scontemporary performance.