Modern theatre science paradigm and transformation of modes and genres in modern dramaturgy («In-yer-face theatre», «Pokolenie porno», «Новая драма»)

Abstract

The phenomenon «new writing» has been brought to life in the Europeandrama at the turn of XX–XXI centuries. It is linked to the British «In-Yer-Face Theatre» and its Polish («Pokolenie Porno») and Russian («NovayaDrama») revisions that has been under a heavy influence of the new theatrescience paradigm expressed by Hans-Thies Lehmann in his «PostdramaticTheatre». Therefore literature specialists face a pressing question of thecorrelation between the modern drama and theatre in terms of a gradual«separation» of the text and theatre, which began by H.-T. Lehmann in thesecond part of the XX century. Moreover there is an obvious need for theintegrated comparative studies based on the three national versions of «newwriting», though their affinity has long been noticed. It has beenH.-T. Lehmann who tries to capture and revisit the avant-garde artistic trends ofthe modern theatre through the scene practice analysis of the works ofAnatoly Vasiliev, Robert Wilson, Jerzy Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor,Robert Lepazh and others in his famous theatre science study. H.-T. Lehmann singles out the rejection of textocentrism, in other words the loss by the text ofits dominant function that dictate and correlate all others, as the key differencebetween postdramatic theatre and all previous theatrical forms. Thepostdramatic theatre has the text as equal element of the musical, visual ormimical whole and interacts actively with plastic art and media. H.-T. Lehmannshifts the emphasis from the «literary text» to «stage text» while studying theWestern theatrical experience of the last decades. He insists that «literary text»can be and should be dropped revisiting the ritual as the performance act.The artistic experiments of the modern playwrights are not limited to thestudy of genesis of violence in society, «hyper-aturalism», everyday topics orthe usage of verbatim technique despite the genetic interrelation between «In-Yer-Face Theatre» (Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Martin McDonagh),«Pokolenie Porno» (Krzysztof Bizio, Michał Walczak, Pavel Jurek) and«Novaya Drama» (Vyacheslav Durnenkov and Mikhail Durnenkov, MaksimKurochkin, Mikhail Ugarov). Another tendency in the dramaturgy of 90s–2000s has been appealing to plastic arts, performance, music, cinema, TV andso-called new media realized together with default ways of stage projection ofthe dramatic text. In the meantime the mode and genre transformationshappening in the process of the interaction of the extra-artistic discourses arerelated to the postdramatic theatre challenges