The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor Postscript
Summary
Just because we are postscript, it doesn't mean that the script is not there. On the contrary, to paraphrase Derrida, there is nothing but the script.
I have decided to call Kantor and Grotowski's theatre post-traumatic rather than postdramatic, recognizing that these two concepts, one derived from psychology and the other from theatre theory, are fundamentally connected. In her introduction to Hans-Ties Lehman's milestone book on Postdramatic Theatre, the translator, Karen Jürs- Munby, explains that the ‘post’ in ‘postdramatic’ is to be understood
as a rupture and a beyond that continue to entertain relationships with drama and are in many ways an analysis and ‘anamnesis’ of drama. To call theatre ‘postdramatic’ involves subjecting the traditional relationship of theatre to drama to deconstruction and takes account of the numerous ways in which this relationship has been refigured in contemporary practices since the 1970s.
As Jürs-Munby notes, ‘postdramatic’ denotes a rupture between drama and theatre visà- vis their symbiotic past. Likewise, trauma is defined as a violent rupture in the social and psychological order that fundamentally alters an individual's concept of the self and the world. Trauma denotes a rupture between the individual and the world: just as postdrama is no longer bound to theatre (“there can be theatre without drama”), the traumatized individual is no longer bound to the world that betrayed him.
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- The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and KantorHistory and Holocaust in 'Akropolis' and 'Dead Class', pp. 283 - 284Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012