Christoph Henke, Martin Middeke, eds.
Drama and/after Postmodernism
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2007.
ISBN 978-3-88476-936-2, 396 pp., EUR 35,00 (2007)
The eighteen essays collected in this volume address a wide range of topics and examine the work of various contemporary playwrights. The essays investigate how and to what extent the aesthetics of contemporary drama reflect upon the postmodern preference for difference, plurality, uncertainty, ambiguity, hybridity, fragmentation, or performativity; for the deconstruction of teleological history and the subject; for carnivalesque playfulness and irony; but also for the non-representable sublime in art. The essays reveal how vital postmodernist discourse and poetics are in the field of contemporary theatre and drama in English, and they also set out to prove how productive contemporary Anglophone playwrights are in producing new narratives and cutting-edge images which interact with our readings.