Output details

Der fremde, faszinierende, paradoxe Ort Theater: Gedanken zu Elfriede Jelineks neueren theatertheoretischen Essays

This chapter was commissioned by the Jelinek Forschungszentrum (Jelinek Research Centre), Vienna, as a substantial contribution on the body of Jelinek’s theatre essays. It forms part of a thematic focus on Jelinek’s extensive essayistic work in this year’s issue of the Jelinek[Jahr]buch. To my knowledge, this chapter represents the first overarching discussion of Elfriede Jelinek’s more recent theoretical essays on theatre (essays since 2003).

The chapter situates these essays in relation to the more widely known earlier essays, to Jelinek’s political concern and to the increased stagings of her work since being awarded the Nobel prize in 2004. Furthermore, it systematically explores their resonances with contemporary theoretical thinking on postdramatic theatre. In particular it examines these essays in relation to: a) the critical potential of theatre as an ‘aisthetic’ medium in relation to other media, b) the ontological difference between text and stage, i.e. writing and theatre making or literary imagination and theatrical imagination, c) the ‘death of the author’ and the paradoxical speaking of actors and d) the political in postdramatic theatre.

This output is thematically related to Output 1 above and is in many ways building on that publication. An English version of this chapter was presented as an invited research seminar talk at The School of English, Sussex (February 2011) as “Productive Contra-laborations: Elfriede Jelinek and her relationship to the theatre”, which equally highlighted the tensions between the author’s text and the directors work as a potentially generative dynamic.

I was subsequently commissioned by the Jelinek Research Centre, Vienna to contribute two articles to the new Jelinek Handbuch (Metzler 2013), the first comprehensive Handbook on all of Jelinek’s works. One of these articles, ‘Inszenierungsformen’, explores the different directorial approaches to Jelinek’s texts by twelve major German directors.

Elfriede Jelinek’s more recent theatre essays have thus far been neglected in Jelinek scholarship. Focusing especially on five essays, this chapter observes a shift compared to Jelinek’s earlier essays which were hostile to theatre. As a result of her plays being staged by major directors, Jelinek has discovered the theatre as a special medium/site with paradoxical forms of artistic communication that have much to offer her as a writer in the struggle against dominant power relations. The essays shed light not only on Jelinek’s plays and their staging but on the dynamic between text and staging in postdramatic theatre generally.