Post-Modernist Theatre

Post-Modernist Characteristics

• They raise more questions than they answer
• Taking something old and turning it upside down
• Andy Warhol

• Formed from anti-realistic art and into symbols
• Its not about the art or place or scene it is mainly about the person that is creating that scene and art and deconstructs to make us think of the idea of art than the art itself
• Instead of looking for the ordinary or the surface, but the disorder or the missing piece
• Instead of finding the message or the idea, it is about appreciating what the conclusion was in itself
• ex: breaking dancing, hip hop, djing, speed surfing, rap, commercializing
• The first real post-modernist performance was in sweden called Dadaism.
• Theatre of the Absurd was based on the pessimism of people.
• Theatre became almost a ironic metaphor.
• Instead of having perfect order or hidden subliminal objects or messages, many times it is right out there for people to interpret.
• Non-linear theatre
• ex: Angels in America, Invention of Love
• Open theatre: reflecting humanity, and not limited to a certain time or place, you are creating roles and not the character itself
• Diverse Theatre: bringing out ideas and elements that might have been otherwise unacceptable
• The Vagina Monologues: Eve Ensler
• helped to voice women's issues and racial issues
• Global Theatre and Macaronic Drama
• Globalization of the world
• Macaronic Drama is thrown together (like pasta) different languages and influences in one play and multiple perspectives being represented
• Theatre of Difference
• has to do with sexual differences
• Non-Traditional Casting
• Patrick Steward- a white man playing the black Moor Othello with his black wife Desdemona
  
• Cross-Color Casting
• Spectacular Theatre
• Cirque de Soleil/Performance Art
  
• Verbatim Theatre
• People that go and interview people and listen and embody the person and act out the person's story and turn it into a theatre
• Dangerous Theatre
• Theatre of Community
• Clifford Odets/ Group
• Theatre waiting for lefty
• Movement Art and Dance/ Theatre

• Stomp/Blue Man Group/Pina/Bausch/Matthew Bourne
• Leaders Today in the Theatre World
• Peter Brook/Rober Wilson