ABSTRACT
The concept of postdramatic theatre appears in several of the reports we consulted in The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy. In this chapter, I will discuss the description by Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Postdramatisches Theater from 1999. Its importance stems from the broad field of theatre performances under investigation, but also from the fact that the book has had a wide and considerable impact internationally. It illustrates how dramaturgy from being a German speciality has become a concept up for international scrutiny, and it gives me the opportunity to supplement the concept of postdramatic by observing it from a systems theoretical point of view. (Lehmann, Hans-Thies (1999) Postdramatisches Theater. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren. Translated to English by Karen Jürs-Munby (2006) Postdramatic Theatre. Oxon: Routledge. Where nothing else is mentioned I quote from the English translation.)
