IngentaConnect Theater der Zersplitterung. Zu den Dramen von Marlene Streeruwitz

Author: Mittermayer, Manfred

Source: Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, Postmoderne Literatur in deutscher Sprache. Herausgegeben von Henk Harbers. , pp. 155-186(32)

Publisher: Rodopi

Abstract:

Although a considerable number of feminist authors share the radical perspectivism and the epistemological doubt of postmodernist thinking, most of them still acknowledge basic assumptions of modernism (Patricia Waugh). A good example for this statement is the Austrian playwright and novelist, Marlene Streeruwitz. In her dramas which are analysed in this essay, she tries to explore alternative ways of writing for the theatre that might be called "postmodern". The author uses a complex ensemble of theatrical devices in order to create a drama that should be different from male traditions of affirmative theatre, which (in her view) are concerned mainly with questions of power and warfare. By means of the principles of collage and montage, of quotations from and allusions to the classical repertoire of our culture (literature, opera, film, comics) Streeruwitz tries to represent the basic patterns of thinking that have been influential in the past but are still highly influental in our present time. She does not, however, give up "modernist" concepts of subjectivity, of the individual whose rights are to be defended even if the aesthetic means of the author follow the principles of disruption developed by the postmodernist movement.