Dramatic Writing After the Post-Dramatic Turn: Anja Hilling, Milena Marković and Simona Semenič

Abstract

In this discussion of three contemporary playwrights from Slovenia, Germany, and Serbia (Simona Semenič, Anja Hilling, and Milena Marković), the focus is on the status of contemporary playwrights after the post-dramatic turn. I try to answer the question of how we can interpret the changes of drama and text in the works of the three playwrights and how we can use new definitions of textual, dramatic, or no longer dramatic or the post-dramatic, intercultural and intertextual, and rhapsodic in contemporary theatre. Can we understand post-dramatic theatre as a specific continuity and not primarily as a break with the tradition? Can we say that con­temporary drama often exposes us to deconstructing the contrast between representation and presentation, but nevertheless establishes a powerful process of re-dramatization, of injecting the dramatic into the post-dramatic?