BEGINNINGS

POSTMODERN TIPPING POINTS

Daniel K. Jernigan
BECOMING POSTMODERN
This collection of essays begins with the observation that while other
genres (notably, ction and lm) have been thoroughly examined from
a postmodern perspective, drama has received relatively little attention
concerning its place in the postmodern literary landscape. In Postmod-
ern Drama (1984), Rodney Simard undertakes the rst foray into this
eld, but Simard applies the term postmodern far too loosely, using it as
little more than a convenient label with which to explain various forms
of experimentation in contemporary theatre. Around the Absurd (1990),
edited by Ruby Cohn and Enoch Brater, is subtitled Essays on Modern
and Postmodern Drama, and yet in her introduction, Cohn manages to
avoid the word postmodern entirely; moreover, only the H. Porter Abbott
essay attempts even the briefest denition of the term. Moreover, while
Marvin Carlsons Deathtraps: The Postmodern Comedy Thriller (1993)
2 Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
carefully implements a description of the postmodern as outlined by
Linda Hutcheon in order to recognize that a postmodern element exists
in contemporary dramatic murder mysteries, Carlsons focus is so decid-
edly narrow as to be of little use to describing a postmodern drama more
generally.
The most notable study of the postmodern in drama is Stephen Watts
Postmodern/Drama: Reading the Contemporary Stage (1998), which, upon
recognizing the poor showing drama makes in various theorizations of the
postmodern condition, suggests that the solution to this oversight is simply
a matter of learning to read the postmodern in theatre; for Watt, postmo-
dernity is in the eye of the beholder. However, while similarly concerned
with querying the reasons why there is such a dearth of postmodern dra-
matic criticism, this collection tacks differently to Watts exploration in
that many of the enclosed essays are most fundamentally concerned with
how the various morphological features of theatre promote a cycle of tilt-
ing to and away from the postmodern.
Another useful account of the postmodern in drama comes in Aus-
tin Quigleys essay Pinter, Politics and Postmodernism. Like Quigley,
I too nd myself much persuaded by [Jean-Francois] Lyotards argu-
ment that we would benet by thinking of postmodernism as one of the
recurring phases of modernism rather than as something posterior to and
opposed to modernism, (12) so much so, in fact, that this attitude toward
the postmodern lies behind the original conceptualization of this collec-
tion, which began with the observation that the postmodern in drama
pre-existed the postmodern in ction, and moreover, has followed a very
different path.
Of equal importance to this discussion, however, is Lyotards account
of the postmodern eras rejection of grand metanarrative truths in favor
of the little narrative (60) whose rulesmust be localagreed on by
its present players and subject to eventual cancellation (66). I would
argue, moreover, that the theatres unique potential for examining the
proliferation of locally agreed upon truths (i.e., its unique ability to ques-
tion the boundary between the real and the articial, the constructed and
the extant) makes the dearth of criticism on the postmodern in drama all
S Postmouein Tipping Points
the more profound. For what other genre allows its practitioners to wear
their constructivist attitude so boldly, allowing their characters to break
that fourth wall separating the stage from the audience in real time, with
a live audience, even as the plays producer makes modications to the
production in real time according to the needs of the moment (as can
be seen, for instance, in Pirandellos Six Characters in Search of an
Author).
In his foundational text on postmodernist trends in ction (Postmod-
ernist Fiction), McHale comments on how the unique features of theatre
can be exploited to metaleptical effect:
Metalepsis appears so early in twentieth-century drama, and
attains such precocious sophistication by comparison with prose
ction, for reasons which should be fairly obvious. The funda-
mental ontological boundary in theater is a literal, physical thresh-
old, equally visible to the audience and (if they are permitted to
recognize it) the characters: namely, the footlights, the edge of the
stage. (121)
Moreover, the fact that theatre is not only meant to be performed but also
reperformed (both on successive nights by a single theatre company as
well as throughout geographic space and time by a nearly limitless num-
ber of additional theatre companies) makes the dramatic text especially
susceptible to reinterpretation (or reconstruction) at the hands of produc-
ers, directors, and actors.
Given these features of live theatre, it is reasonable to assume that the
ontological and epistemological fragility of the theatrical environment
would make it a particularly engaging forum within which to investi-
gate a wide variety of postmodern crises, be they epistemological, onto-
logical, aesthetic, or ideological. This observation, in turn, leads to the
fundamental questions driving this collection: That is, Why hasnt dra-
matic experimentation of this sort become the norm? and Why hasnt
it at least become prevalent enough that postmodern drama is as pub-
licly recognizable a literary type as are postmodern ction and post-
modern lm?
4 Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
One reasonable answer to these questionsand the answer driving
much of the discussion in this collectionis that perhaps these post-
modern attitudes had become so routine within drama by the time post-
modernism came into its own as a literary and cultural category with
which to describe important innovations in post WWII ction and lm
that the term lacked both categorical utility and interpretive resonance
when it came to contemporary drama; and having become postmodern
so early, it is also possible that by this time, drama had simply tipped
away from the postmodern, a possibility assumed within McHales own
description of the postmoderns relation with the modern:
Intractable epistemological uncertainty becomes at a certain point
ontological plurality or instability: push epistemological ques-
tions far enough and they tip over into ontological questions.
By the same token, push ontological questions far enough and
they tip over into epistemological questionsthe sequence is not
linear and unidirectional, but bidirectional and reversible. (11)
This account of how ction tips back and forth from the modern to the
postmodern serves as a fair description of what most of these essays take
notice of vis--vis drama, except that with theatre, the literal, physical
threshold, equally visible to the audience causes this tipping to be inten-
sied; in turn, those very same morphological features of theatre that
allow that drama tip toward the postmodern in the rst place might just
as quickly allow that drama to tip away from the postmodern as well. For
example, someone all too comfortable with a postmodern attitude toward
knowledge and reality might suddenly shift for any one of a number of
reasons (ideological, aesthetic, by sheer accident, or out of desire to par-
ody either mode) into a more denitive attitude toward knowledge and
reality. Indeed, a historical overview of nineteenth and twentieth century
drama clearly suggest that the fourth wall is as easily ignoredthink
Realismas it is made use of (again, the best example is Pirandello).
In general, the rst half of the collection contains essays which con-
sider the circumstances under which theatre tips toward the postmodern,
S Postmouein Tipping Points
while the second half of the collection contains essays which consider
the circumstances under which theatre tips away from the postmodern.
Moreover, these initial essays do much to provide substance to Jean
Francois Lyotards claim that [a] work can become modern only if it
is rst postmodern (79). Indeed, without such a statement from one of
postmodernisms foremost theorists, Jenn Stephensons essay on King
Lear (herein), which nds convincing postmodern dramatic features
in Shakespeare, might strain this collections credibility. Instead, the
essays thesis (the reasonableness of which is substantiated by Lyotard)
only reinforces the central conceit of the workwhich is that the unique
morphological features of drama lead to the early and inevitable appro-
priation of various postmodern concepts, or, as Stephenson puts it in
arguing the case for King Lear,
Any stage which has been rendered perceptually vacant by virtue
of the lack of representational scenery possesses this capability of
indeterminate blankness. Being characteristically without scenery
or indicative props (except on occasion), the professional Lon-
don stage of the era of King Lear typies this potential for scenic
ambiguity. It is the innate ability of the stage to be supercially
nowhere in particular that provides the key to this scene in perfor-
mance. (33 in this volume)
While this might not quite be the self-conscious making visible to the
audience and (if they are permitted to recognize it) the characters of
the footlights, the edge of the stage that McHale speaks of, it isat
the very leasta self-conscious exploitation of features all the same.
Bill Angus also explores how the Renaissance theatre presented a
particularly apt environment for the postmodern play not only because
of the theatres specic morphology, but because of the way in which
this morphology allowed its practitioners a place where tacit ques-
tions can be asked of oppressive structures simply by recreating them
onstage, without necessarily making explicit their oppressive nature
(48 in this volume) Angus uses this observation as a means to push his
6 Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
own understanding of why postmodernism never became a signicant
categorical term for drama studies:
Finally, perhaps drama has not been perceived as postmodern
for critical purposes because, so closely and early allied to the
capitalist system, the structures that dictate self-reexive drama
became mere conventions, themselves to be transcended in order
to keep bums on seats. No longer carrying weight as reections
of social structures, they became mere techniques, the staples
of dramatic irony. An example of this might be the typical early
modern aside, conventionally taken for Protestant psychological
interiority rather than as deliberately self-conscious dramatic
technique. (57 in this volume)
Perhaps, moreover, it is because dramatic self-reexivity has had such a
long, varied, and diverse theatrical history (stretching back, in its various
guises, at least as far as Shakespeare) that the explicit self-consciousness
of Pirandello and Brecht didnt cry out for a whole new critical paradigm
with which to explain it, and instead, we got much more focused critical
treatments (the epic theatre, the theatre of the absurd).
Skipping forward some four hundred years from Shakespeare to the
twentieth century, we nd that the fourth wall of theatre can be just as
important thematically in nominally realist texts as it was in Elizabe-
than times, regardless of the realist tendency to ignore this fourth wall.
Indeed, Ibsen himself provides a notable case in point, as a fair amount of
criticism has observed postmodern tendencies in his later work, making
Ibsen scholarship a notable exception to the lack of dramatic postmodern
criticism.
1
Eugene McNultys essay Parody, Metatheatre, and the Post-
modern Turn (herein) on the early twentieth century Irish playwrights
Bernard MacNamara and Denis Johnston paints a stark picture of how a
stiing romantic nationalism, for all its pretensions toward appropriating
realist representations of nationalist cultural traditions, is essentially con-
structivist in nature; moreover, McNulty uncovers a whole tradition of
self-conscious Irish drama wherein the idea that historys agents could
be re-performed through an unmediated process of realist presentation
is revealed as a convention in need of revisiting (71 in this volume).
7 Postmouein Tipping Points
McNultys essay is notable, moreover, for recognizing how essential the
realist mode of Synge is to the antirealism of postmodern self-conscious-
ness playwrights, such a MacNamara and Johnston, who used the theatre
to comment on the very constructed nature of the original. In stark con-
trast to Synges Playboy of the Western World,
MacNamaras peasant characters are not only aware of the needs
and desires that drive bourgeois tourists to seek them out, but are
prepared to enter into an economy of representational exchange
with them. Synges West has become, just two years after Playboy,
an early form of theme parka simulacra of a lost authenticity.
(75 in this volume)
McNulty further notes how at times the tip from one mode to another
was as much sociocultural as it was performative-textual. Upon hav-
ing his play Shadowdance rejected by the Abbey theatre with the note
The Old Lady Says No, (the old lady being Lady Gregory), Johnston
changed the title of his play to The Old Lady Says No, which, by the
time it was produced instead at The Gate, was now a strident record
of the developing challenge posed by Johnstons generation to the out-
moded orthodoxies of the Abbey (67 in this volume), which only goes
to show how, just as focusing on the footlights, the edge of the stage,
the very title of a work might play a part in explicating its constructed
qualities, as well as the articiality of a tradition that had built its reputa-
tion on authenticity (i.e., the Abbey Theatre).
Lance Normans essay on Eugene ONeills The Emperor Jones (herein)
makes the case that even when a realist playscript itself doesnt exactly
go out of its way to reference its constructed nature, it might tip over
into a self-conscious postmodernism all the same in performance. Nor-
man argues, for instance, that [Charles S.] Gilpins [the actor who made
the role famous] creation of Jones in a perfomative present supersedes
ONeills creation of Jones in a historical text and offers a productive link
between Gilpins performance of Jones and Jones performance of self
within the narrative of the play (91 in this volume). The argument here
is that even as the Brutus Jones of ONeills play attempted to fashion
8 Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
his own self-identity, Gilpin overpowers the original text in just such a
way that he self-consciously fashions his own identity as an actor even as
he refashions Brutus Jones into a character of his own making. And in this
self-conscious appropriation, the production of the play tips over into an
explicitly self-conscious and self-correcting endeavor that highlights the
constructed nature of text, performance, and even character.
Norman proceeds to track this potential in The Emperor Jones to tip
over into the postmodern into the present, describing how the Wooster
group reinvented the play with Kate Valk play[ing] Brutus Jones in
Blackface in 1993 and 2006 (88 in this volume), in a production that
not only calls attention to theatrical representations of race (86 in this
volume) but also calls attention to the impossibility of subverting a his-
torical text more than momentarily by privileging ONeills language
and title (103 in this volume). In turn, Norman makes clear the way in
which a single play can tip over into revealing its constructed nature,
only to tip away again once a particular theatrical run has been com-
pleted. We can, then, add actors to that list of items equally visible to
the audience and (if they are permitted to recognize it) the characters.
Looked at one way, Brutus Jones is simply a character fullling his part
in a realist narrative. Look again, and he is obviously an actors con-
struct. Look again, and all you see is the character.
Teresa Requena Pelegr sees Gertrude Stein as one of the earliest thor-
oughly postmodern playwrights and as embodying many of those same
characteristics that Patricia Waugh would eventually nd to be denitive
of postmodernism:
[O]nce more, we nd another point of connection with Waughs
denition of metaction, as Waugh argues that frames consti-
tute all those elements that constitute an identiable ctional
space. Thus, openings, endings, the division of acts and scenes,
the use of curtains, etc. are all strategies designated to frame the
ctional status of the text. Therefore, the deconstruction of such
formal divisions leads to an explicit discussion of the arbitrary
nature of all demarcation, becoming one of the characteristics of
postmodernism. (Requena 121 in this volume)
9 Postmouein Tipping Points
What is especially notable here is that in addition to making use of
the morphological features of the stage in order to self-consciously
reect on the constructed nature of theatre, Requena also nds that
Stein has made use of the morphological features of the script (i.e.,
the openings, endings, the division of acts and scenes (a metathe-
atrical self-consciousness that wouldnt arrive in ction until at least
the late 60s).
Samuel Beckett, perhaps, has been critiqued more thoroughly from
a postmodern perspective than any other playwright, most notably for
how in a succession of plays beginning with Waiting for Godot, Beckett
went out of his way to disrupt grand narrative attitudes about truth and
language. And yet in response to this standard take on Beckett, Matthew
Paproth shows how easily even Becketts work tips from postmodern
to modern because of Becketts commitment to ensuring that his plays
were performed to his specications:
What this means is that in his private role as writer, Beckett cre-
ated texts that acknowledge the inherent and unavoidable arti-
ciality of writing; however, in his public role as author, when it
came to questions of publishing and performing his texts, Beckett
was obsessed with maintaining the very authority in his own life
that he questions in his texts. (135 in this volume)
As Paproth explains it, this tendency in Beckett became ever more intense
as his career progressed, so that even as his plays became increasingly
concerned with the impossibility of stable or controllable representation,
Beckett himself became increasingly concerned with controlling the
public reception of them (135136 in this volume).
REGRESSIVE MODERNITIES
After having become postmodern so early, there is some evidence that
drama moved beyond engagement with postmodern perspectives at the
same time that ction and lm were just beginning to engage them
(perhaps even for the very reasons mentioned by Murphy). Indeed, this
1u Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
is the argument of my own essay from this collection, Tom Stoppards
Regressive Postmodernity, which argues that after a brief irtation
with postmodern attitudes in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
and The Real Inspector Hound, Stoppard moved gradually away from
a postmodern treatment of theatrical space and philosophical concerns
during the rest of his career. The essays of the second half of this col-
lection continue in the same vein, describing various playwrights,
from Caryl Churchill, to Tony Kushner, to Mark Ravenhill, who, after
having given consideration to and irted with the postmodern, began
to move away from the postmodern in important, complex, and pro-
found ways.
Christine Kiebuzinskas Elfriede Jelinek: Staging a Heidegge-
rian Postmodern Debate in Totenauberg argues that Jelinek is post-
dramatic in a way that at rst recalls Brecht for its unmasking of the
illusion that theatrical art replicates reality where there are no distinct
characters, and stage images are constructed out of lm clips, discon-
nected collage-like stage imagery (183 in this volume). However,
Kiebuzinska is also careful to detail where Jelineks aesthetic transcends
Brechts Epic theatre:
in her construction of postdramatic form in Totenauberg, she
is decidedly positioning herself as a post-Brechtian who rejects
his self-condent reductionism that keeps planing off, sharpen-
ing, and pointing its subject matter like a lollipop, until nally
the specter of a sense comes out of the mouth of the actors.
Brechts tireless naming of victims and their exploiters have
become for Jelinek akin to second-hand goods. (185186 in this
volume)
As Kiebuzinska explains it, because there is none of the modernist mor-
alizing of Brecht in Totenauberg, the metadramatic liveliness of the play
has more room to serve as a deconstruction of past and present ctions
(188 in this volume) surrounding the life and career of Martin Heidegger
and his Jewish student (and prewar lover), Hanna Arendt. Accordingly,
after balancing between the modern and the postmodern, the work
11 Postmouein Tipping Points
nally does tip over into the postmodern, although only reluctantly so,
as Jelinek nally favours an Arendt who capitulates to the new myths
of a self-conscious New Age ideology rather than one who took her
experiences with Nazi fascism as the departure point for her work on
totalitarianism (202 in this volume).
Each of the remaining essays in the collection is similarly concerned
with playwrights who decry how the antirationalism often associated
with postmodernism is potentially disruptive of progressive politics, and
they describe how these playwrights make various theatrical concessions
that cause their work to tip away from the postmodern. In turn, these
essays indicate how self-consciousness about the tension between politi-
cal progressivism and postmodernity is fast becoming the most salient
feature of a post-postmodern climate.
Set in a 1960s Germany struggling to move beyond its Nazi era indis-
cretions, Peter Weisss The Investigation, as Scott Windham explains it, is
engaged at least in part with exploring the tension between postmodern
aesthetics and moral and political judgments for how it uses the post-
modernist strategy of implicating the audience in the performance
in order to achieve the modernist goal of providing a clear, morally
informed, politically actionable lesson to the audience (207 in this
volume). Windham, however, is pessimistic about the potential of
Weiss approach:
Though it seems clear the playwright Weiss is promoting a clear,
universal truth in these cases, the structure of his play, with its
gaps, inconsistencies, and lack of finality, undermines that
attempt. Thus, while the ending could be read as an attempt to
galvanize audiences against the attitude portrayed in the defen-
dants nal statement, it is also unsettlingly inconclusive. No one
emerges to counteract Defendant 1s declaration; his is the more
vehement, though not better, argument. (223 in this volume)
According to Windhams reading, The Investigation is a transitional piece
that seeks to employ postmodern aesthetics to political ends without being
fully cognizant of how this tension potentially undermines his agenda.
12 Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
As Prapassaree Kramer describes Caryl Churchills work in Top
Girls: Postmodern Imperfect, Top Girls also employs many of the tradi-
tional features of postmodernism, especially in the rst act:
We seem to be in the realm of the postmodern eclectic, a playful
mix of perspectives and costumes which challenge our grasp on
reality and render all debates ultimately undecidable. What may
appear a chaotic bricolage, however, comes to resolve itself into
a decisive conclusion about the protagonists failures of compre-
hension on both a political and human level (and implicitly, there-
fore, a decisive conclusion about the correct perspective on these
human and political issues). (235 in this volume)
Churchills commitment to various postmodern features is part and par-
cel of a larger concern on her part: That is, the explicitly socialist-feminist
works of her immediate peers ignore some of the larger issues faced by
women in the Thatcher era. However, even while Churchill retains a ten-
dency to reject epistemological trends generally, her desire to pursue claims
against both feminism and the patriarchy ultimately necessitates her turn
toward realism in the second two acts of the work.
The basically realistic portrait of the modern world in the second
and third acts serves to quash any such temptation to complacency
and also to reinforce the themes of the inadequacy of a feminism
based on individualist premises. With its retreat into realism,
Top Girls may be said to deny us any sense of constant progress
towards a state of greater freedom, both on a political and a liter-
ary level. Its imperfect postmodernism is a featurenot a bug.
(252 in this volume)
Perhaps while similarly motivated as her peers, this nal turn toward
realism might best be regarded as regressive rather moving beyond the
postmodern given how slight is its self-consciousness about the tension
between political progressivism and postmodernity.
James Fisher is understandably reluctant to peg Tony Kushner as
postmodern, at least in part because Kushner has described himself as
a premodern modernistnot quite ready for postmodernism (255 in
1S Postmouein Tipping Points
this volume). Fisher does, however, nd an aesthetic kinship between
Kushner and his more postmodern contemporaries:
Kushners postmodern aesthetic encompasses all of the signi-
cant signposts of contemporary culture: history, race, gender, pol-
itics, economics, spirituality. He presents his themes through
a dramatic style encompassing both the real and the fantastic, as
exemplied by an hermaphroditic angel and various historical
ghosts oating through Angels, an otherwise realistic play. These
gures of an imaginary realm and of the historical past collide
with a very real present struggle in Angels and Kushners other
metatheatrical plays. (257 in this volume)
Among other connections to the postmodern, Fisher also notes that
Kushner often goes beyond a mere articulated rejection of the status
quo to imagine a differently constructed society. Clearly, grand narra-
tives have been given up in Kushners work in favor of constructed ones
(a postmodern move, if ever there was one). However, Fisher goes on to
argue that Kushners emerging aesthetic offers a vision in which post-
modern pessimism is merged with his essential optimism of the will
(261 in this volume) and that Kushners ultimate emphasis is on what
must come next: the question of how America will choose to move for-
ward into the future (262 in this volume). Perhaps, the ability to replace
traditional grand narratives with new ones can tip negative, in which
case the postmodernist will decry how we will never have anything to
believe in again, or positive, in which case we get Kushners optimism of
the will). In either case, we nd once again that Kushners work is self-
conscious of this dilemma between postmodernity and political progres-
sivism, even while Kushner himself seems more than willing to trade in
his postmodernity for a premodern modernism ideology.
BEYOND THE POSTMODERN
What late-twentieth-century drama seems to be telling us, then, is that in
the aftermath of a postmodern epistemology comes a post-postmodern eth-
ical sensibility. This change has its counterpart in theoretical discussions of
14 Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
postmodernity, given its kinship to a paradox that has caused some leftist
critics to reject the positions of such contemporary philosophers as Michel
Foucault for what they see as his pessimism about the possibility of revo-
lution. Vincent Leitch provides a poignant example of this reaction:
[Foucaults project] leaves little room for resistance or transfor-
mation, not to mention revolution. Implicitly, it counsels quietism,
as many of Foucaults critics note. Moreover, the notion that all
aberrations and delinquencies occur within the system and that
they are calculated to do so similarly accords little possibility for
opposition and change. With Foucault the era of oppositional poli-
tics appears at an end; the subdued masses can be counted. (131)
Leitchs point is that if Foucault is right, then the power/knowledge
cycle is so pervasive that emancipatory progress is impossible. This is
the plight that a reader of Foucault faces, as each epistemological level
that we traverse brings us no closer to a way out of the power/knowledge
cycle, since whatever knowledge we happen to gain along the way
always and already serves the status quo in our oppression.
This sort of self-consciousness about the futility of postmodern atti-
tudes becomes especially apparent in Leslie A. Wades and William C.
Boles essays on Ravenhill and Penhall respectively, as each play sug-
gests that the socialist (Ravenhill) and/or feminist (Penhall) politics that
often accompanied postmodern forms (think of Bertolt Brecht and also
of traditional readings of Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, and even Har-
old Pinter) had become their own cultural dominant. In his discussion of
Ravenhill, Wade begins by explaining that Ravenhills plays
go beyond shock value and attempt serious philosophical (and
political) inquiry. Giving potent voice to a generation disillusioned
by national civic life, facing the complexities of an emerging global
marketplace, Ravenhill questions the possibility of moral action.
With volatile emotion and dark humor, his plays seek the ethical
in a postmodern, post-ideological world. (284 in this volume)
As it turns out, Wades essay raises a number of difculties for pin-
pointing the postmodern in late-twentieth-century theatre, given how
1S Postmouein Tipping Points
Ravenhills plays themselves are conscious of how his immediate
predecessors (David Edgar, David Hare, Howard Brenton, Trevor
Grifths) were committed to various socialist causes and given how he
sought to distance himself from them:
I argue that Ravenhills play exhibits a profound yearning for
interpersonal connection and altruistic possibility; however, the
work reveals a deep ambiguity. Ravenhill remains suspicious of
ideology, of any foundational authority, and thus cannot embrace
the assurances of socialism (there is no going back); yet his
depiction of postmodernism offers no positive alternative. The
play ably captures the frustration and anxiety of a 1990s genera-
tion, bereft of moral grounding though still desirous of political
efcacy. (285 in this volume)
It is easy to get lost here. On the one hand, Ravenhill being conscious
that his predecessors valued a socialist politicsand his commitment to
move beyond itis reminiscent of the tipping into postmodernism that
we might nd in Pirandello or Stoppard or even Beckett; on the other
hand, it appears that Ravenhill partly tips into postmodernism out of a
desire for a truly progressive politics (as if that were possible). More-
over, it is also worth noting how this desire that his work somehow be
progressive (that he is still desirous of political efcacy) is reminiscent
of what we see in Weiss and Kushner (indicating a tipping away from
the postmodern instead). Wade sums up Ravenhills own conictions on
this score as follows:
Clearly the play underscores the need for some point of resistance,
some assertion of value that works to counter the dehumanizing
effects of an increasingly powerful global capitalism. Ravenhill
appears ambivalent on this matter, nostalgic for a larger ideologi-
cal frame from which to combat a marketplace that reduces all to
commodity, yet suspicious of any totalizing outlook that is too
certain of its premises and proposals. (296 in this volume)
Wade ultimately turns to postmodern ethicsand Emmanuel Levinas
to help him understand what is happening with Ravenhill and his peers,
16 Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
settling on the idea that rather than pursuing a full-edged political
agenda: [P]ostmodern ethics rather underscores the call for responsibil-
ity, the primacy of the selfs obligation to the other (287 in this volume).
Instead of socialist activities and grand postures (297 in this volume),
Wade argues that the characters of Some Explicit Polaroids come to an
awareness of minor acts of outreach, expressions of care (297 in this
volume).
Whereas the driving concern of Ravenhills plays is the bankruptcy of
70s style theatrical socialism, according to Boles, Penhalls New Lads
serve as reactionary to the New Man sensitivity of the 80s:
And just who was the New Lad? He rejected the New Man phi-
losophy that stipulated men have repeatedly been redesignated as
the fragile sex and sensitivity and emotional literacy [should] be
at the heart of the new masculinity (Beynon 93, qtd. in Boles, 309
in this volume).
Quoting Phyllis Nagy and Mel Kenyon, Boles documents the feminist
response to the New Lad as suggesting that violent misogyny is alive,
kicking and applauded (310 in this volume); Nagy and Kenyon further
worry that [f ]or women in their thirtiesto realise that misogyny was
never really conquered but simply lay low until it was ready for a coun-
ter attack is terrifying (310 in this volume). Boles notes, however, that
Penhalls appropriation of the New Lad was vastly different than that of
his peers:
In addition to not following the same stylistic and thematic model
as his peers, Penhall is also not interested in highlighting and glori-
fying the misogynistic characteristics of the New Lad. Penhall,
instead, is more interested in the state of those males who are not
part of the target demographic of Maxim, FHM and Loaded. (312
in this volume)
Thus, while cognizant of the way in which some of Penhalls peers had
latched onto various antifeminist and antisocialist attitudes, Boles essay
ultimately nds that Penhall, of all the late-twentieth-century playwrights,
17 Postmouein Tipping Points
appears most comfortable with the political implications of his work.
Thus, while the play is cognizant of the various and sundry stereotypes
which now populate British culture, his male characters struggle in
their inability to fulll the stereotypical societal roles expected of men.
It would seem, then, that even given Penhalls approach to the various
themes of postmodernity (i.e., in toying with how types never t their
apparently representative models), he is well prepared to pursue political
truths in a way that marks him as having moved beyond the postmodern.
However, when placed alongside his pears, it is also clear just how tenu-
ous this positioning is and how likely it is he might yet tip toward a more
postmodern perspective in the future.
Margaret F. Savilonis essay on Kirk Lynns WAR provides a nal and
recent example of this tension between fullling a progressive politics
and recognizing how postmodern attitudes toward truth refuse the very
concept of progress, while yet committing to the idea that the solution
to this dilemma resides, once again, in local and individual responses to
larger social issues:
The desire to present multiple solutions, to offer limitless possi-
bilities, generates action. The intervention to save Sister broadens
out conceptually as Mother, Waitress, Boss, and Secretariat devote
their energy to presenting their solutions for xing the world while
One Man and One Guy dedicate themselves to saving Sister. Fix-
ing the world happens incrementally; not everything can be xed
at once, but by taking the initiative to change even just one small
thing, even at the most personal level, each individual makes a
signicant contribution. (343 in this volume)
Savolinis essay, moreover, is notable for how it tracks the way in which
this tension can be examined performatively as well as both narratively
and textually:
Sisters escape at the plays end depends on not only the other
characters in the world of the play, but also on the audience, as
indicated by Secretariats closing speech, in which she proposes
that the audience will likely need to help her x whatever is
18 Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
wrong with the world. [This] resonates with Linda Hutcheons
assertion that Postmodernism works to show that all repairs are
human constructs, but that from that very fact, they derive their
value as well as their limitation. All repairs are both comforting
and illusory (78). Though War consistently acknowledges itself
as a construct, an illusion, the enactment of the effort to repair is
concrete, enabling Lynns piece to refute this contradiction even
while acknowledging it. (345 in this volume)
Perhaps there is no better statement of what is happening in late-twentieth
and early-twenty-rst-century drama than that it is acknowledg[ing] itself
as a construct even while the effort to repair is concrete. Indeed, when
presented with enough examples, we begin to see an even larger contem-
porary trend that exists outside of and beyond the way in which each of
these plays is about the dilemma of appropriating a progressive politics
in the face of postmodern ideological pessimism (i.e., that they are each
excessively self-conscious about the limits of postmodernity). About its
dilemmas, paradoxes, and dead ends.
It is worth noting, moreover, that even while late-twentieth-century
theatre never decisively appropriatesnor rejectsthe postmodern, the
continually shifting perspectives of contemporary theatre might them-
selves be seen as part and parcel of a postmodern climate, as, ultimately,
we are left with the numerous and conicting small narratives. To borrow
from Lyotard, then, it would appear that the grand narrative gestures of
modernism have indeed been replaced by the more localized gestures of
the postmodern, meaning that in the nal analysis these plays by Raven-
hill, Penhall, and Lynn tip postmodern or at least try to. In either case, it
is worth noting all the same that this balancing at the tipping pointthis
desire to have it both waysis perhaps itself a denitive feature of late
postmodern drama. Indeed, we should not be surprised that the contin-
ual tipping between a postmodern perspective and an antipostmodern
becomes ubiquitous at this point given that, as Wade explains it, these
playwrights and thinkers were responding to the same historical moment,
to a contemporary world in continuous revision, with no recourse to
metaphysical, rationalist, or political assurances (287 in this volume).
19 Postmouein Tipping Points
In other words, late-twentieth-century theatre might yet be postmodern
(i.e., as a cultural phenomenon) despite itself.
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
The importance to this collection of Neil Murphys essay on Beckett
resides in the fact that it argues against one of the central conceits of
this collection, arguing instead that while there are perhaps fundamental
morphological differences between theatre and other postmodern genres,
those features are as likely to provide epistemological and ontological
grounding to a performance as they are to lead to epistemological and
ontological disruptions:
With respect to postmodern drama the implications are as follow:
postmodern drama is different to postmodern ction quite simply
because the words we hear on stage frequently offer views that
challenge the idea of the validity of meaning, life, action but, in
an implicit sense, this may be compromised by the actuality of the
stage, even if the characters appear to be living futile lives; they
are still there, they speak, they act, they exist. So a gap between
word and deed in postmodern drama at very least delays the full
impact of the arrival at unmeaning. (353 in this volume)
However, even while situating itself in opposition to the idea that the
very morphological features of the theatre are fundamental to how and
why theatre became postmodern, Murphys essay ts the overall arc of
the collection all the same. For while I might argue that it is because the
fourth wall is so visible (through ostension, even) that theatre became
so quickly and self-consciously metatheatrical as early as Pirandello,
Murphys point isnt so much oppositional to mine, as the reverse side
of the same coin. For while I argue that the reality of the fourth wall is
hard to ignore, and Murphy argues that the reality of physical objects
and characters onstage are equally hard to ignore, the thesis of the collec-
tion more generally is that the tipping from one perspective to another is
something akin to a gestalt shift and that while both attitudes toward the
articial/real dichotomy are always and already available, attention to
2u Bxnrn nNo 1ur Pos1roorxN
one necessarily obscures attention to the other, until that attention shifts,
and you get the reverse. Thus, while Murphy argues that the vividness
of the stage is too intense to be made unequivocally ctional, (354 in
this volume) I argue, rather, that it is when this vividness makes itself
evident (for whatever reason) that drama tips away from metanarrative
display and moves beyond the postmodern, and moreover, that when
this vividness is obscured, it tips back again. From one perspective, the
stage is composed of ontologically stable objects; but from another, as
Peter Handke explains, the objects of theatre are deprived of their nor-
mal function in reality such that a table can serve as an ornament,
as a door, as scenery, (17) in turn raising the distinct possibility that
a theatrical production might appropriate props as one more means to
self-consciously comment on the articiality of theatrical production.
Handke attempts this in his own play, Offending the Audience: They
have an articial function in the game I force them to play. They are like
the objects a circus clown makes factually unreal (57).