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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2025
How much is enough? The relevance of this question comes from individual expectations regarding value. What is value and how does it manifest through our daily interactions? There is a qualitative difference between the concept of value and individual and collective values. Is there such a thing as a common good when it comes to either? Values are a social construct formed through a process of analysis, dialogue, and assessment within any given community. Though each individual's value system has varying degrees of difference, an agreed-upon system of values is created within and through communication, communion, and coalition. In contemporary societies, it seems the importance of unified community values has diminished in favor of the individual due to the rise of late capitalism, consumer culture, mediatization, political polarization, and the various signposts of neoliberalism. Postdramatic scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann states, “It is a fundamental fact of today's Western societies that all human experiences (life, eroticism, happiness, recognition) are tied to commodities or more precisely their consumption and possession (and not to a discourse).” Lehmann's assertion leads me to ask some striking questions relating to the theatrical practices that guide this essay. Namely, how have large-scale social systems of the contemporary era increasingly divested from community values, instead opting for smaller and smaller factions of identification? Without belief in a larger community good, what use is democracy?
1 Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Jürs-Munby, Karen (New York: Routledge, 2006), 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Lehmann, Hans-Thies, “A Future of Tragedy? Remarks on the Political and the Postdramatic,” in Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance, ed. Jürs-Munby, Karen, Carroll, Jerome, and Giles, Steve (London: Methuen Drama, 2013), 87–109, at 107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, trans. Butler, Erik (London: Routledge, 2016), 208CrossRefGoogle Scholar. To best understand this trajectory, one must connect Lehmann's multiple writings on the evolution of theatrical form cited in this essay as a whole.
4 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 42–4.
5 Ibid., 151.
6 See Jürs-Munby, Carroll, and Giles, eds., Postdramatic Theatre and the Political.
7 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 22–3 and 183–6.
8 Ibid., 180–6.
9 Lynn, Kirk, “Questions and Prayers: An Author's Preface to How Much Is Enough?” Theater 42.3 (2012): 43–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 47.
10 Ibid.
11 How Much Is Enough? Our Values in Question, written by Kirk Lynn and Melanie Joseph, produced by the Foundry Theatre, performed at St. Ann's Warehouse, 12 November 2011.
12 Lynn, Kirk and Joseph, Melanie, How Much Is Enough? Our Values in Question, Theater 42.3 (2012): 48–63Google Scholar, at 51.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 58.
15 During my second night of participating in the production I recorded the audio for research purposes. There is some considerable difference between the printed text and the actual lines delivered by the actors that seems to be based on the nightly flow with the participants in the audience. This confirms another aspect of the postdramatic nature of the work.
16 Lynn, “Questions and Prayers,” 47.
17 Christoph Cox, Molly Whalen, and Alain Badiou, “On Evil: An Interview with Alain Badiou,” Cabinet, no. 5 (2001–2), <URL>www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/5/alainbadiou.php<EN>, accessed 18 May 2022.
18 Deep mediatization refers to the process where our understanding of reality becomes so entangled with processes of media that it becomes impossible to think of reality divorced from media. See Hepp, Andres, Deep Mediatization (London: Routledge, 2020)Google Scholar.
19 For a reading of Lehmann's “caesura of the media society” put into conversation with theories of political economics and capitalism, see Ridout, Nicholas, “Media: Intermission” in Postdramatic Theatre and Form, ed. Boyle, Michael Shane, Cornish, Matt, and Woolf, Brandon (London: Methuen Drama, 2019), 96–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 99–100.
20 Kershaw, Baz, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (London: Routledge, 1992), 59Google Scholar.
21 Burian, Peter, “Athenian Tragedy as Democratic Discourse,” in Why Athens: A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics, ed. Carter, D. M. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 95–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 98.
22 Ibid., 99.
23 Kershaw, Baz, “Oh for Unruly Audiences! Or, Patterns of Participation in Twentieth-Century Theatre,” Modern Drama 44.2 (2001): 133–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 138.
24 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 21.
25 Karen Jürs-Munby, in the Introduction to Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre,1–15, at 3.
26 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 26.
27 Lehmann, Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, 153.
28 For a further explanation of the evolution from dithyrambs to tragedies with choral components serving as participatory elements of Greek civic society see Rehm, Rush, Greek Tragic Theatre (New York: Routledge, 1994), 13–15, 51–60Google Scholar.
29 Lehmann, Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, 144–56, at 155.
30 James Thompson and Richard Schechner, “Why ‘Social Theatre’?” TDR: The Drama Review 48.3 (2004): 11–16, at 12.
31 Doug Patterson in Tony Kushner et al., “How Do You Make Social Change?” Theater 31.3 (2001): 62–93, at 67.
32 Guglielmo Schininà, “Here We Are: Social Theatre and Some Open Questions about Its Developments,” TDR: The Drama Review 48.3 (2004): 17–31, at 24.
33 Jürs-Munby, “Introduction,” 6.
34 Lehmann, Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, 194.
35 David Wiles, Greek Theatre Performance: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 3.
36 Steph Harrop, “Greek Tragedy, Agonistic Space, and Contemporary Performance,” New Theatre Quarterly 34.2 (2018): 99–114, at 102.
37 Jon Hesk, “The Socio-Political Dimension of Ancient Tragedy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre, ed. Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 72–91, at 72.
38 Kevin Hawthorne, “The Chorus as Rhetorical Audience: A Sophoklean Agōn Pattern,” American Journal of Philology 130.1 (2009): 25–46, at 28.
39 Paul A. Kottman, “Memory, ‘Mimesis,’ Tragedy: The Scene before Philosophy,” Theatre Journal 55.1 (2003): 81–97, at 90.
40 Hesk, “Socio-Political Dimension,” 75.
41 Ibid.
42 It is important to acknowledge that the voting members of the polis did not include women, resident aliens, or slaves, though there was a pluralistic form of thought where the input of these members of the demos impacted the actions of the “citizenry.”
43 Hawthorne, “Chorus as Rhetorical Audience,” 28.
44 See Boyle, Cornish, and Woolf, eds., Postdramatic Theatre and Form.
45 Amy Cook, “Interplay: The Method and Potential of a Cognitive Scientific Approach to Theatre,” Theatre Journal 59.4 (2008): 579–94, at 590.
46 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 160.
47 Marvin Carlson, Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present, expanded ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 17.
48 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 160.
49 Ibid.
50 The entire discussion about catharsis in theatrical history has been tumultuous because the word appears only once in Aristotle's Poetics. This discussion could continue for pages here, specifically juxtaposing the idea in conjunction with Aristotle's Politics. I refer you to the notes in Gerald Else's translation of the Poetics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), at 97–9, for a brief commentary—or to Augusto Boal's various works of political theatre.
51 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 41.
52 See Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, trans. Charles A. McBride and Maria-Odilia Leal McBride (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985), 25–50.
53 Ibid., 47.
54 Susan Bennett, Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception, 2d ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 21.
55 In the following quotes I have chosen to alternate between two versions of Rancière's argument: the short plenary speech “The Emancipated Spectator,” presented in English in 2007, and his full-length book The Emancipated Spectator, first published in English in 2009. This choice is based on the wording (translated or not) and framing of the specific quotes within their respective sources.
56 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2009), 2.
57 Schininà, “Here We Are,” 18.
58 Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steven Corcoran (London: Continuum, 2010).
59 Agonistic logics are those that are in opposition to each other while still being open to the possibility of seeing the truth in the other side. These logics align in some capacity with Rancière's dissensus. See Chantal Mouffe, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?” Social Research 66.3 (1999): 745–58, at 754, and her The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso, 2005) for a more detailed explanation.
60 Rancière, Emancipated Spectator, 17.
61 See Henry Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, and danah boyd, Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth Learning (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016); Andy Lavender, Performance in the 21st Century: Theatres of Engagement (London: Routledge, 2016); and William W. Lewis, Experiential Spectatorship: Immersion, Participation, and Play in Times of Deep Mediatization (New York: Routledge, 2025).
62 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 186.
63 Jacques Rancière, “The Emancipated Spectator,” Artforum 45.7 (2007): 270–81, at 272.
64 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 31.
65 Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, 103.
66 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 32.
67 Rancière, “Emancipated Spectator,” 272.
68 Ibid., 274.
69 Ibid.
70 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 31.
71 Rancière, Dissensus, 42.
72 Lynn and Joseph, How Much Is Enough, 57.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 87.
76 Lehmann, “A Future of Tragedy?” 100. Italics in original.
77 Christopher B. Balme, The Theatrical Public Sphere (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), x.
78 Lynn, “Questions and Prayers,” 44.
79 Rancière, Emancipated Spectator, 12.
80 Jacque Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, trans. Kristin Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).
81 See William W. Lewis, “The Media Affects of Political Performance: Unmasking the Real and the Now,” GPS: Global Performance Studies 2.2 (2019), https://doi.org/10.33303/gpsv2n2a6, for a detailed analysis of how political agency emerges for spectators engaged with media and actual events.
82 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 103.
83 Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, 122.
84 Questions presented to my table during the 12 November 2011 performance.
85 Kershaw, “Oh for Unruly Audiences!” 144.
86 Ibid.
87 I wonder how effective this would be today when it is increasingly rare to have available funds in a nondigital form.
88 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 183.
89 Lynn, “Questions and Prayers,” 46. Italics in original.
90 Jacques Rancière, On the Shores of Politics, trans. Liz Heron (London:Verso, 2007), 39.
91 Alan Read, Theatre in the Expanded Field: Seven Approaches to Performance (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013), 158.
92 Rancière, On the Shores of Politics, 32–3.
93 Lynn and Joseph, How Much Is Enough, 63.