A Paradigm of Dramatic and Postdramatic Tragedy: Simon Stephens’s Motortown1

Tragedy has been studied and reworked by theorists from ancient Greece through

Renaissance and into the modern age. Hans Thies Lehmann examines task of

tragedy in his last work Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre (2016). In his detailed

study, Lehmann classifies periods of tragedy such as predramatic, pure dramatic and

postdramatic. In the beginning of twenty first century dramatic and postdramatic

tragedies have been placed with the plays of Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, and

Simon Stephens. Simon Stephens’s play Motortown (2006), written over four

days, represents signs of dramatic and postdramatic tragedies. The play consists

of eight scenes which have structural order with each other; however Simon

Stephens, choosing monologues, deconstructs hierarchical structure and diverges

from the dramatic text. Stage structure of the performance is deconstructed by the

explanation at the beginning of the play: “the play should be performed as far as

possible without decor”. At this point, Motortown puts forth a new approach to

tragedy in dramatic theatre, which conventionally depicts overt physical acts and

suffering on stage, and in postdramatic theatre which unconventionally depicts

overt non-hierarchical structure and irruption of the real. This paper considers how traits of dramatic and postdramatic theatre are determined and how aspects

of dramatic and postdramatic tragedy are experienced in Simon Stephens’s

contemporary performance.