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Reading and performing uncertainty: Michael Frayn's Copenhagen and the postdramatic theatre

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 05:08 authored by David Barnett
Michael Frayn's play about quantum mechanics, memory and history, Copenhagen, has taken a lot Of criticism for 'misrepresenting' its historical characters, primarily Werner Heisenberg. This essay analyses the dramaturgy of the play and argues for a postdramatic reading in which questions of representation are dissolved by formal strategies that ally themselves with the thematics of the work. The text is viewed as a hybrid, somewhere between the dramatic and the postdramatic, set, as it is, in a fictional afterlife where conventional human categories no longer function. The postdramatic theatre, in refusing to interpret text, becomes a viable mode for performance in that the indeterminacy Of meaning on stage equates with the uncertainty principle that lies at the scientific and moral heart of Copenhagen.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Theatre Research International

ISSN

0307-8833

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Issue

2

Volume

30

Page range

139-149

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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