La reescritura escénica de los clásicos en la configuración de la contemporaneidad teatral. Puestas en escena a partir de textos shakespeareanos de tres directores europeos: Thomas Ostermeier, Jan Lauwers y Romeo Castellucci (1990-2010)

Abstract

Starting from the central ideas that in the history of art time behaves in anachronistic and/or untimely ways, therefore, that the so-called classical texts form a substratum present in contemporaneity, that the contemporary implies an external look at one's own time and that any staging of a source-text is an act of scenic rewriting, it analyzes various ways in which this process of staging classical texts contributes to the configuration of theatrical contemporaneity, through the analysis of approach strategies, theoretical assumptions and aesthetic resources and findings of different scenic creators. To do so, it takes as its corpus the Shakespearean productions of three contemporary European directors made between 1990 and 2010: Ein Sommernachtstraum (2006), Othello (2010) and Hamlet (2008), by Thomas Ostermeier with the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz; Julius Caesar (1990), Needcompany's Macbeth (1996) and Needcompany's King Lear (2000), by Jan Lauwers with the Needcompany, and Amleto. La veemente esteriorità della morte di un mollusco (1992) and Giulio Cesare (1997), by Romeo Castellucci with the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, which are studied through the critical eye of various currents and instruments, among which the work of three thinkers stands out: Slavoj ?i?ek, Giorgio Agamben and Georges Didi-Huberman. It highlights the differences in approach between the three directors: a closer rapprochement to the source-text, as if it had been written in the present, in the case of Ostermeier; the understanding of classical texts as a kind of learning platform, in Lauwers, and the dissolution of the text in an act of iconoclasm in order to write new contemporary mythologies, in Castellucci. But it also addresses their points of contact: mainly, the understanding of scenic rewriting as a political task that questions the status quo, and the use of common scenic resources, such as the revision of categories such as fiction and representation, the preponderance in the use of the body as an expressive medium and the construction of a personal interdisciplinary language. Based on these findings, it confirms that these three directors make conscious use of the scenic rewriting of classical texts as a way of shaping a contemporary theatrical language.

Date of Award	4 Dec 2024
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	Nuria Santamaria Roig (Director)