The book engages with the principle of disruption to describe the political potential of Elfriede Jelinek's self-introduced "genre" of "secondary drama." The plays Abraumhalde ["Mining Dump"] (2009) and FaustIn and out (2011), which Jelinek refers to as "secondary dramas," may only be staged together with those texts on which they rely on: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise and Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Urfaust. The book examines the relationship of drama and "secondary drama." It asks to what extent they modify, question, but also enrich each other. The "primary" drama is discussed as a historical form that participates in patriarchal structures of power and violence. Thus, the critical potential of "secondary dramas" can be found in their form itself, which consciously deviates from conventional dramaturgy. My book focuses on the intertwining of the literary canon and the excluded, as well as on the historical and contemporary textual and theatrical practices that come into play with secondary drama. I argue that the co-presence of drama and "secondary drama" causes fractures which open up formerly enclosed works and thoughts and thus gives space to the hidden and excluded, allowing alternative forms of perception.
The book was reviewed in a broad number of international journals, among others: Zeitschrift für Theaterpädagogik, Germanistische Mitteilungen, Norsk Shakespeare- und Teatertidsskrift, Women in German. Moreover, it was awarded three international prizes.
The College of Arts