Transgression of Taboos in Postdramatic Theater. Productive Aesthetics of Risk

This contribution analyzes Aristotle’s influence on the modern understanding of theater (based on the concept of the drama script) as a restriction and reduction of the potentiality of theater. Therefore, it presents a comparative analysis of the objectives of the antique theatrical practices around the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. (before Aristotle) and Schlingensief’s “Action 18, Kill Politic” (2002). It provides also a transcultural examination that helps explain the meaning of the postdramatic transgression of taboos, its productive aesthetics of risk, and its social and political potentiality. Thus, the performance “Action 18, Kill Politic” is analyzed as a process-oriented and experience-based aesthetic of risk as well as a ‘social drama’ in everyday life.