Disability and Postdramatic Theater: Return of Storytelling

The article explores the interweaving of theater with and by disabled artists with so-called postdramatic theater practices. It elaborates points of connection between the postdramatic concept and disability aesthetics through an analysis of work by and with disabled artists (such as Theater Thikwa and Monster Truck or Rimini Protokoll). Building on the work of Tobin Siebers, the argument is that a disability aesthetic can be described within the framework of the postdramatic. The popularity of disabled performers in postdramatic works can be examined from a disability studies perspective, in which one can criticize the reduction of disability into a “pure” form, without considering the social, historical, and political aspects of it. Postdramatic forms, however, seem to open up new opportunities for disabled performers because they broaden the aesthetic spectrum away from what Carrie Sandahl calls a “tyranny of the neutral,” shifting a traditionally rigid concept of acting to a broader aesthetical spectrum of performance, including different sensorial, cognitive, and physical states.