Experience of Time narrated in Music Theatre Today

Abstract

Narration in contemporary music theatre has long been thought of in two modes: on the one hand as something that serves tradition and linearity in the narrative structure and on the other hand as something that negates them (anti-narration). That there are alternative approaches between these two poles is demonstrated not least by literature and theatre studies, based on HansThies Lehmann’s post-dramatic theories. The narrowing of narration to an understanding as plot or as negation of narration obstructs the analysis of current musical theatre productions. Instead of determining what is not done or how something sets itself apart from a tradition, one must ask what is told and how something is told out of the value, out of the form itself. Since musical theatre in its basic form is always a sequence of events in time, an extended concept of narration is taken as a basis, based on Paul Ricœur's idea of narration as “l'agencement des faits” (arrangement of facts). Narration, understood as the assembly of events through specific connections and as a genuinely temporal structure, can then function as an analytical tool to find principles in seemingly ‚non-narrative’ works according to which decisions are structured sequentially. Last but not least, everything that serves the constitution of performative space can already be understood as a starting point for narrative semiotic processes (Hans-Thies Lehmann and Erika Fischer-Lichte). Today, narrative structures can thus emerge from the media and materially different conditions of the performance space (image, text, light, space), the open work structures in sound and play and their respective performance. On this basis, the essay is intended to develop a broader concept of narration, on the basis of which the temporal situational event chains of contemporary music theatre values (e.g. Brigitta Muntendorf, Clara Ianotta, Manos Tsangaris, Helmut Lachenmann or Luigi Nono) are questioned about their narrative structure. The aim is to model artistic strategies and structures immanent in the work that offer access to narratives of contemporary music theatre.