Theater and audience perception in a postmodern perspective

« The genuinely postmodern work forces us to recognise that reality is something other than our formulations of it, and that those formulations are therefore constructs » (Jean-François Lyotard). Investigate and interrogate the urge in performance theatre to radically restructure audience perception and understanding of theatre/life. Focus your response through the analysis of at least two different practitioners or performance forms studied and work seen.

Postmodernism denies the idea of a true and unique reality. It questions it by using irony instead of metaphysics. It plays with the idea that there exists another reality, as Allan Kaprow (in Kirby ; 1965 : 67) explained in a letter sent to selected New Yorkers for the production of 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959), 'In this different art, the artist takes off from life'. Thus, it forces us to question our sense of the world and reality and in placing the audience in this altered and parallel state, tries to offer new ways of seeing theatre and life.
The work of The Wooster Group, Robert Wilson, Shunt and Happenings challenge accepted intelligence and knowledge and modify our perception of reality by investigating other realities. Avant-garde performance theatre also exposes our constructed models of reality and theatre and in doing so, changes the traditional model of audience understanding and asks the questions, what is theatre? What is life? What is real? Does real exist?