Theatre in Suspension: Staging the Epoché in Beckett, Churchill, and Kane

This paper examines the intersection of postdramatic theatre and phenomenology. It utilizes the Husserlian concept of the epoché and connects it with postdramatic theatre as theorized by Hans-Thies Lehmann, following the analysis of Zsolt Benedek: theatre as a suspension of quotidian intentionality. The study incorporates a practical application of its analysis within the selected works of Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, and Sarah Kane. It explores how these playwrights employ the epoché to suspend familiar patterns of perception and rethink meaning by disrupting traditional performative structures on two levels, performance and text. The discussion will then examine how Lehmann’s ‘joint text’ and Goethe’s ‘productive imagination,’ within these works in focus, impact spectators’ engagement in meaning-making. This phenomenological mode of perception is further grounded in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception and his concept of the ‘gaze’. In this regard, this framework enables the analysis to position the theatrical experience as a co-constituted, embodied event, where meaning unfolds through the spectator’s corporeal presence and perceptual engagement. For the most part, this study argues that postdramatic forms compel a radical shift in spectatorship, urging a phenomenological attitude that transcends passive viewing and fosters active and reflective participation.