Disturbance in the Intermediate: Secondary Drama as a Parasite

Abstract

Elfriede Jelinek’s essay (for a reprint see this volume: 337–338) describes a concept that can be viewed as a form of editing, that, however, extends well beyond parody, contrafactum, travesty, etc.1 What Jelinek calls for with the “genre” of secondary drama she introduced, cannot be referred to as a counter-song or a sequel; her concept is about concurrence, about making two texts simultaneously present in the moment of staging, as suggested by the characterization of secondary drama as an accompanying drama (Begleitdrama). By this requirement, Jelinek intervenes in the theatre business more extensively than texts usually do, thus continuing to question its historical and present conditions, a constitutive principle of her dramatic work (Haß and Meister 2015: 113– 114). Jelinek associates two of her theatre texts with secondary drama: Abraumhalde (2009), created as a secondary drama to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, as well as FaustIn and out (2011) that cites Goethe’s Urfaust as the central referential text. Formulated in this essay, the instruction to stage the plays only along with Lessing’s and Goethe’s dramas respectively was at first actually enforced by Jelinek’s publishing house. Both premieres thus chose a form, in which primary2 and secondary dramas were connected, and yet showing very different approaches at the same time.3 Notes on Secondary Drama (Anmerkung zum Sekundärdrama) has to be seen in the context of the much‐debated issue concerning the progressing economisation of public theatre. In the first sentence of the text, Jelinek links aesthetic considerations primarily to economic conditions and presents the secondary drama