RHAPSODISATION IN CONTEMPORARY TEXTS FOR THE THEATRE

In his book 'L'Avenir du drama' published in France in 1981 Jean-Pierre Sarrazac formulated the thesis about the rhapsodisation of contemporary theatre. His analyses of a few dozen dramas written in the 1960s and 1970s link the process of change with the rejection of the Aristotelian idea of man's innate nobility and the erosion of the 'organic' concept of dramatic structure. According to Sarrazac twentieth-century drama evolved into 'rhapsody', ie. a patchwork of dramatic, epic and lyrical elements put together by techniques of juxtaposition, collage or hybridization. The authoress of the article concurs with Sarrazac's argument and complements it by examining a number of concrete 'rhapsodic' devices and their functionality in Roland Schimmelpfennig's 'Vorher/Nachher', Jean-Luc Lagarce's 'Le Pays lontain' and Daniel Danis's 'Terre océane'.