Hybridity in Anthony Neilson’s Realism and Narrative

Abstract

Theatre, as a co-production produced by efforts of the playwright, the director, the actors, prop-makers and costume artists, musicians, the dancers, the lighting experts; in short, on-stage and backstage technical team, is inherently a hybrid art. It has maintained the quality of being an intermedial and hybrid art form by being in interaction with genres and arts and benefitting from the technology of every age since its birth. However, the hybridity of theatre has not been the subject of serious research and discussion until almost the twentieth century. In the last fifteen years, it is seen that the hybridity of theatre and hybridization coming to the fore in the productions have begun to be discussed and studied theoretically in theatre and performance studies under the leadership of names such as Hans-Thies Lehmann, Patrice Pavis, Gerda Poschmann, Andy Lavender, Jean Pierre Sarrazac, and Erika Fischer-Lichte, This paper explores the hybrid nature of theatre to be discussed regarding the perspectives of the past and the present through the examples from two plays entitled Realism (2006) and Narrative (2013), by the playwright Anthony Neilson, who has an important place in British theatre.