Fritzl Agonista: The Limit of the Obscene

Abstract

The staging of Emilio García Wehbi’s Fritzl Agonista can be approached through the concept of the obscene as developed by Corinne Maier. This lens reveals dramaturgical tactics used to stage images of the monstrous and the unrepresentable, the subject matter of the play. The resulting mise-en-scène constitutes an aesthetics of the obscene, simultaneously at work in the  formal structure of the play and the way in which it frames the spectators’ expectations. Furthermore, the performance also functions as a site-specific piece, where the intrinsic relationship with the space defines the conditions of reception. Concepts such as liminality, undecidability, and semantic proliferation provide a framework for interpreting a play that can be described as postdramatic, according to Hans-Thies Lehmann’s postulations. It is through the demarcation and transgression of this theoretical border, the space of contradiction where the piece’s poetic images are grounded, that both the aesthetic proposal and the political operation of Fritzl Agonista may be analyzed.