60년대 아방가르드 연극 운동의 비평적 유산에 대한 재고: 샘 셰퍼드 초기 단막극에 대한 사실주의적 해석의 가능성

Abstract

This paper proposes a realistic interpretation of Sam Shepard's early one-act plays, considering their pronounced theatricality both as reflection and problematization of increasing theatricalization of contemporary everyday life. This interpretation challenges the dominant view that his early plays embody the liberating aesthetics absorbed from the american avant-garde theater movement in the sixties. The essential idea of this movement is epitomized in its strong valorization of performance. Performance. which used to be understood as faithful staging of plays, became autonomous theatrical activity free from (or opposing to) restricting literary text and was celebrated for anticipating social trans formation. This paper does not deny the strong influence on Sam Shepard of the innovative ideas and techniques developed by various performance-oriented theater groups. However. what. he dramatized by employing them is far from the ideal of performance envisioned by the avant-garde theater practitioners. Rather, his radically theatrical plays seem to implicitly criticize increasing performance impulses which the modern, urban life encourages, There has rarely been this kind of critical efforts which relate Shepard's innovative theatrics to critical realism. Anti - realism, which Gerald Graff attributes to the counter-cultural sensibility, the legacy of the cultural revolution in the sixties including the avant-garde theater movement, currently seems to dominate our critical thoughts, This paper aspires to provide an opportunity to reconsider this anti - realistic critical paradigm in general together with the dominant critical views of Shepard informed by it.