The paper explains how ‘dys-appearance’ (Leder 1990) as a mode of embodiment identifies with doubleness and alterity in mixed-media theatre. In Petros Sevastikoglou’s production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis (Empros Theatre, Athens 2003), the dynamic co-existence of selfhood and otherness is expressed through the process of ‘reversibility’; in a sense both physical and technological entities are divided and then reunited building up a cohesive mixed-media event. Self as one side of the Other and technological body as the other facet of the physical compose a ‘chiasmic’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964) experience on stage.

This article shows how postdramatic works for the theatre invite us into conceptual regions wherein the distinction between the diegetic and the mimetic modes is effectively blurred. Not only does this interfusion of mimesis and diegesis make the boundaries between the ‘fictitious’ theatrical reality and the non-theatrical somewhat permeable, but it also invites us to re-conceptualize mimesis as an act of production within a work. This auto-generative mimesis accounts for a self-propelled, non-purposive, and fluxional becoming that allows a given arrangement within a play to ever constitute itself anew. In order to arrive at a definition of mimesis as a dynamic constitutive motion from within a work, I look at the generative ontology of philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his concept of ‘expression’. This type of mimesis becomes capable of showing how plays are involved in self-constitutive processes that recompose their fabric from within. In being such, mimesis assumes the role of a generative force in the composition of literary worlds in drama.

Contemporary drama boasts the power to transform the audience through careful selection and crafty delivery of impactful images and pieces of information. By creating faux-reality, drama sometimes appeals to the affective side of the audience in order to provide commentary on a number of social and psychological issues. Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing capitalises on its affect-inducing potential, tackling the issue of suicidal depression. The lyrical dissonance between the light-hearted delivery of the sombre tale of the Narrator whose mother committed suicide breaks a number of formal boundaries in order to create theatrical hyperreality, which may transcend the play and become the new real. By inviting audience participation, the play fosters the sense of community, trust and commitment, bringing to life characters whose origins lie in information, enhancing their realness through performance. This paper aims to explore how the play creates a more realistic setting through deviating from audience’s expectations, thus blurring the line between drama and real life. It may be argued that simulated reality, exemplified through a number of exaggerations, impacts on the affective component in audience’s attitude formation, and that its neglect for the cognitive reinforces the transformative power of Every Brilliant Thing. A final look shall be taken at how the structure of the play simulates depression in order to sensitise the audience and to which extent it attains its goal of conveying the message of the universality and repercussions of the disease. Key Words: psychological effects, hyperreality, contemporary drama, affect and cognition, depression

Our text presents the theoretical approach to the problems of body and technology in stage performance. The starting point is the status of the categories such as presence, ephemerality, immediacy of the (theatre) performance, radically undermined in the texts of performance studies scholars such as Rebecca Schneider, Amelia Jones or Philip Auslander. Utilizing examples of performances from young Polish theatre: Krzysztof Garbaczewski (b. 1983) and Radosław Rychcik (b. 1981), we juxtapose two functioning models of the body-technology relation on stage. The first – represented by Garbaczewski – is based on an understanding of the body as always mediated. It multiplies (undermines) the body's presence by use of audio-visual means. The second – Rychcik's case – is to push the theatrical presence of the body to the absolute maximum. In this case, the audio-visual layer is used to build a strong opposition to the actor's stage presence. The two examples are used to propose a new theoretical approach. We show that such stage phenomena are not only a sign of a (technological) reality shift, but also, a very important theoretical input in the understanding of theatre. We state that every single body on stage (no matter if consciously, as in Garbaczewski's case, or unconsciously as in the Rychcik's case) is already mediated and the use of technological tools is a way to play with this specific character of theatre corporeality. This broader perspective also incorporates elements of the political dimension of annexing media-mediated and media-manipulated corporeality, for it will follow the apparently transparent and natural dimension of such actions, whereby once again it will turn, as postulated by Jacques Rancière, aesthetic considerations into political considerations.