IntertextualitY and discourse in Dea Loher’s Theater

Abstract

Discourse is made of several voices, a premise that was announced since Bakhtin’s studies. The advances in the field of intertextuality allowed a wider specification of the term and broaden the discussion of many different occurrence of the intertext in literature. The work of a German contemporary playwright, Dea Loher, brings the recurrence of intertext, and the present paper aims to investigate this manifestation in two of her plays, Olgas Raum and Licht. Loher uses citation, references and allusions, cutting pieces of other texts and pasting them into her writing. This game of cutting and pasting is also visible inside her aesthetic, as she uses elements that are part of other theatrical aesthetics and adapts them in her work, creating an original style. Representing the political side of theater, Loher provides her reader with the possibility of reflecting and, in the considered two plays, she does it through the deconstruction of the canonic discourse, showing how discourses are made and how they are connected to power maintenance. This way, intertext, the hybrid aesthetic and other aesthetical and linguistic resources are organized to receive these political themes that come to the reader as questions and inquires.