Winter 2015

Simon Stephens, Pornography

Simon Stephens and Pornography

... Pornography, first performed at the Hanover Festival and at Deutsches Schaupielhaus Hamburg in June and October 2007*, focuses on subjective perceptions of traumatic historical events. Stephens wrote the play just three weeks after the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Very unlike porno-graphic depictions of stark facts, however, Stephens’s play portrays the traumatic real of the terrorist attacks as a sublime absence, a precarious void. We sense that something catastrophic has happened, but instead of watching the spectacle, we are asked to fill in blanks: the brief mentioning of the size of a rucksack; the leader of the suicide bombers perceiving in much detail the landscape on the train from Manchester to London; dashes replace names of characters; scenes are presented in a reverse numbering – like an uncanny count-down.? ... (Martin Middeke)

Read the full text of Martin Middeke’s introduction to Pornography here.

• Take a look at our programme.
• Look at Toni Bihler’s and Florian Schneider’s video produced for the AnglistenTheater’s production of Pornography.
• Listen to Bettina Auerswald’s sound tracks I am going to ... and Images of Hell produced for the AnglistenTheater’s production of Pornography.