SOURCE: "Postmodernism: Extension or End of Modernism? Theater between Cultural Crisis and Cultural Change," in Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodernist Controversy, edited by Ingeborg Hoesterey, Indiana University Press, 1991, pp. 216-28.

In the following essay, Fischer-Lichte distinguishes between Modernism and Postmodernism in the theater.

The controversy surrounding postmodernism which has currently aroused fierce debate in various fields on different levels culminates in the persistent question of whether postmodernism has effected a complete break with modernist traditions, or whether it has, on the contrary, only radicalized the trends first formulated and pronounced by modernism and extended its conclusions. Both viewpoints are vigorously upheld. This is all the more extraordinary since the ground on which the controversy should be discussed is not yet clearly plotted: Does the modernism dealt with here begin with the Querelle des anciens et des modernes or with the Enlightenment? With the industrialization of Western Europe or...