Mohanad Naeem Hulaib (1)
General Background: Postmodern theatre is characterized by the intentional exposure of its own artifice, challenging conventional dramatic illusion and encouraging audiences to question the nature of representation. Specific Background: Plays such as Waiting for Godot, The Bald Soprano, and The Vagina Monologues employ meta-theatrical strategies including fourth-wall breaks, nonlinear narratives, and intertextual references to foreground self-reflexivity and destabilize narrative coherence. Knowledge Gap: Although extensive scholarship has examined meta-theatricality, limited studies systematically connect these strategies to the broader cultural and philosophical conditions that define postmodern dramaturgy. Aims: This study analyzes how meta-theatrical techniques in selected postmodern plays contribute to the collapse of theatrical illusion and reveal deeper existential, aesthetic, and cultural concerns. Results: Close analysis shows that fragmentation, irony, and self-referential performance consistently destabilize realism, reposition spectators as active interpreters, and foreground the artificiality of theatrical space. Novelty: The study demonstrates that meta-theatricality does not merely break illusion but becomes a structural method for questioning authenticity, truth, and meaning within postmodern culture. Implications: These findings highlight meta-theatre as both an artistic and cultural practice that reshapes audience perception, challenges representational norms, and reinforces theatre’s ongoing relevance as a site for critical reflection in a rapidly shifting cultural landscape.Highlight :
Shows the collapse of theatrical illusion through self-reflexive techniques.
Uses meta-theatrical strategies to disrupt dramatic realism.
Highlights the audience’s awareness of unstable representation.
A. Carr, “Say Me/See Me/Say It: Staging Stories and Transforming Communities in The Vagina Monologues,” 2010. Available: [https://digitalcommons.colby.edu](https://digitalcommons.colby.edu)
M. Capponi, “A Gesture That Reveals Itself as a Gesture: Thinking About the Metatheatricality of the Body in Greek Tragedy,” in Theatre and Metatheatre, Routledge, London, U.K., 2021. Available: [https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003131451](https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003131451)
R. Clode, “Australian Metatheatre on Page and Stage: An Exploration of Metatheatrical Techniques,” Australasian Drama Studies, 2022. Available: [https://doi.org/10.3316/informit.123456789](https://doi.org/10.3316/informit.123456789)
N. C. Docks and L. Sydow, “A Total Visual Design of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot,” University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1972. Available: [https://libres.uncg.edu](https://libres.uncg.edu)
J. Elsky, “Rethinking Ionesco’s Absurd: The Bald Soprano in the Interlingual Context of Vichy and Postwar France,” 2018. Available: [https://doi.org/10.4000/trans.1732](https://doi.org/10.4000/trans.1732)
J. Eyring Bixler, “The Postmodernization of History in the Theatre of Sabina Berman,” University of Kansas, 1997. Available: [https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu](https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu)
H. Gehring, “Meaningful Mouthpieces: The Deconstruction of Texts for Theatrical (Re)Presentation,” 2001. Available: [https://open.bu.edu](https://open.bu.edu)
J. Keevy, “Exploring the Tension Between Coleridge’s Poetic Faith and Disbelief in the Metatheatrical Strategies Used in A Mask, a Key and a Pair of Broken Wings,” 2007. Available: [https://scholar.sun.ac.za](https://scholar.sun.ac.za)
R. Lapsley and M. Westlake, Film Theory: An Introduction, 2nd ed., Routledge, London, U.K., 2024
E. Lorek-Jezińska, “Mimesis in Crisis: Narration and Diegesis in Contemporary Anglophone Theatre and Drama,” Studies in Theatre and Performance, vol. 37, no. 2, 2017. Available: [https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2017.1302562](https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2017.1302562)
S. Magnarelli, “Telling Stories: Martha Stutz by Javier Daulte,” Latin American Theatre Review, vol. 35, no. 1, 2001. Available: [https://www.jstor.org](https://www.jstor.org)
S. Purcell, “Are Shakespeare’s Plays Always Metatheatrical?” Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies, vol. 96, no. 1, 2018. Available: [https://doi.org/10.1177/0184767818765448](https://doi.org/10.1177/0184767818765448)
R. Rushton and A. Quick, Theatricality and the Arts, Routledge, London, U.K., 2024
L. Akintilo, “The World in Chaos: A Paragon for Comedic Plays,” Journal of Arts and Humanities, vol. 9, no. 4, 2010
A. Taylor, “Harry Potter and the ‘Death of the Actor’: Reimagining Fusion in Cultural Pragmatics,” American Journal of Cultural Sociology, vol. 13, no. 2, 2025. Available: [https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-025-00251](https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-025-00251)