비극의 (재)탄생: 세라 룰의 애도 3부작

The (Re)Birth of Tragedy:Sarah Ruhl’s Mourning Trilogy

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Sarah Ruhl’s “mourning trilogy”—Eurydice, The Clean House, and Dead Man’s Cell Phone—with the concepts of Apolline and Dionysiac based on Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. We argue that Ruhl’s unique dramaturgy gives ‘rebirth’ to tragedy through the aesthetic convergence of Apolline and Dionysiac, which is especially well shown in the “mourning trilogy” in which Ruhl turns the mourning into a celebration and reaffirmation of life force by giving Apolline forms to Dionysiac wisdom. First, Eurydice reinterprets the Greek myth of Orpheus as a symbolic journey of ‘Eurydice,’ who finds her Apolline language in the state of Dionysiac oblivion in the underworld, thus to reach her own tragedy. Secondly, in The Clean House, Matilde can be understood as a Dionysiac chorus who creates her vision on the stage through Apolline artistry. Lastly, Dead Man’s Cell Phone shows the possibility of tragedy beyond postmodernism by creating the Apolline image of “music-making Socrates,” which manifests a soundscape of Dionysiac music onstage. This study not only sheds light on the possibility of “rebirth” of tragedy in modern drama which formerly has been lopsided toward the Apolline, but also expands the horizon of dramatic criticism on women playwrights which tends to see their aesthetics as some kind of ‘whimsy’ or ‘quirky’ accident. In conclusion, we discuss why we should resume more active academic discussions on the possibility and necessity of tragedy and how to incorporate Ruhl’s ‘millenium tragedy’ in the curriculum and pedagogy of modern drama.