Abstract
Lee Breuer, director, playwright, and a founding member of the avant-garde theatrical group Mabou Mines, is well known in the American avant-garde theatre for his adaptations of Beckett's work as well as his original work such as the Animation trilogy. The purpose of this essay is to present my criticism of his latest work, the New York production of The Warrior Ant in 1988. Through a close examination of the performance text and analyses of both the narrative and mythopoeic aspects of the work, in reference to Aristotelian notion of epic, Brecht's idea of Epic Theater and Roland Barthes' speculation on Bunraku, Breuer's importation of a narrative structure as a framework to hold such a postmodern piece will be confirmed as a successful solution. Fianlly, the problematics of postmodernism and interculturalism will be discussed in relation to the postmodern aspects of the production, such as the reference of various ideas and cultural codes, ready-made images and parodies on both semantic and linguistic levels regardless the difference between high and low, the holy and the popular, the classic and the modern to place the significance of this production in its social context as a kind of intercultural phenomenon in this so-called postmodern era.
