Postmodernism Unmasked: Rainald Goetz's Festung and Albert Ostermaier's The Making of B-Movie.

Since the 1970s, the pastiche has become the most popular theatrical form in Germany. In the 1990s, the postmodern wave gradually petered out, and became the object of critical analysis, not only by means of literary criticsm, but also through the plays themselves. In 1993, Rainald Goetz published his trilogy Fortress (Festung), a harsh criticism of the media, which is composed of a multitude of plays within the play, thus exposing the absurdity of the postmodern TV culture. In his play The Making of B-Movie (1999), Albert Ostermaier picks up on postmodernism by presenting the making of the would-be writer Brom and his ghost-writer Silber as a play against the backdrop of a kitsch movie. This chapter will examine the structure of both plays, analysing the different approaches to postmodernism in a consumerist society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]