This thesis takes as its focus the work of auteur theatre director Barrie Kosky. Engaging with Kosky s work in Australia in the 1990s and 2000s, it argues that Kosky s radical reconfigurations of classical tragedy introduced a new mode of performance to the contemporary Australian stage that I call post-tragedy . Kosky s post-tragedies created ruptures in the fabric of contemporary Australian theatre. These ruptures produced new modes of thinking about the role of performance in Australia,

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... itating a collapse between marginal and mainstream theatrical practice. The post- in post-tragedy marks the relation between Kosky s adaptations and what Hans-Thies Lehmann has called postdramatic theatre . Through an analysis of various Kosky productions, the thesis demonstrates that post-tragedy operates as a subgenre of postdramatic performance. Specifically, post-tragedy troubles an audiences mimetic relationship with the stage action by drawing nonrepresentational and representational performance tropes into dynamic relation. Through this relation, the boundaries between performance and audience collapse, mobilising an affective dimension that the thesis calls post-tragic affect .