What is 'tragic experience' in theater? Building on his earlier studies of ancient tragedy and his standard work "Postdramatic Theater," which has been translated into 19 languages, Hans-Thies Lehmann, one of Germany's most significant theater theorists, outlines a theory of tragedy in his new book that has developed in Europe from antiquity to the postdramatic present. The concept of tragic experience is explained as being strictly tied to theatrical experience. At the center is modern tragedy since the Renaissance and the question of the contemporaneity of tragedy. What exactly is (or was) the 'dramatic' in dramatic theater? What can tragedy and the tragic mean when clearly distinguishing between pre-dramatic, dramatic, and post-dramatic forms of theatricality?.