Page 118 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 118
Ideology in the 20th Century: studies of literary and social discourses and practices
All three characters, who are, or perhaps are not, the main characters,
are heading abroad or fleeing: Luka to Afghanistan, Erik to Luxembourg
and Boris to Italy.
As Lehmann says, the political stake engagement of theatre is
not in the topics, but in the forms of perception. /…/ Instead of the decep-
tively comforting duality of here and there, inside and outside, it can move
the mutual implication of actors and spectators in the theatrical production of imag-
es into the centre and thus make visible the broken thread between person-
al experience and perception ( Lehmann 2009, 185, 86).
The effect of a text such as onethousandninehundreteightyone is thus
not so much in the rational explanation of the social reality, but in trig-
gering emotions, taking sides on the part of the recipients. These will,
118 of course, be different. Some will be nostalgic towards the past, others
sceptical towards the presented utopia; some will be indignant regard-
ing the present, some merely relinquent. But it would be hard to say that
this fragmentary technique of dramatic writing, which incessantly moves
between the characters places and moments in time, allows a distance
and rational gaze. The latter basically leaves us empty-handed. The thesis
seems too simple and one-sided. Peter Rak, perhaps justified, ascribes it to
the youth: “after all, there would certainly be people who look with nos-
talgia to their young age in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany; Mus-
solini’s Italy or Romania under Ceauşescu”(Rak 2016, no pag.).
But perhaps the trap is that we, as readers/spectators, have to take our
own emotional position to the world described. We thus wake up from
the numbness, into which usually remote images push us, which media
of all sorts and forms serve us. “This is given when the spectators are con-
fronted with the problem of having to react to what is happening in their
presence, that is as soon as the safe distance is no longer given, which the
aesthetic distance between stage and auditorium seemed to safeguard.
(Lehmann 2009, 187).
And how does this play into a drama text that we can also simply just
read? This is exactly where Marko Juvan sees the difference between po-
litical theatre of the 1980s and the contemporary ‘political performance’;
that the former is based on the dramatic text, in which the performanc-
es still “treated politics in the codes of mimetic presentation. They staged
social problems through the relationships between characters, either his-
toric or imaginary” (Juvan 2014, 555, 556). In the contemporary political
performance the drama script is “replaced by documents, biography or di-
alogues written or improvised by the actors or performers” (Juvan 2014,
All three characters, who are, or perhaps are not, the main characters,
are heading abroad or fleeing: Luka to Afghanistan, Erik to Luxembourg
and Boris to Italy.
As Lehmann says, the political stake engagement of theatre is
not in the topics, but in the forms of perception. /…/ Instead of the decep-
tively comforting duality of here and there, inside and outside, it can move
the mutual implication of actors and spectators in the theatrical production of imag-
es into the centre and thus make visible the broken thread between person-
al experience and perception ( Lehmann 2009, 185, 86).
The effect of a text such as onethousandninehundreteightyone is thus
not so much in the rational explanation of the social reality, but in trig-
gering emotions, taking sides on the part of the recipients. These will,
118 of course, be different. Some will be nostalgic towards the past, others
sceptical towards the presented utopia; some will be indignant regard-
ing the present, some merely relinquent. But it would be hard to say that
this fragmentary technique of dramatic writing, which incessantly moves
between the characters places and moments in time, allows a distance
and rational gaze. The latter basically leaves us empty-handed. The thesis
seems too simple and one-sided. Peter Rak, perhaps justified, ascribes it to
the youth: “after all, there would certainly be people who look with nos-
talgia to their young age in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany; Mus-
solini’s Italy or Romania under Ceauşescu”(Rak 2016, no pag.).
But perhaps the trap is that we, as readers/spectators, have to take our
own emotional position to the world described. We thus wake up from
the numbness, into which usually remote images push us, which media
of all sorts and forms serve us. “This is given when the spectators are con-
fronted with the problem of having to react to what is happening in their
presence, that is as soon as the safe distance is no longer given, which the
aesthetic distance between stage and auditorium seemed to safeguard.
(Lehmann 2009, 187).
And how does this play into a drama text that we can also simply just
read? This is exactly where Marko Juvan sees the difference between po-
litical theatre of the 1980s and the contemporary ‘political performance’;
that the former is based on the dramatic text, in which the performanc-
es still “treated politics in the codes of mimetic presentation. They staged
social problems through the relationships between characters, either his-
toric or imaginary” (Juvan 2014, 555, 556). In the contemporary political
performance the drama script is “replaced by documents, biography or di-
alogues written or improvised by the actors or performers” (Juvan 2014,
