Parataktični absurdizem in (ne več) dramska komedija od Jesiha do Semenič in naprej

slovenian

2024

volume 12, issue 1

absurdism   contemporary Slovenian drama   death of character   postdramatic   repetition

Slovenski gledališki inštitut (SLOGI)
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

Within the Slovenian context, dramatic writing has repeatedly returned to the realms of absurdity and grotesque. Lado Kralj highlights this observation in his influential essay “Contemporary Slovenian Drama”, where he asserts that, modernism or one of its streams, namely, the drama of the absurd, gradually established itself in post-war Slovenian drama. This drama stems from the fundamental assumption, incompatible with socialist dogma, that reality is absurd and senseless. Interestingly, authors of such dramatic works often did not perceive themselves as contributors to the theatre of the absurd. They navigated in the direction of a dramatic technique that was simultaneously Gogolesque, absurdist as seen in the works of Daniil Harms and Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky, and surrealist akin to the early plays of Roger Vitrac and his Victor or Children in Power. Moreover, theory, particularly through the lens of the famous historian of Slovenian drama Taras Kermauner, began interpreting it as “ludist” modernism. In the essay, Toporišič examines how the specific forms of carnivalesque and paratactic absurdism that emerged and were developed in some of the most intriguing and complex comedic mechanisms in the works of Emil Filipčič, Milan Jesih, Pavle Lužan, Franček Rudolf and Andrej Rozman Roza have behaved in Slovenian drama in the new millennium. He explores how contemporary absurdist plays – often employing comedic techniques while embracing genre hybridity, including elements of the grotesque – deconstruct the concept of a unified self. Additionally, the author investigates how they blur the line between the real and the fictitious and destabilise subjectivity itself. All of these aspects, as scrutinised by Jure Gantar, who in his essay “The Death of Character in Postdramatic Comedy” evaluates Elinor Fuchs’s terminology and theses regarding the death of character, seem to suggest that “character is also fading away in postmodern comedy” (87).

21.10.2024