The winter of 2012. Once again, I’m working at the theatre. My latest play, “Twenty thousand pages” is in rehearsal at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. Lars-Ole Walburg is directing. We talk about scenes, cuts, transpositions, about too much and too little dramaturgy, rhythm, psychology and the necessary distance between actor and text. We act like crazy, while the world outside is really acting crazy. (more…)
Archive for the ‘English’ Category
There is a strong wave of feminism on the stages , represented by both male and female feminists.
Staging gender has for several years been the most discussed topic in the theatre in Sweden and the most popular theme, I would say, in new work. A discussion both about gender per se and the representation of gender on stage. In the big cities, that is. (more…)
Even today, Europe doesn’t know the Balkans, but neither do the Balkans know Europe. Because we write and think in different alphabets.
And it is significant that the toponym Balkans is of Turkish origin. While Western Europe is unifying, we in the East are practicing separatism. In this context, my Ukrainian colleague Irvanets once said: “Before Western Europe unified, they went through a process of proper distancing themselves from each other. That is still in store for us.” This means that we will first become a part of Europe and only then will we begin to distance ourselves from it. (more…)
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Before a character enters the stage with its luggage of words, the author has to seize these words. The author takes hold of words whenever he wants and gives them to whom he likes. But are we really sure of this? Of the author “giving” words?
Personally, I would rather say that I impose words and revoke them. The character exists only as a linguistic identity and cannot speak for itself. It doesn’t have a voice of its own. It has nothing to say. (more…)
„No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent“ – this quote, noted on the flyleaf of my school notebook, served as a dam against floods of loneliness for a long time. Now the image has resurfaced in the contemplation of theatrical landscapes.
Spotlights draw islands onto the boards that represent the world; illuminated bodies flood spectators sitting in the dark with their words. Are they stranded, have they found footing on these islands and do they tell of their attempts at rescue, flailing their arms and throwing message-filled bottles into space? Is the whole theatre an intoxicated ship, searching for land, while outside dark estimates are raging? (more…)
Mostly, I wasted time on things that have little to do with art. But if theatre is a living thing, it should be equally alive every single time: the aliveness of the theatre performance cannot be measured by one actor coughing in a different spot during different performances…
I often use this old adage, or better, paraphrase it and use it as my personal motto in researching and creating theatre. The type of theatre with endless rehearsals that are nothing more than the preparation for a final revelation no longer interests me. What bothers me is exactly that: the theatre processes, rehearsals… always orientated towards the product (more…)
When I started the political satire programme “An hour of laughter” two years ago, I thought nothing of playing the buffoon.
It has been noted that I have an inclination towards exhibitionism – yes, that is one dimension of my “role”. I don’t mind disguising myself. I guess that this is part of a sense of alienation, of an inability to really participate in everything that has occurred in my life. I still feel like a young man of 25 or 30, who woke up with a feeling of longing for death and hasn’t been able to shake this nightmare ever since. (more…)
What is most important for me as a playwright is that I am going through a writer’s crisis. I know that something has ended. Certain ways of writing – of expressing myself through writing – have been over-explored.
I keep asking myself what I am looking for now? What I believe in? Who I am? I am not so young anymore. The enthusiasm and happiness that accompanied me at the beginning of my writing (and career) are gone. (more…)
Not a jester, however, who insolently confronts the king with his bad deeds and weaknesses, but a servile jester.
At a writers’ residency of the “Maison d’Europe et d’Orient” in Paris (November – December 2011), I worked on a comedy which is treating the Kosovo’s declaration of independence three years ago. As in the end of some movies, when they show the funniest outtakes from the shoot; similarly, I wanted to show this doubtlessly great historic event – the birth of Europe’s youngest state – from a different perspective. (more…)
Especially since the beginning of the 21st century, Ukrainian drama has seen a strong surge of activity.
When I began writing plays in the mid 1990s, Ukraine was going through a difficult period of economic and social transition. Only very few of the formerly leading playwrights were able to make it into the new era. There was no theatre reform and hardly any performances of new Ukrainian plays, since their funding had been abolished. And so dramaturgy became a free art, (more…)
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