Letters From Ljubliana: A Theatrical Blogger Speaks - Tuesday

[Written for Noises Off at the National Student Drama Festival 2009.]


In case you have not seen any of my columns so far, I believe I am reporting from the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival here in Ljubliana. I believe this because it is fricking true, boys! I am Andrzwej Haidonsk, and I love post-drama so much I named my dog after it. Here, boy! Fetch this stick, Post-Drama! Not really. I named him Gjeckel, which is Slovenian for “Meat Cart”.

Today we have had two shows which have taken my theatre pig and shaken it until it has sicked up emotion on my shoes! It has been fucking extreme over here!

First up was the show called “Elephant’s Graveyard”. Imagine that! Going to the place where all the dead elephants are! It is a situation full of stuff that you could make an exciting, dramatic and tense play about!

And therefore bravos must go to Mr Igor Kopf, the directitateur of this piece. He ignored all of that! Two men sit in a room. One reads a newspaper. This takes a fucking long time. He then finishes the newspaper. The other man picks up the newspaper. He reads it also. This also takes a fucking long time.

The second man finishes the newspaper and then puts it on the floor. The two men sit in silence, for a fucking long time.

Then the first man leans into the front row of audience. Very quietly, he says the word “Tzap” fourteen times in the ear of audience member.

“Tzap tzap tzap tzap tzap tzap.” Like that, but doubled in number. And then with two more on top. What does “tzap” mean? I do not know. Is it English? It isn’t Slovenian. I’m not even sure Mr Igor Kopf knows what this means! And that is the essence of post-drama.

Then we had a play called “Not Enough”. In this a grotesquely fat man, who I recognised as working behind the honey counter in Zozik’s Shop, was given some raisins. “Mmm, I love raisins!” he says, “I can never have enough!” and the audience are invited onto the stage to post raisins into his mouth, which is getting fuller and fuller of raisins, but still he chews his massive jaws, chomp chomp chomp, and eventually his body goes into sugar shock and he is now unconscious, but still they pour raisins into his mouth, until he is buried underneath a large mound of raisins. Where did they even get that amount of raisins? Don’t they know about global recession? People are going hungry! Not the man from the honey counter. He has had enough.

Let me return tomorrow to make you better with more post-drama thrill pills from Doctor Haidonsk! I like you! I do!