Letters from Ljubliana: A Theatrical Blogger Speaks - Wednesday

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


Hello from somewhere where you are not! Unless you are reading this in Ljubliana, which is where I am. I am Andrzwej Haidonsk, theatrical blogmeister and pimp. I’m not even joking about the pimp! I run a successful business.

I am here at the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival. Some people have been saying on my fricking Facebook wall that me being at the NSPDF and you being at the NSDF that I might be made up. Well, I can tell you that those people are totally not extreme and are also dickheads. I am as real as the sun across the mighty peaks of Torstz in the Lopl region. Some have also said that evidence for me being made up is that my name – Andrzwej Haidonsk – is slightly similar to the editor of the NSDF magazine. I have met him at a post-dramatic conference in some stink-hole place in Poland, and I can tell you that we had a good laugh about our names being alike. “We are like cousins!” I told him, but then he looked uncomfortable so I stopped talking to him. He seemed happy kicking a pot-plant with a soft shoe.

Today at the NSPDF, we saw Return to the Silence. In Slovenia many years ago there was a man who could not speak because he was born with his tongue all fricked. Well, one day he was out in a field, picking a flower or potato or something, and he got struck by a piece of lightning. POW! When they took him out of the plaster, he could do talking like any natural born Slovenian. It was amazing! All the stories he could tell! What it was like being a mute, how he liked picking a flower or potato, how picking a flower or potato was more difficult when you are being a mute. He became very famous and went from village to village telling his amazing stories. Unfortunately one day he was in a field and got hit by a piece of lightning again and then could not speak any more. He had returned to the silence.

The play at NSPDF wasn’t about that story at all. A man just hung upside down and pissed on an alarm clock.

The no talking man became a famous writer, and wrote long stories about how it was much harder to pick a flower or potato when you had talked about it and then could talk about it no more.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a bird? I have! That is why I loved “Herons”. In it three women pretended to be herons, like the title of the play “Herons” would suggest. Herons! They stood and pecked at things at their feet and stretched their wings and occasionally made a little heron noise. In the fourth hour, one of them left the stage, but returned about five minutes later. When this had been going on for seven and a half hours, I went into a dream-like trance, in which I was a genie, awarding wishes to beautiful girls. One of them wanted to be a pony. POW! I made her a pony! One wanted to be successful in business, so I hooked her up with Alan Sugary. I was a good genie, and I was happy to give gifts. Then I came back to reality, and those women were still herons! Fricking herons! It was now the next day. HERONS! It was BRILLIANT.

Come back in me for more great post-plays and I will spoon them into your guts, boys! This is what I do best.