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Poet and playwright Gellu Naum (1915-2001) is the most significant representative of late Romanian surrealist literature. Born in Bucharest, he also studied philosophy there and he came close to André Breton’s group of French surrealists during his Parisian studies. After the communist change he supported himself mainly from translations. After volumes of poetry, he published new significant volume, Athanor (1968), and the novel Zenobia (1985), which gain him international recognition. The well-deserved appreciation as a writer came only after 1990. In our spring issue we publish Imre József Balázs’s translation of his play, The Island (Insula) a playful-ironic rewriting of the Robinson Crusoe story about the loneliness of human existence. A deserted island full with people: this image could summarize Naum’s play, which can be read also as a family story with unexpected, yet typical turns of situation. Ada Milea created a theatrical concert in a remarkable performance based on Naum’s text at the Cluj-Napoca National Theatre in 2011.
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The cross comparison of the works of art has always been fascinating and has led to the discovery of many interesting ideas. Although much has been written on Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett’s works, this paper introduces a comparative outlook of two of their works. Basing its approach on content analysis, the paper compares the theme of menace in The Caretaker by Harold Pinter and Endgame by Samuel Beckett. We try to show how protagonists in both plays are afflicted by some sort of threat which is best justified by the manifestations of Pinter’s Comedy of Menace which in the end results in Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd. One character is threatened by the nationally oriented fears of the system and the other harbingers an international atmosphere of menace hovering over the mind and soul of the protagonists at a micro level viewpoint and reflecting that of the postmodern man at a macro level one.
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Mihaela Michailov is a contemporary Romanian playwright and theatre critic born in 1977, who also teaches at the Caragiale Academy of Theatrical Arts of Bucharest. Her plays have been translated in several languages, including Bulgarian, French, German, Spanish and Hungarian. This impressive list is now continued with Johanna Bertóti’s Hungarian translation of Profu’ de religie (The Religion Teacher). Michailov’s play invites us to the world of Romanian institutional education, populated by the characters of the primary school pupils, teachers, and parents, but gradually – with the complication of the events – opening up toward a wider social framework, in order to provide a more comprehensive view of the sensational and scandalous media coverage of an abuse story. Did the religion teacher touch the thigh of the 12-year old girl? What does it mean in fact if he did? What does abuse itself mean in this case? Who is the victim? What is the truth? The author does not provide us with any clear-cut solutions. Her aim is rather to show how unsure our language and our various discourses, the adults’ and children’s interpretations might be in this case, along with complex ways in which the media transforms the issues of victimhood, while also presenting an ironic image of church, religion, and education in Romania.
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In Estonian theatre, the experience of World War I found expression somewhat belatedly, in the early 1920s, when Expresssionist plays, mainly by contemporary German playwrights – Ernst Toller,Walter Hasenclever, Georg Kaiser et al – were staged in the Estonia Theatre, in the Drama Theatre and in the amateur Hommikteater (Morning Theatre, 1921–1924). The article examines the most significant Expressionist stage productions, focusing on the relations between their ideological, affective and stylistic dimensions. Critical and audience receptions of Expressionist plays are discussed as well.In the Estonia Theatre, a group of young actors and directors(Ants Lauter, Erna Villmer, et al) sought to innovate theatrical language by making use of new, Expressionist devices. In contrast, the amateur Hommikteater (led by August Bachmann and Nigol Andresen)placed emphasis on spreading the ideals of new humanity and social justice, which reflected the left-wing sympathies of the troupe , but their work was also distinguished by an inventive style and a strong emotional impact on audiences. The members of the literary group Tarapita (who promoted Expressionism themselves)enthusiastically supported Hommikteater. This little theatre became highly influential in the process of theatre innovation, despite its very small audiences.However, the key ideas and ideals of postwar Expressionism (including a strong anti-war pathos) had rather little effect on Estonian theatre in general. Expressionism mainly contributed to the widening of the stylistic palette of Estonian theatrical art. This can be partly explained by the social situation of the 1920s: victory in the War of Independence and the subsequent building of the independent Estonian state raised nationalist spirits and made people less sensitive to the destructive experiences of World War I as reflected in postwar German Expressionism.
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This article explores the forms and functions of grotesque realism in the play Balkan Spy (1983) (Balkanski špijun) by Dušan Kovačević. The analysis is focused on the mechanisms of grotesque that the author uses in order to create a tragicomic version of reality, and on the effects of this aesthetic choice. The analytical approach to the dramatic text shows that Kovačević employs elements of both conventional and modern theatre. In other words, contemporary grotesque realism, caricature, irony, bitter/dry and subversive humour are the most dominant dramaturgical techniques that the author brings in order to create his characters as well as the absurd world caused by political paranoia.
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Drama "Dekret" (Decree) was at the same time the first of his literary works, which also brought him victory at „Gajret's“ literary competition in 1932. This and the drama "Žrtve tradicije" (Victims of tradition) deal with various and temporary social issues. It considers family and describes it, deals with relations between a man and a woman and also deals with „issue of woman“, trying to examine and trying to find her place in tradition and in new modern society. But this drama also deals with relations of the country and government towards the ordinary man, relations between the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated. The drama is built around the conflict between Đulaga and Fadil, whose characters are modeled into figures whose relations represent binary oppositions: old / young, modern / backward, advanced / retrograde, modernization / tradition, schooling / physical work etc.
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The recusant culture in the time of the queen Elizabeth (1558–1603) developed a lot of rhetorical devices, figures, tropes and allegories to convey hidden religious and political meanings. Apostle Peter, whose authority had been lessened by reformers, epitomized the institution of papacy and the Roman Church for the Catholics as is clearly understandable from the poem Saint Peter’s Complaint by Robert Southwell or from the motet Tu es Petrus by William Byrd. In The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare creatively adapted motifs taken from his sources (Brooke, Painter) but added to them a remarkable number of allusions, canonical terms, and references to St. Peter the apostle, to the Ecclesia Romana and to Rome as well as to the liturgy of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, thereby underlining a sacrificial value of Juliet’s suffering in figura Christi for the sanctity of her marriage. This article supports the thesis that Shakespeare made use of the Bible and scholastic philosophy for his dramatic purpose, and deliberately imbued the secular subject-matter with a religious vocabulary and imagery.
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Originally written by Henrik Ibsen in 1882, An Enemy of the People was adapted in 1950 by the American playwright Arthur Miller, and this adaptation was the one taken into consideration by the director Claudiu Goga when staging the play at the “Vasile Alecsandri” National Theatre in Iași in 2016. In this paper, we aim to analyze the reception of the play in Iași by also pointing out the differences between Henrik Ibsen’s original, Arthur Miller’s adaptation and Claudiu Goga’s staging and showing that any adaptation of a text leads in fact to a new piece of work. Goga’s staging enjoyed favorable reviews, probably also due to the possible identification of the audience with the social-political realities in Romania.
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To achieve its cathartic effect tragedy must communicate and elicit emotions. Any dramatic utterance, treated as an act of communication within the represented world, rests on the interaction of two inseparable, accordant, and interrelated systems – language and emotions. Language can name and verbalize emotions in order to construct them in the dramatic world, but to create a linguistic image of a believable emotional utterance the language a character speaks must appear to be infl uenced and shaped by emotions. Further, that mimetic representation of emotion through language must be understood by the audience. To achieve this, dramatic language must either rely on conventional linguistic means used to express emotions or create its own code that will be decoded by the audience. The audience will vicariously experience the characters’ emotions by recognizing them in their language and actions. The emotionally dynamic image of Othello, one of the most passionate men of Elizabethan drama, is created primarily by the language he uses. To follow the changes in the syntax and the semantics of his language as the action of the play develops is to observe the transformation of the character from a loving and caring husband into a jealous beast that knows no mercy. The article will offer an analysis of the pragmalinguistic representation of jealousy in Othello’s language and show how his discourse changes in the text. The analysis will rely on basic pragmatic categories and consider Othello’s use of directives, assertives, expressives, etc. The emotional change in Othello will also be illustrated by a brief study of the change in his syntax and his vocabulary: from balanced rhetorics and sophisticated words to erratic speech and expletive swearwords.
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This paper investigates how verbal images are anchored in acting. It focuses on the concretisation of the actor’s imagination and the possibilities of relating the declamation and gestures to the stage disposition and the theatre’s location in the city. Two models are used – Noh and Shakespearean theatre.
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This study focuses on the most important stage productions of Aeschylus’ Oresteia of the 20th century. A special emphasis is given to the possibilities of reading the tragedy, in relation to politics and social climate. Based on selected productions the study also follows the evolution of various modern directing concepts and diverse approaches to staging ancient drama. Productions of Aeschylus’ Oresteia were often an integral part of significant changes in modern history and went beyond established ideas of how to read ancient drama.
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Various human science disciplines have employed ‗co-narration‘ as an empowering mode that enables one to explore group behaviour and dynamics, social psychology and identity, or as a mechanism of sense-making. In brief, co-narration can be defined as a collaborative, conversational narrative mode, which provides multiple storytellers with an opportunity to join the discourse level (in socio-communicative context) with a view to constructing a story together. Taking an interdisciplinary (socio-communicative and cognitive) approach to narrative, the present enquiry seeks to observe how the concepts of ‗co-narration‘ may provide new insights into the fictional story and discourse.With this end in view I propose Andrea Levy‘s Small Island (2004) as a case study meant to explore how the several narrators activating collaboratively on the discourse level contribute to the intersubjective (and conversational) achievement of narrative. I posit that the four conarrators contribute to the discourse, each in their own right, through the thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs—in short, their entire ideological makeup and positioning. As a result, narrative works within discursive plurality but as a collective communicative project rather than as a solipsistic enterprise.
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András Ferenc Kovács, the poet residing in Tg-Mureş is a well-known figure of contemporary Hungarian literature and a collaborator in creating several theatrical texts. Antwerp Runs, which appears in our drama supplement, is a sketch from his script entitled Debauched Armada of Comedians (Elizabethan English Fosteriades). The characters of the dramatic text in verse step out from Paul Foster’s drama Elisabeth I. They are mostly money lenders, as the theme of the text is the world of money and its way of functioning – offering us a peek into the witchcraft of power. Characteristically to András Ferenc Kovács’s poetry, in the Antwerp Runs layers of historical and current experience and language, the political-economic relations of the sixteenth century and the reality of the European economic and political union build on each other with ease.
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In the drama “To Damascus” August Strindberg opened archetypes of collective unconscious – the archetypes of mother and hero, accenting the first one. The article analyzes how the playwright creates this image using literary language. The analysis of the play is based on the theories of archetypes by Carl Gustav Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell: the archetype of the hero means the imprisonment of the human soul in the material reality – the kingdom of the Earth Mother, and the task of the hero is to get rid of her by a spiritual awakening. The article shows that the main actor in drama embodies an archetypal image of the hero and that the secondary characters are portrayed as a number of different aspects of the hero’s inner world. It shows how writer creates the process of a spiritual journey and liberation: in drama’s three parts the main character is tempted by the other players to forget his spiritual nature, to give up, is tested in aspects of the Earth Mother – time, space, recurrence, fate and frees himself from her through rebirth in a higher reality.
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Aristophanes, the Athenian comic playwright, is often said to be the inventor of limericks. The author of the paper attempts to answer the question of the origin of that opinion. He also draws attention to the fact that there are some limericks or allusions to this genre in several English translations of Aristophanes’ comedies.
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This paper aims at considering some instances of totalitarian literary prints in some of the greatest Romanian playwrights of the 6th and 7th decades of the 20th century. The times were hard, as fiction had to go on underground ways in order to be heard and perecived correctly. However, ”official” authors had their own ”surviving” techniques as far as fiction matters were concerned, as they were resisting censorship through creating characters who, by their own path throughout the plot, were criticizing the communist regime. On the other hand, playwrights like Al. Mirodan felt simply content with their well known literary value, not using any of their skills for bringing forth fiction-based resistance.
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Theatre is a cultural activity deeply involved with repetition. Repeated text recycling of specific material, and the practice of using the same spaces and bcj dies appear in a wide range of theatrical cultures. Māra Ķimele as a stage dire tor has always been interested in the original, the unique. Yet she is not free fro postmodern obsession with things that return. This can be clearly seen in two productions of "Miss Julie" by August Strindberg. Māra Ķimele gains enc mous power from repeated appearances of the same actors and scenic element.
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