Bitef

additional fragmentation of the. drama in which Aristotelian unity of action does not exist, not even in a single line of a single character. Then, there is also the introduction of an additional round of language games - the only action in this drama and performance - for instance, by concrétisation of a switch of (speech) roles on the scene by literal switch of the roles of Snow White and the Queen. Then, there is an additional iconization (in the argotic, not semiotic sense) of the already iconic figures, or setting a trap to recognition, the ideological ‘interpellational bob’ in reading: who might be the ‘evil’ Queen, and who might be the ‘good’ Snow White? Here and now? Two willing women? One of them inhibits and stifles her desire (because she gets hurt because of it), the other allows and satisfies it (but gets hurt by it). Which do you prefer? The black or the white one? The ‘evil’ or the ‘good’? Whose side are you on? Oh, well, it is difficult, but we have decided for you; on the basis of century-long experience we allow ourselves the freedom to let events flow in this performance just as a ‘majority 1 would like them to. Is it painful for you? You do not agree? But, it is just a game... or even more benign - a language game. Although. Walser 1 s Schneewittchen is an ideal range for testing possibilities of post-dramatic theatre. Fragmentary and ephemeral, the drama leaves the main narrative to the fairytale, and it deals with its remains, crumbs from the table of mythology, and insists on - for the drama - ‘minor’ matters, possibilities, omissions, implications, dislocations, coarse seams... Therefore, there is nothing in it beyond language games, sometimes at a dizzy rate, sometimes lazy and uninventive. But always real, realistically consequential. Dramatis personae as four talking heads, speaking machines, elaborate the well known narrative in all variations, testing and exchanging different strategies, like in a game of chess or a complicated dance... Whose move is it?... Who is in the lead...? All in all, post-dramatic theatre as the nightmare of traditional dramatic theatre - there is no dramatic action, one acts with words broken by speech, only with them the world, figures are made and destroyed... A bad drama, uneconomical: why does Hunter have so little text? Why does King appear only at the vet}' end? Therefore, it is out of the question that it is ‘a well made play’. But why would ‘excessive’ textualism be limiting? Or rather, is it the matter of a work with the economy of dramatic text. With ownership relations of discourse. With capitalist logic of the text. From dramatic towards post-dramatic. Post-dramatic performance as a queer performance. Because it does not deal with linear narrative, psychologically motivated actions, stable psychological profiles of characters, but side ‘queer’ traces of action, anticipation of actions, action as performance, unstable and constantly potential.

Here is a proposition of a queer form (genre) in theatre: neoclassical post-dramatic performance... We offer you a drawing-room drama, a storm in a teacup... utterly two-dimensional - in it figure (of speech) is more significant than anything else. The story is behind us. Let us deal with the way it is performed on the scene: the manner, the nuances, the variations, the poses, the figures, associations, representation models, dense network of references, unfathomable jokes only the ‘well-versed’ laugh at. »Just for the educated«. We are offering you a noble and trashy boudoir of Petre von Kant or lofi of Alexis Colby as the scene of event.. We are offering you the Queen as Tamara de Lempicka who sings the rhymes of Kathy Acker with the voice of Josipa Lisac. We are offering you Snow White and the Hunter as Balthus’s (sponged off/painted over) models of bourgeois society. The ambitious Prince, fashioned for yachting, who understands nothing. We are offering you a ‘Turkish’ mise-en-scene.... But these are just a framework, initial status of the performance. I will quote the characters from my own performance: »Panta rei...« Have fun recognizing the rest! Although... (Bojan Đorđev) NOTES ON ROBERT WALSER Swiss writer Robert Walser was born in 1878, died in 1956; he lived in Switzerland and Germany. His work belongs in the literary circle of (Central) European modernists of the first decades of the 20 tll century. He mostly wrote short stories ( The Walk, The Little Tree, A Little Ramble...), but also novels (Jacob von Gunten, Factotum, The Robber), short dramas (»dramolettes« - Snow White, Felix, Pond, Cinderella), essays and reviews (on Kleist, Büchner, Hölderlin, Schiller...), and роепу. He strongly influenced many modernist writers of the first half of the 2CW 1 century, such as Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, W. G. Sebald, Robert Musil and others. Photos: Đorđe Tomić