Bitef

LiTTLE THEATRE,DUSKO RADOViC" ]

TRKAČ | RUNNER

Mattias Andersson TRKAČ

Directed by:

Stevan Bodroža

Translation:

Vesna Stanišić

Set Design:

Marko Kesić

Dejan Pantelić

Costume Design:

Vedran Vučić

Composer:

Lazar Bodroža i Nina Zeljković

Montage of the Video material;

Miiutin Milošević, Nataša Marković, Vladica Milosavljević, Dušica Sinobad, Jovo Maksić, Bojan Lazarov

THE RUNNER THROUGH ABSURDITY When in Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett laid bare the grim nothingness of the world in which man cannot find meaning and when he foretold the twilight of human-centered self-importance, the public was shocked. No less shocking was monologuizing musicianship of petty bourgeois in the The Bald Soprano by Eugene lonesco, who are trying to dredge from their memory the lost feeling of their own existence. The public sharply disapproved. It condemned the new drama. Very few viewers nevertheless tried to make out traits of their own reality in this anathemized monster, while majority very lightly delegated it to a treasury of art for art's sake fantasies. The feeling of the absurd today, half a century after the appearance of Beckett's and lonesco's plays, is a feeling almost universally shared by all humanity. The absurd has annulled all cultural, civilizational, political, social and psychological differences on the planet and united the world. It has become a bitter part of the human experience, equally present in the life of the young and the old. Contemporary European theatre is concerned with the absurd once again. Numerous works have appeared on this topic. For ail new authors, Beckett and lonesco, as well as all writers of modernity, are a classic example and a great tradition. However, the absurd for them is also a poetic ornament, a motive, a metaphor, a real life situation, a sign of the times and a destructive force. How intimidating the consequences of the absurd are today, can be seen in The Runner, a play by Swedish writer Mattias Andersson, in which the victims are the young, almost children. This play deals with young people who are into sport because in it they seek pleasure, уЦ jP ' 4 I shelter and salvation from the life governed by violence, sex and drugs. Alas, the main *||П '' , character of this play, an 800 meter runner, gets defeated in the end, just like everyone ' i|| else. Violence and destruction triumph in their lives. Lonely and lost, they float on the Ш1 surface of evil times. Si We live in a world of psychopaths - this is Andersson's conclusion. People don't love each other; they merely hurt each other. Love is a brief dream when we go out on a Friday evening... What remains is merely a hope to go unimaginable, blue and still and | A quiet sea. It is halfway between life and death... ;| Ц The Runner is a story about "a hollow period" of adolescence. The heroes of this play Кп jSfc** have reached the most agonizing and the most tragic period of life, of which grownups often reminiscence with affection, since their selective memory and ample quanti- /у ties of inaccurate and hypocritical nostalgia allow them to do so. I have always won- ' I A dered, how come that people are so benevolently sentimental about their memories Ш 1 ' J . of adolescence? Is there anything in the least mellowing or pleasant to think about a V <4 j# ; period of life during which you wake up every morning with questions such as: who am I? am I the ugliest? do real friends exist or will I stay alone my whole life? is there î||?|| anything in this world which I do, which gives me even the slightest satisfaction? will I ...■ A ever, ever lose my virginity? Try as hard as I may, 1 cannot detect anything pleasurable WÊàk H u in my memory of that period of life. WÊÊ ■ I The text by Mattias Andersson has a disarming honesty. In it, all romantic lies about К 4 jjjKSs. s?