The European theatre today: the plays nr 8

Transcription

8
EUROPEAN THEATRE TODAY
/THE PLAYS
+ ALBANIA
Allegretto Albania /Stefan ÇAPALIKU
An Angel On The Eleventh Floor
/Stefan ÇAPALIKU
+ AUSTRIA
Hamlet is Dead. Zero Gravity /Ewald
PALMETSHOFER
Or the Night Will Be Abolished
/Gerhild STEINBUCH
Ulrike Maria Stuart /Elfriede JELINEK
+ BELARUS
Off /Konstantin STESHIK
The Field of Miracles /Ekaterina
MOKLOKOVA
Under Control /Nikolai KHALEZIN
+ BELGIUM, FLEMISH-SPEAKING
Bulger /Klaas TINDEMANS
Mission /David VAN REYBROUCK
Song /Kris CUPPENS
+ BELGIUM, FRENCH SPEAKING
Amerika /Claude SCHMITZ
Bloody Niggers /Dorcy RUGAMBA
Dialog Between a Dog and His Master
on the Necessity of Biting One’s
Friends /Jean-Marie PIEMME
+ BOSNIA AND HERCEGOVINA
Fly-Catcher /Zilhad KLJUČANIN
+ BULGARIA
Small Play for a Children`s Room
/Yana BORISOVA
+ CROATIA
Archetype: Medea/Woman-Bomb/
Europe /Ivana SAJKO
Fireflies /Tena ŠTIVIĆIĆ
Sunday Lunch /Ivica PRTENJAČA
+ CYPRUS
For Harry’s Sake /Adonis FLORIDES
My Beloved Washing Machine
/Antonis GEORGIOU
The Rich Also Cry: The Age Of
Innocence /Andreas ARAOUZOS
+ CZECH REPUBLIC
Britney Goes To Heaven /Petr
KOLEČKO
Dorotka /Magdalena FRYDRYCHOVÁ
Harila /René KUHL
Leaving /Václav HAVEL
Miracle in the Dark House /Milan
UHDE
The Elle Girls /Radmila ADAMOVÁ
+ ICELAND
Imminent /Sigtryggur MAGNASON
Mishap! /Bjarni JONSSON
+ DENMARK
Home Sweet Home /Andreas
GARFIELD
Piss /Kamilla Wargo BREKLING
With Kind Regards /Erling JEPSEN
+ ITALY
Genoa 01 /Fausto PARAVIDINO
North face /Edoardo ERBA
+ ESTONIA
Filling the Barn /Madis KOIV
+ FINLAND
Loneholm /Laura RUOHONEN
Sexton /Heini JUNKKAALA
The Man Who Refuses to Use
Elevators /Bengt AHLFORS
+ KOSOVO
The Prospector of the High Peaks
/Fadil HYSAJ
The Town is Growing /Jeton NEZIRAJ
War in Times of Love /Jeton NEZIRAJ
+ LATVIA
Latvian Love /Alvis HERMANIS
The Sound of Silence /Alvis
HERMANIS
+ FRANCE
The Merchants /Joël POMMERAT
The Unknown Act /Valère NOVARINA
The Comic Illusions /Olivier PY
+ LITHUANIA
58 Dreams /Julius KELERAS
A Girl, of Whom God Was Afraid
/Gintaras GRAJAUSKAS
+ GEORGIA
Birdie Died in Glen /Tamaz CHILADZE
Sweet, Sad Scent of Vanilla /Irakli
SAMSONADZE
+ LUXEMBOURG
Notturno (The End, My Friend) /Guy
WAGNER
Notturno (Too late) /Guy WAGNER
+ GERMANY
A Man Is Born /Martin HECKMANNS
Amok My Children’s Game /Thomas
FREYER
Old Ford Excort Dark Blue /Dirk
LAUKE
Sense /Anja HILLING
The Biting Frequency of Guard Dogs
/Andreas MARBER
The Last Fire /Dea LOHER
+ MALTA
Caravaggio: the Investigation /Joe
FRIGGIERI
Lacuna /Simone SPITERI
The Ban Under the Bed /Clare
AZZOPARDI
+ GREECE
Blind Spot /Yannis MAVRITSAKIS
Num Mums! / Yum! /Sakis SEREFAS
Unforgettable /Vassilis
CHRISTOPHILAKIS
+ HUNGARY
Public Enemy /Istvan TASNADI
The Stone Watcher /Janos HAY
www.etc-cte.org
+ IRELAND
Pump Girl /Abbie SPALLEN
Terminus /Mark O’ROWE
The Seafarer /Conor McPHERSON
Walworth Farce /Enda WALSH
+ MOLDOVA
FUCK YOU, Eu.ro.Pa ! /Nicoleta
ESINENCU
Without Sugar /Nicoleta ESINENCU
+ NETHERLANDS
The Fourth Reich /Peer
WITTENBOLS
Mightysociety 4 /Eric DE VROEDT
Peace /Rob DE GRAAF
european theatre today /the plays /08
+ NORWAY
Barcodes /Erlend SANDEM
Men Without Value /Christopher
NIELSEN
Shadow of a Boy /Arne LYGRE
+ POLAND
Death of the Squirrel-Man /Małgorzata
SIKORSKA-MISZCZUK
Grandmother /Michal WALCZAK
Let’s Talk about Life and Death
/Krzysztof BIZIO
+ PORTUGAL
My Wife /José Maria VIEIRA
MENDES
The Morning /José Luís PEIXOTO
A Strong Smell of Apples /Pedro
EIRAS
Extras /Jacinto LUCAS PIRES
Flatland Trilogy (Flatland I, Flatland II,
Flatland III) /Patricia PORTELA
+ REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
(FYROM)
The Demon of Debarmaalo /Goran
STEFANOVSKI
Werther & Werther /Zanina
MIRCEVSKA
Empty City /Dejan DUKOVSKI
+ ROMANIA
Mr Sisyphus /Radu F. ALEXANDRU
Three Flies and a Spider /Miahi IGNAT
+ RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Blood and Ash /Mouradine OLMEZ
July /Ivan VIRIPAEV
The Wolves /Moussa AKHMADOV
+ SERBIA
Godot on the Hot Tin Roof /Branko
DIMITRIJEVIC
Jump Girl /Maja PELEVIC
+ SLOVAKIA
Terra Granus /Michal DITTE
The sad life of Ivan T. /Lubo BURGR
(and company)
Woman Fetishists /Iveta
HORVÁTHOVÁ
www.etc-cte.org
+ SLOVENIA
Baba Yaga /Dane ZAJC
I, Victim /Simona SEMENIČ
The Class /Matjaž ZUPANČIČ
+ SPAIN, CASTILIAN-SPEAKING
Exile /Paco ZARZOSO
Hamelin /Juan MAYORGA
Nina /José Ramón FERNANDEZ
+ SPAIN, CATALAN-SPEAKING
Match Day /David PLANA
Singapore /Pau MIRÓ
+ SWEDEN
Invasion! /Jonas Hassen KHEMIRI
The Day Day Died /Rasmus
LINDBERG
The White Baby /Sofia FREDÉN
+ SWITZERLAND, FRENCHSPEAKING
At the End of the Tether /Manon
PULVER
Far from the Ball /Valérie POIRIER
Mephisto (Only an Actor) /Mathieu
BERTHOLET
Venus Vocero /Nadège REVEILLON
+ SWITZERLAND,
GERMAN-SPEAKING
Cold Country /Reto FINGER
Favourite people /Laura DE WECK
The sample (The Good Simon Korach)
/Luka BÄRFUSS
+ TURKEY
Paper Stone Cloth /Murathan
MUNGAN
The Unofficial Hürrem /Özen YULA
+ UKRAINE
When the Rain Returns /Neda
NEJDANA
A Station, or the Timetable of Desires
for Tomorrow /Alexandre VITER
Daughters-Mothers /Alexandre
MARDAN
+ UNITED KINGDOM
Clickwind /Judith ADAMS
Yellow Moon /David GREIG
If you read this catalogue of new plays
written, performed or published in the last
two years throughout Europe attentively,
you will have further proof of the validity of
set theory: 2 + 2 makes more than three.
The same goes for theatre production in
terms of meaning.
Each plays tells its own story, has its
particular meaning and a form very much
its own... But when combined, the new
texts presented here constitute, on the
basis of their content alone, a broader,
more universal, more violent, more
committed and more preoccupied story.
And it is the story of today’s Europe, our
Europe, caught between withdrawal and
opening up, between disenchantments
and hopes, between globalisation and
identity, in search of meaning and a new
vitality which can only be found starting
from language, and especially from the
language of the other, and its constantly
renewed translation, into all the languages
of Europe! At the ETC we are working
to ensure that each language finds its
place on the continent, rooted in the most
ancient act of communication, by which I
mean the art of theatre.
Jean-Claude Berutti
ETC Chairman
www.etc-cte.org
/european theatre today
At the essence of theatre there is
dialogue. Not just between the characters
on the stage, but also between the actors
and the audience: it is impossible to
experience theatre passively. That is why
theatre, despite its old age, is the most
contemporary of all arts. And it is also, by
definition, a shared communal experience.
For these reasons a European theatre
already prefigures that Europe-wide
“public space” we have been building
since the European Community was first
established.
There is indeed already quite a long
history of cooperation between European
theatre and the European institutions. The
European Commission has supported the
performing arts since the launch of the
first community programme in the field of
culture, and even before that, when action
could only be accomplished through pilot
projects.
The
partnership
between
the
Commission and the European Theatre
Convention is also a long-standing
one, and it stems from the full accord
between the activities of the ETC and
the priorities of the Union in the field of
culture: in particular the promotion of the
trans-national mobility of artists and the
circulation of works of art as well as of
intercultural dialogue.
www.etc-cte.org
ETC brings a valuable contribution to all
these three fields and this is why it is a
particular pleasure for me to write these
few words for a publication that collects
the best new plays that have been written
in Europe.
As a result of it, young and older authors
will have a better chance of reaching a
wider audience, within and also outside
the countries where they live and work;
new plays will be produced, often after
having been translated in different
languages, thereby bringing to the fore
all the richness of the European theatrical
scene and bringing intercultural dialogue
closer to all those who are fascinated by
what goes on a stage, among whom I can
certainly be counted.
Theatre in Europe Today: The Plays will
bring about wider recognition of individual
talent and creativity, and by doing so will
further the common objective of promoting
social and cultural understanding: this is
an undertaking that goes to everybody’s
benefit, and I am happy to be called to
have a role in it.
Odile Quintin
Director General, DG Education and
Culture, European Commission
Stefan ÇAPALIKU /1965
Stefan ÇAPALIKU /1965
ALLEGRETTO ALBANIA
AN ANGEL ON THE
ELEVENTH FLOOR
+ Characters
3 male, 4 female
+ Premiere
06/08/07 Skopje, Republic of
Macedonia
+ Translations
French
+ Contact
[email protected]
A family, Mr, Mrs and their two sons,
is cooped up in its home, because of a
vendetta. Someone from their clan has
killed a man and in keeping with the law
of vendetta which still holds in the north
of Albania, the victim’s family has made
known its intention to kill the best man from
the killer’s clan. After wondering who might
be the best man in his clan, Mr, a theatre
critic, has come to the conclusion that it’s
him. In the meanwhile, life continues more
or less normally in the town, where the next
season of symphonic concerts, entitled
Allegretto Albania, has been announced.
Other characters come to visit this family.
By accident a box containing instruments
for the Allegreto Albania is delivered
to them. The murderer, a cousin of the
family, is still free. The family sees him
on television, coming back from a peace
mission in Iraq. At the end, he is the one
who proposes a solution for the family: a
plan to escape to Greece.
NJË ENGJËLL NË KATIN E
NJËMBËDHJETË
+ Characters
2 male, 1 female
+ Translations
French
+ Publisher
Shtëpia botuese ‘Gjergj Fishta’
Lezhe
+ Contact
[email protected]
An apartment on the eleventh floor.
A couple is making love. The telephone
interrupts their frolics: the woman’s
husband will arrive imminently. The young
man wants to flee, but the lift is out of
order. If he takes the stairs he risks finding
himself face to face with the husband. Nor
can he jump from the window. He thinks
while time runs out. There is a knock
at the door. Instead of the husband, a
Jehovah’s witness, holding a Bible in one
hand, appears. He is out of breath from
the stairs and feeling unwell. The young
man and the woman give him first aid. The
Jehovah’s witness gets his breath back
and starts spewing out a pathetic speech
about family. At the end of his speech, the
Jehovah’s witness dies. The lovers lay
him on their bed and start to speak of their
own lives. The husband never comes, it
is a fiction of their minds tired out by the
routine of a banal affair.
+ Reading Committee
Dominique Dolmieu /Director, head of the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient, Paris
The propositions for this selection have resulted from the permanent work of the reading committee of the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient
for plays in Albanian. The members of this committee are: Anne-Marie Autissier, Arben Bajraktaraj, Ndoc Cefa, Elisabeth Chabuel,
Ilir Dragovoja, Robert Elsie, Mandi Gueguen, Ardian Marashi, Nikson Pitaqaj, Irena Rambi, Sulejman Rushiti and Arben Selimi
www.etc-cte.org
Elfriede JELINEK /1946
Gerhild STEINBUCH /1983
Ewald PALMETSHOFER /1983
ULRIKE MARIA STUART
DISAPPEARANCE,
OR THE NIGHT WILL BE
ABOLISHED
HAMLET IS DEAD.
ZERO GRAVITY
+ Characters
5 male, 4 female (variable casting)
+ Premiere
28/10/06 Thalia Theater Hamburg
+ Translations
Norwegian
+ Publisher
Rowohlt Theater Verlag
+ Contact
[email protected]
Two women take centre stage in
Elfriede Jelinek’s new play: Ulrike Meinhof
and Gudrun Ensslin. It is also about Mary
Stuart and Elisabeth of England – women
linked by destiny. And it is about power
– feminine power, to be precise. Whereas
the royal-blooded already possess this,
the RAF-women require violence to attain
it. They presume to take part in the writing
not only of their own history – in the belief of
course that they have a mandate from the
people to do so. In this desire to become
protagonists in their own narratives,
they are forced to sacrifice their own
femininity. And this is what causes their
downfall. Ulrike Maria Stuart continues in
Jelinek’s tradition of uniting conflicting text
material. In a game where concealment
and flirtation constantly alternate, aspects
of the characters’ psyches are projected
which involve not only the personally
emotional but also the mythological and
its deconstruction.
VERSCHWINDEN ODER
DIE NACHT WIRD
ABGESCHAFFT
+ Characters
4 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
10/10/07 Schauspielhaus Graz
+ Translations
French (under consideration)
+ Publisher
+ Contact
[email protected]
“Oed and Laura are brother and
sister. While Laura finds solace with her
boyfriend Haimon’s family, her brother
misses out. Although his job as geriatric
nurse at a hospital gives him a sense of
security, the demands of his work place
him under inordinate pressure. So he
isolates himself, aimlessly wandering the
streets at night. This pleases Haimon.
After all, Lara is his refuge, his own safe
haven from a control-freak politician
father who tries fruitlessly to keep the
family together through sport and to
cover up his dwindling popularity among
the masses. And then there is Haimon’s
mother, a lady who is only ever seen and
who’s name nobody can recall; who goes
for nocturnal walks because she cannot
sleep.” (Gerhild Steinbuch) Inspired by the
main points of the Antigone myth, Gerhild
Steinbuch transports the question of the
relationship between power and morality,
and order and humanity into very different
contexts. All this in the middle of the selfrighteousness of a society no longer able
to tolerate the thought of aging, and which
doggedly suppresses this attitude.
HAMLET IST TOT.
KEINE SCHWERKRAFT
+ Characters
3 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
22/10/07 Schauspielhaus Wien
+ Translations
Polish (in preparation)
+ Publisher
S. Fischer Verlag GmbH,
Theater & Medien
+ Contact
theater@fischerverlage.de
Hamlet is dead. zero gravity is about a
new sense of one’s homeland, that is: the
search for it. Homeland doesn’t have to
mean any particular place as such, rather
it can mean a certain feeling, an idealistic
safe haven. Palmetshofer depicts, as the
title suggests, a world in which all laws
and understandings have been dissolved,
and he shows people who no longer have
a homeland, no home of any kind to call
their own, neither in their families nor in
their relationships, neither in world history
nor in their private lives. Definitely not
just another family play, rather a study in
malice and anxiety.
+ Reading Committee
Brigitte Auer /Dramaturg, Volkstheater Wien, Dr Manfred Beilharz /Artistic Director, Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden,
Beatrix Bühler /Festival Director ‘Auawirleben’ Bern, freelance director & dramaturg, Gerhard Jörder /Theatre critic and cultural
journalist, Christa Müller /Dramaturg and Producer, Thalia in der Gaußstraße, Hamburg, Anne Paffenholz /Dramaturg, Theater
an der Parkaue Berlin, Stefan Schnabel /Dramaturg, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Beate Seidel /Dramaturg, Staatsschauspiel
Stuttgart, Rita Thiele /Dramaturg, Schauspiel Köln
www.etc-cte.org
Nikolai KHALEZIN /1964
Ekaterina MOKLOKOVA
Konstantin STESHIK /1979
UNDER CONTROL
THE FIELD OF MIRACLES
OFF
ПОЛЕ ЧУДЕС
Çõäã
+ Characters
4 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
20/04/08
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
Casting variable
+ Premiere
21/04/08
+ Contact
[email protected]
Olia lives with her mother and her stepfather Igor. Uncle Igor works as a mill
operator at the factory. He loves Fridays
because he can get some rest and there’s
no need to go to work the next day. And
also they show The Field of Miracles – a
popular TV show – on Fridays. Olia hates
her step-father, hates him for the constant
smell of cigarettes and beer, and because
every evening after work he lies on the
coach laughing ridiculously at stupid jokes
on TV. Olia has a friend called Pasha
whom she tells about her step-father,
about his odd Friday entertainment, about
how much she hates him and wants him
to leave. On Friday evenings, Uncle Igor
becomes more and more violent with Olia.
He grabs her by her hair, smashes her on
the wall several times, sits back on the
coach and continues watching TV. The
girl leaves home, meets Pasha and tells
him that she will definitely kill her stepfather. The next Friday the step-father
becomes enraged, shouts at Olia, hits her
on the face, tears her clothes off and rapes
her, puffing that she has to learn how to
behave with her father. Olia comes to the
place where she always talks to Pasha
and sits remembering the day when she
invented this friend, how much time she
spent thinking of his voice, appearance,
walk. Then the girl breaks into laughter,
screams, says disconnected, odd things,
laughs and screams again. Olia has gone
crazy.
The play OFF consists of three
monologues
by
three
characters
completely unrelated to each other. The
only thing that unites them is being “cut
off” from objective reality. In the first
monologue the character is talking about
herself as if she was a complete stranger,
in third-person narration. She smokes,
recalling quite dull details and images of
her own life and dreaming of herself as a
character in a black & white film in which she
is living in America. The second character
works as a ‘chaser’: ‘ordered’ by some
mysterious organization, he drives his
victims to a heart attack by his permanent
aggressive presence. The ‘chaser’ is
completely devoted to his ‘work’ – mostly
because he is terribly afraid of becoming
unnecessary for society. But at the end
he confesses that, probably, he’ll have to
quit, because he too is being pursued by
some ‘black man’. This character is cut
off from reality by his own madness, the
lack of possibility of normal contact with
people. The third character escapes into
her own imaginary world inhabited by
lovely and absolutely innocent creatures
– horses. She wishes she could stay
forever in a dream, but doesn’t know how
to. Some special rituals help her to cope
with society which still keeps invading her
life, but today – the day of her death – they
somehow don’t work: harsh reality bursts
into her consciousness. As a result, the girl
dies having received a strong discharge
of electricity from a damaged trolleybus.
She fails to get cut off from reality while
alive.
+ Characters
Casting variable
+ Translations
English
+ Contact
[email protected]
Hardly anyone is able to feel freedom to
the full. A contemporary person is unable
to stay on her/his own even for a minute
– people are constantly under control:
that of their family, teachers, colleagues,
special services, bosses… But what can
happen if a person tries to break away
from this permanent control? The play
Under Control presents various situations
in which the Character finds himself
under the control of different persons and
institutions: airport staff, kindergartners,
parents, teachers, wife, his boss, a priest,
a fellow worker, a friend, special services,
a policeman. A collage compiled out of
disconnected dialogues forms a general
picture of the life of the main character
– Champion – the story of his weaknesses
and achievements.
+ Reading Committee
Andreï Koliada /Translator, theatre specialist, inventor of the first manual for learning literary Belorussian,
Oleg Sidorchik /Actor, Free Theatre of Minsk, Vladimir Shcherban /Director, Free Theatre of Minsk,
Maryia Vavokhina /International Officer, Free Theatre of Minsk
www.etc-cte.org
/flemish-speaking
Kris CUPPENS / 1962
Klaas TINDEMANS / 1959
SONG
BULGER
LIED
+ Characters
1 male
+ Premiere
09/11/05 Molens Van Orshoven,
Leuven
+ Publisher
Braakland/ZheBilding
+ Contact
[email protected]
Song is an emotional rollercoaster. It’s
everyone’s story – the story of love and
loss, of success and defeat, of life and
death. Seen through the eyes and the
life of Kris Cuppens, in a very poetic and
musical language, it is the chronicle of
an era. From World War II to the sixties,
the closing of the mines in the ‘70s, up
until now – Cuppens interweaves his
life with world history. Song starts in the
past. With a grandfather and his family,
with death close at hand, broken dreams
and expectations. A little boy is born
and through him we look at the life of
his parents. With difficulty he grows up
to become a troubled adult. He knows
love and divorce, he knows defeat and
depression. But he struggles to regain a
life. And when his son is born, he writes
him a song. The song of his past, a song
of life.
+ Characters
1 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
28/01/06 De Bottelarij,
Sint-Jans-Molenbeek (Brussels)
+ Translations
German
+ Contact
[email protected]
A dirty neighbourhood in a grey city.
The shopping mall is the only place
where people meet. And a small city park,
run wild. Three children hang around
together, they have dangerous fantasies,
they look for exciting places, they risk
everything, since other children also risk
everything. A little child goes shopping
with his mother. His brothers are taken
to the school door, the child lets go of
his mother’s hand for just one second.
Three children take him along with them.
Horrible things have happened. The little
child has disappeared, the big children
are on the run. The police finds a dead
child, and a little later three children who
cannot remember anything anymore.
Nobody knows what exactly happened,
although CCTV has followed everything.
This must show one clue at least. Yet,
nobody knows why things turned out so
badly. Children are happy, not capable of
doing such things… Bulger is inspired by a
crime which occurred in 1993 in Liverpool,
where two eleven year old truants killed a
two and a half year old toddler. They were
tried and convicted as adults.
David VAN REYBROUCK
/1971
MISSION
MISSIE
+ Characters
1 male
+ Premiere
14/12/07 KVS_BOL
+ Publisher
KVS
+ Contact
+32 2 210 11 00
They are heroes which no-one speaks
of. Who quietly grow old in retirement
homes, or who keep to the terrain: they
baptise, they preach, they vaccinate, run
schools and kitchen gardens, send letters
home. Upon their return, they no longer
recognise many people and especially
not this country which they had left poor
and Catholic, and which they discover to
be rich and materialistic upon their return.
These are the heroes of Flanders, and
the audience recognised them as such:
the spectators KVS gave a sustained
standing ovation to this long monologue
written by David Van Reybrouck and
performed magnificently, for a duration of
one hour and forty-five minutes, by Bruno
Vanden Broucke. David Van Reybrouck,
a novelist, historian and columnist at the
Morgen, contracted the Africa ‘virus’ a few
years ago, and the Congo has become a
recurrent theme in his work. During his
voyages, he encountered missionaries,
Belgian and Flemish for the most part,
White Fathers, Scheut Fathers, Oblates,
Capuchins, Silesians. They are generally
elderly men who live modestly in small
communities lost in the brush or in the
provincial towns, places where electricity
hasn’t arrived, where drinking water has
disappeared, where the Congolese have
learned to no longer count on anyone but
respectfully greet those who have chosen
to stay with them…
+ Reading Committee
Nikol Wellens /Administrator of Vlaams Theater Instituut, Ann Olaerts /Director of Vlaams Theater Instituut
www.etc-cte.org
/french-speaking
Dorcy RUGAMBA
Jean-Marie PIEMME / 1944
Claude SCHMITZ / 1979
BLOODY NIGGERS
DIALOGUE BETWEEN A
DOG AND HIS MASTER
ON THE NECESSITY OF
BITING ONE’S FRIENDS
AMERIKA
+ Characters
3 male, voice of providence
+ Premiere
15/02/07 Festival de Liège
+ Contact
[email protected]
With humour and poetry, anger and
lucidity, this play is an attempt to run
through the history and the major debates
of our times from the point of view of
serfs, workers, slaves, muzhiks, darkies,
immigrants, aborigines, native Americans,
blacks from Africa and elsewhere, yids,
wogs, … of all those who, throughout
history, have had to pay for the forced
progress of the world with their blood and
often their lives. The expression “Bloody
niggers” used here does not designate
a particular ‘race’ but a community of
destinies. It is about all people who one
day or another were considered as a
lesser humanity and treated as such.
DIALOGUE D’UN CHIEN
AVEC SON MAÎTRE
SUR LA NÉCESSITÉ DE
MORDRE SES AMIS
+ Characters
2 male
+ Premiere
23/10/07 Théâtre National, Brussels
+ Publisher
Actes Sud Papiers
+ Contact
[email protected]
Dialogue Between a Dog and His Master
on the Necessity of Biting One’s Friends
describes the relationship between a
stray dog and a homeless man, who also
happens to be a porter at a big hotel and
who lives in an old caravan on the edge
of the motorway. These two classless
beings, rejected by society, will have to
adapt to and understand each other in
order to survive together. Through verbal
jousting – an opportunity for a magnificent
duet for the two actors playing the dog
and his master – they let loose everything
they can about a series of philosophical or
political themes: the country of Belgium,
which hovers in the background, the
hypocrisy of a society which lets the poor
die but which won’t accept a dog feeding on
their corpses, the question of the frontier
separating animal and human, human
and animal, the instinct of ownership, the
impulse to commit murder... Jean-Marie
Piemme, totally masters the paradoxical
dialectic with the couple of characters
here.
+ Characters
3 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
27/03/06 Halles de Schaerbeek
+ Contact
[email protected]
In Amerika, a family’s daily existence is
subtly confronted with the supernatural.
An evil force seems to have infiltrated
their home, causing terror among its
occupants. A poetic statement of the post
11 September world, Amerika crystallises
the survival mechanisms of our world. A
projection of an unreal America, Amerika
feels like a tribute to American horror films
as well as to the literature of Poe and
Lovecraft. A voyage into the heart of a
fantasised and fantastical America.
+ Reading Committee
Jean-Pierre Baudson /Actor, Patrick Bebi /Director, Françoise Bloch /Director, Jeanne Dandoy /Actress, director, Nancy Delhalle
/Lecturer at the Université Libre, Belgium, Patrick Donnay /Actor, Sabine Durand /Director, Cécile Michel /Studio of the National
Theatre, Isabelle Pousseur /Director, Jean-Luc Outers /Writer, head of literature promotion for the French Community, Philippe
Sireuil /Director, Alexandre Caputo /Responsible of the Studio of the National Theatre
www.etc-cte.org
Zilhad KLJUČANIN / 1960
FLY-CATCHER
MUHOLOVAC
+ Characters
8 male, 5 female
(3 flies, 3 fictional characters)
+ Premiere
28/02/08 Kamerni tetar 55,
Sarajevo
+ Publisher
Zalihica
+ Contact
[email protected]
A Bosnian named Muho L. lives in
Slovenia. It is 1992. The war in Bosnia
starts, but Muho L. does not react to it:
he is interested in flies. He makes a gizmo
called ‘the ecologic fly-catcher’, wins an
award for it in Genoa and is completely
obsessed by it. He sees flies everywhere;
he dreams of flies and even has a vision
of meeting the President of All Flies,
who brings him the message to save the
world. His wife, Maruška, tries to bring
some sense into Muho L. and to save
their marriage. Muho L. creates a factory
which produces fly-catchers and, using
his motto: “I will save the world from flies,”
tries to create an international business.
He makes two million fly-catchers, which
he tries to sell to Arabs, Americans,
Russians and others. Of course, he fails.
In this madness of his, he loses everything:
his family, money, parents etc. In the end,
he brings millions of fly-catchers to Bosnia
to at least save Bosnia from flies!
+ Reading Committee
Selma Alispahic /Actress at the Theater of the War, Sarajevo
www.etc-cte.org
Yana BORISOVA
SMALL PLAY FOR A
CHILDREN`S ROOM
MALKA PIESA ZA
DETSKA STAYA
+ Characters
2 male, 2 female, 1 other
+ Premiere
Theatre 199, Sofia
+ Translations
French
+ Contact
[email protected]
Four childhood friends have been
meeting in a bar every Friday for 30
years to play a strange card game with
eccentric and uncertain rules (invented
by themselves 30 years ago). Everyone
has his/her own life outside the bar but
when they are together, they ‘regress’
into the past, remember ancient events
and comment the errors and choices
they made in life. One of them suddenly
announces his decision to get married
to a woman the others don’t know. They
become suspicious she will take him away
from their ‘Masonic’ card games… In
highly poetic monologues the characters
describe their meetings and friendship as
resistance to the grey reality outside the
bar and aggressively fast contemporary
life. It is not specified where the action is
taking place, the names of the characters
are ‘international’. The main object of
interest is the surviving of the soul and
sensitiveness today. Small pleasures such
as preparing and eating a cake, inventing
ironic jokes or dreaming and inventing
poetic worlds are the strategies of these
characters to humanize the world.
+ Reading Committee
Aglika Stefanova /Theatre critic
www.etc-cte.org
Tena ŠTIVIĆIĆ
Ivana SAJKO
Ivica PRTENJAČA
FIREFLIES
ARCHETYPE: MEDEA/
WOMAN-BOMB/EUROPE
SUNDAY LUNCH
KRIJESNICE
+ Characters
5 male, 7 female
+ Premiere
27/10/07 ZeKaeM, Zagreb
+ Contact
[email protected]
At an unnamed airport, the fastest
route to the whole world, we find a bunch
of people trapped – due to something
as simple and as invincible as a good
old-fashioned blizzard. As they sit there,
forced to stop, for once in their hectic lives,
they are also forced to confront each other
and themselves. There is nothing much to
do, but to think. Free as birds and at the
same time under strict airport surveillance
like a bunch of inmates, they could leave
but there is nowhere to go and while
they are there, every step they take is
restricted. And in that unforeseen pocket
in time, in that gap in real life, anything
might happen. Long lost lovers might run
into each other, life changing decisions
might take place, unexpected truths
might be revealed. In this time of endless
possibilities and fast paced living, Fireflies
is a play about loneliness, disappointment
and the indestructible illusion that life
could still get better.
ARHETIP:MEDEJA/ŽENA
BOMBA/EUROPA
+ Characters
1 female
+ Premiere
11/04/07 ZeKaeM/Youth Theatre,
Zagreb
+ Translations
German, English, French, Spanish,
Slovenian
+ Publisher
Meandar edition, Zagreb (2004)
+ Contact
[email protected]
The Archetype monologues Medea/
Woman-Bomb/Europe function as three
stories connected to contemporary
Europe and neo-colonialism. All of them
are written from a woman’s point of view.
These three monologues were performed
as triptych in ZeKaeM theatre (Zagreb
Youth Theatre) in Croatia, 2007. WomanBomb was already published in the Book
of plays 2007, so for the 2008 edition the
other two monologues from Archetype
are chosen: Medea and Europe. Medea
is a well-known myth of woman who kills
her children as revenge on her husband.
In Medea, like in the other two plays from
the trilogy, Ivana Sajko adds political
implications – the husband has no name,
but only appears as a political figure.
Medea appears as a rejected woman in
the shadows whose role is to smile to the
crowds. Europe is named after the main
character in the play. Ivana Sajko takes
Brecht’s Mother Courage as a reference
which she combines with the mythical
story of Europe and the white bull. In
counterpoint to the intimate relationship
between the Colonel and the heroine, we
see the consequences of their militarypolitical strategies, and in the end a
world of failure, accidental selections and
unsuccessful attempts to love is revealed
to the ideologically poisoned children.
NEDJELJNI RUČAK
+ Characters
4 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
27/11/07 Croatian National Theatre
Ivan pl. Zajc, Rijeka
+ Publisher
Društvo hrvatskih književnika- Ogranak
u Rijeci/Croatian Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc/
Verba d.o.o. Rijeka
+ Contact
[email protected]
A family from Rijeka gathers for Sunday
lunch as it has many times before. It is
a spring day; there is Formula 1 on TV,
they sit around the table, eat roast meat,
dessert… The night before something
happened to all four of them and now
they are sitting round the table changed,
disturbed, different. In this play we have
two plots, two types of text, two different
types of emotions which take us through
this exciting drama in which all the
characters are condemned to the same
fate and their tragic search for happiness.
From the Square Kont to their flat, then
to Opatija… from the meaning of life
to tragedy, from beauty to horror, from
common sense to madness all serving
the main idea of this play, the search for
happiness. At any cost.
+ Reading Committee
Dubravka Lampalov /theatre critic, Olja Lozica /dramaturg, Elvis Bošnjak /actor and writer
www.etc-cte.org
Adonis FLORIDES /1959
Andreas ARAOUZOS /1977
Antonis GEORGIOU /1969
FOR HARRY’S SAKE
THE RICH ALSO CRY:
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
MY BELOVED WASHING
MACHINE
ΚΑΙ ΟΙ ΠΛΟΥΣΙΟΙ
ΚΛΑΙΝΕ: ΤΑ ΧΡΟΝΙΑ ΤΗΣ
ΑΘΩΟΤΗΤAS
ΤΟ ΑΓΑΠΗΜΕΝΟ ΜΟΥ
ΠΛΥΝΤΗΡΙΟ
YAHARI TUHARI
+ Characters
3 female
+ Premiere
02/05/07 Theatro EpiTheseos,
Technochoros, ETHAL, Limassol
+ Translations
English (in preparation)
+ Contact
csadofl[email protected]
Eva is a young widow who refuses to
go out ever since her husband Harry died.
She wants to remain indoors forever. She
is afraid that the sun will burn her skin and
that the light will blind her. She is afraid of
climate change. Her best friend Lisa is the
only person visiting her, bringing her food
and heating oil. But Lisa has not shown
up since last night. When she finally does
show up, Eva reminds her once again that
Lisa’s role is to subject herself to Eva’s
emotional blackmail. Rich pampered and
spoilt as she is, Lisa often finds herself out
of bounds, doing what she feels instead
of just voicing it out loud. So, after trying
without success to burn Eva’s house and
to choke her, she comes up with another
plan: she calls Anastasia, Eva’s sister
whom Eva has not seen in eight years. She
hopes that what Anastasia will shock her
into coming out. Anastasia arrives. She is
a woman who has memorised the rhymes
for all the annual saints days together with
the time of daybreak for each day of the
year, as these are printed on the back flap
of cheap calendars. She will try shock
therapy on Eva, telling her various soap
opera clichés about her alleged affair with
Harry. In doing so, she will reveal her own
tragedy: as a child, Anastasia was raped
by her father.
+ Characters
3 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
19/12/07 Theatro ENA, Nicosia
+ Contact
[email protected]
Daily television fiction is an art form
known to all. These (self-proclaimed)
legendary TV series take pride in
reflecting the everyday life of viewers.
The element of exaggeration is merely
a humble dramaturgical tool… Using a
fairly standardised recipe of character
depth, a twisted plot, a script full of lightentertainment life-philosophies and even
containing some bad filming, a new TV
soap opera is created. In this episode of
The Rich Also Cry (with seasonal subtitle:
The Age of Innocence) we watch the
radical developments in the ‘Diamond
Mansion’, the house of the mighty
and filthy-rich family of Constantinos
Diamantis. Why has the son and heir
disappeared? How did the daughter turn
into a cop? What secrets does the elegant
Zafira Diamantis hide? Who can resist the
sexy and struggling gardener and how
will the young and ultra-sociable maid find
justice?
+ Characters
1 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
23/01/07 THOC Experimental Stage,
Theatro Agoras Agiou Andrea, Nicosia
+ Translations
Italian, Hungarian
+ Contact
[email protected]
The play consists of three stylistically
distinct monologues which share common
themes regarding solitude, conventionality,
the desire to love and to be loved and the
right of every human being to take part in
the joy of life. The narratives of the three
texts form a cycle and relate to each other
in composite and diverse ways.
Jocasta – Jocasta’s monologue reveals
a different version of the Oedipal story.
A woman who suffered greatly in her
life, Jocasta represents the ‘living being’
who uncomplainingly and unsuspectingly
accepts faith.
Chattering – This is a story about a
middle aged woman. One day she runs
into an old friend and recalls the love affair
she once had with her young son. Back
then she was forty, bored and trapped in a
conventional marriage with children. The
experience was enjoyable although very
much against her moral beliefs, codes
and social conventions.
My Beloved Washing Machine – A
middle-aged man is getting ready to leave
his house. At this time of his life, being
alone, he can only talk to his washing
machine. He recalls the years that have
passed and vainly waits for a phone call
from a young and beautiful waiter… He
endlessly talks about a play he would like
to write, with the title My Beloved Washing
Machine. He will go to the theatre to watch
a monologue called Jocasta…
+ Reading Committee
Varnavas Kyriazis /MPhil Theatre Practice, actor, stage director, Director of THOC, Dr Giorgos Neofytou /Playwright, translator,
Minas Tingilis /MA Theatre Studies, stage director, Artistic Director of ETHAL (Limassol Regional Theatre)
www.etc-cte.org
Helmut KUHL /1970
/alias Samuel KÖNIGGRATZ,
René LEVINSKY, Šimon OLIVĚTÍN
HARILA
+ Characters
5 male, 1 female, 1 gorilla (M/F)
+ Premiere
30/09/06 Divadlo 29 Pardubic,
7 a půl Brno
+ Translations
German, Russian
+ Contact
[email protected]
Four punks, three male (Karl-Heinz,
Giovanne and Rudi) and one female (Elsa)
are living together with their Alsatian dog
Šaryk on the edge of society without
money or jobs. While under the influence
of alcohol, they decide to do a good deed:
they will liberate Kisoro the gorilla from
a Zoo. Their action is successful, the
gorilla, completely drunk, sits in a car with
the stoned punks going in an unknown
direction. The morning brings hangovers
and a surprise: they made it all the way
to Bodensee, moreover, after a night of
foreplay in the car there is an outbreak of
sexual passion between Kisoro and Rudi.
The protagonists are inspired with an
original money-making idea: Kisoro and
Rudi will make love in front of the camera
and the audience will pay to view it online
at www.fuckthegorilla.com. A mysterious
businessman offers a large sum of money
for both the show and Kisoro, putting the
four punks into a moral dilemma – they
could free Kisoro, but they could also
make money out of her. They decide
on financial gain and are immediately
punished, almost as in a Greek tragedy.
In a symbolic epilogue, Kisoro the Gorilla
and Šaryk the Dog are running side by
side on a beach against the rising sun,
ready for happy copulation.
Petr KOLEČKO /1984
Radmila ADAMOVÁ /1975
BRITNEY GOES TO
HEAVEN
THE ELLE GIRLS
+ Characters
4 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
29/09/06 Divadlo Petra Bezruče,
Ostrava
+ Translations
English
+ Contact
[email protected]
Five dead people meet inbetween
worlds. They are bored, do not understand
one another, do not know where they are,
where they are going and every one of
them copes in a different way: Britney
Spears practises the new steps of her
dance arrangement, under-age football
fan Hool smokes, heils, beats everybody
up and waits for “a hundred skinheads
with saxophones”, a drunkard and failed
mother Marie tries to create a Holy family,
Mafioso Bruno shoots his gun off, and a
workman Kolben fulfils his most secret
and intimate dreams. However, all of
them have their own goal: Heaven. During
their ‘stay’ they all undergo group as well
as individual therapies led by the angel
Gabriel, and gradually they realize that
they are taking part in a strange reality
show, where they play for advancement
to Heaven. The game starts. How far are
those ‘people’ willing to go in order to win?
What means are they willing to use against
each other? And how will angel Gabriel be
able to face all this? Will he succumb to it
and be seduced by ‘godly’ Britney? Will
he let her organize an apocalyptic concert
for his ‘boss’? Will he put up with workman
Kolben’s emotional blackmail? Will the
holy family of Marie, Hool and Bruno split
up under the pressure of circumstances?
Who will drop out and who will remain?
HOLKY ELKY
+ Characters
4 female
+ Premiere
28/05/06 Divadlo Letí
+ Translations
English, German
+ Publisher
Větrné mlýny
+ Contact
[email protected]
The play by a young playwright
Radmila Adamová (from 2005), at
first very humorously but then rather
more sharply, exposes the influence of
media manipulation on women’s beliefs,
behaviour and feelings. It shows the
vicious circle of the commercialised and
consumer society in which objectionable
behaviour is projected from one generation
onto another. In the first part of the play,
the photo models Ela 1, Ela 2 a Ela 3 are
waiting in the studio for their photo shoots.
They do not know that all three of them will
get the job, so in turns they try to “destroy”
their rivals psychologically as well as
physically. Although they keep trying to
impress, crucial problems gradually start
to come to the surface. After a long wait
the shoot begins. The second part takes
place in Ela 3’s small flat in the evening
of the same day. When her paralysed
wheelchair-bound mother is unexpectedly
brought in for a visit by the nurse Agata,
Ela 3’s “life truth” is exposed. Already as
a girl she was used to being sold by her
mother to various advertising campaigns
and now she exercises the same models
of behaviour in her adulthood. It manifests
itself not only in the relationship with her
agent, to whom Ela 3 belongs, but also in
the relationship with her own mother. Ela
3 needs to win a “prestigious campaign”,
so she throws her dying mother ruthlessly
out of the flat.
+ Reading Committee
Marie Špalová /Literary Manager, Simona Šnajperková /Literary Manager, Lukáš Matásek /Literary Manager, Barbara Topolová
/Theatrologue, specialist at the Dept For Czech Theatre Studies, Kamila Černá /Theatrologue, chief of the edition Dept Theatre
Institute, Mirka Potůčková /Theatrologue, secretary of the Czech AICT/IATC Centre
www.etc-cte.org
Milan UHDE /1936
THE MIRACLE AT THE
DARK HOUSE
ZÁZRAK V ČERNÉM
DOMĚ
+ Characters
4 male, 4 female
+ Premiere
09/03/07 Na Zábradlí Theatre, Prague
+ Translations
English
+ Contact
[email protected]
Uhde’s play is set in the nineties, just
after the transition, but its protagonists
are going back to their past almost
obsessively. Two brothers and their wives
gather in a 1930s family villa where their
old parents and their unstable sister live.
There is a strong tension between the
father, a stubborn DIY enthusiast clinging
to the house almost pathologically, and
his wife. One of the sons is a former
dissident, the other a police informer: their
contrasting positions in the past lead to
them hating each other. Their mad sister is
just one single step away from the suicide
but her parents refuse to put her into an
institution. Out of the banal squabbles and
violent confrontations, a ghost of a family
mystery emerges that goes back to the
Nazi occupation. The tragicomedy reflects
“the bigger history” through the history of
a small family from the end of the 1930s
all the way to the 1990s, so there is no
shortage of important themes, including
the holocaust trauma.
Magdalena FRYDRYCHOVÁ
/1982
DOROTKA
+ Characters
3 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
03/03/08 Švandovo divadlo, Prague
+ Translations
English
+ Publisher
Disk
+ Contact
[email protected]
The story begins when two sisters
Adéla and Dorotka are returning from their
father’s funeral to a pub which belongs
to their family. Their mother died when
Dorotka was seven years old. Now she is
sixteen and Adela is thirty. They rent an
upstairs room out to Kryštof, a singer who
often suffers from depression. The pub
is located in a remote village from which
everything is too far. The local priest is an
alcoholic and the only regular customer in
Adela’s pub. He says he drinks because
the people do not go to church anymore,
because they do not believe in anything.
Dorotka is of “intiatory” age and she
needs love and especially hope. Yet, she
sees only abandoned and faithless people
around her. The night the sisters bury their
father, a strong wind comes to the village.
The next morning the sisters find a fallen
tree in front of the pub, uprooted by the
wind. Sap starts to flow from it. Dorotka
experiences a miracle. And we can start
asking ourselves. Is this God’s nemesis?
Or God’s salvation? Dorotka is a story
about the possible experience of faith.
This experience has to be unconventional,
uprooted and somehow incomprehensible.
The question is, the way we live our
everyday lives, is it possible to experience
something like a miracle?
Václav HAVEL /1936
LEAVING
ODCHÁZENÍ
+ Characters
11 male, 6 female
+ Premiere
22/05/08 Theatre Archa, Prague
+ Translations
English, French, German, Dutch,
Croatian, Slovenian, Polish
+ Publisher
Respekt
+ Contact
[email protected]
Václav Havel’s first play after twenty
years is about the household of Dr Vilém
Rieger, who is retiring from politics. The
former chancellor’s time is up and a
question mark hangs over his continued
residence in the government villa. The
catastrophic news that he and his family
must vacate the house sets off the visible
collapse of Rieger’s ‘court’. The pace of
events soon speeds up: a court order is
delivered to Rieger ordering him to move.
Shortly afterwards, he is arrested, led
away and ridiculed: it turns out that the
details of his intimate correspondence
have already become public property. The
following day Rieger is offered a way out:
he can have a job as adviser to an adviser
to an adviser of the new government. A
press campaign against Rieger gathers
pace. Rieger defends his decisions: To
become adviser at a time when world
events are being managed by omnipotent
advisers is not humiliating at all; for Rieger,
it represents an honourable opportunity
to continue his life’s work. In Leaving,
Havel constructs an artificial (and sadly
entertaining) theatrical world. The caustic
view of the real-capitalist generation in the
post-Communist period is permeated with
playful references to Chekhov’s Cherry
Orchard and Shakespeare’s King Lear.
+ Reading Committee
Marie Špalová /Literary Manager, Simona Šnajperková /Literary Manager, Lukáš Matásek /Literary Manager, Barbara Topolová
/Theatrologue, specialist at the Dept For Czech Theatre Studies, Kamila Černá /Theatrologue, chief of the edition Dept Theatre
Institute, Mirka Potůčková /Theatrologue, secretary of the Czech AICT/IATC Centre
www.etc-cte.org
Andreas GARFIELD /1976
HOME SWEET HOME
HJEM KÆRE HJEM
+ Characters
2 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
10/03/07 Teater Grob, Kaleidoskop/K1,
Copenhagen
+ Translations
Swedish, English (in preparation)
+ Publisher
Forlaget DRAMA
+ Contact
[email protected]
A young soldier just back from the war
in Iraq is invited to dinner by his best
friend and the latter’s new girlfriend. The
couple is very eager to show their mutual
home and happiness to the soldier who
for his part finds it difficult to adjust to the
trivialities of everyday life. The differences
between the couple and the soldier in
values and views of the world come out
during dinner and the evening ends up
disastrously with the soldier committing
suicide. Based on true incidents the
drama confronts the brutality of war with
the privileges of everyday life and its
merciless ignorance. The play asks what
makes a young man or woman leave their
home to go into combat and how the rest
of us relate to a war so far away.
Kamilla Wargo BREKLING
/1966
PISS
Erling JEPSEN /1956
WITH KIND REGARDS
MED VENLIG DELTAGELSE
PIS
+ Characters
5 male
+ Premiere
28/09/07 The Royal Danish Theatre
+ Publisher
Nordiska Aps
+ Contact
[email protected]
The playwright and director Kamilla
Wargo Brekling became known to a larger
audience with her surrealistic performance
Sorry! on contemporary women. Piss is
a performance about the modern male.
His condition, his position in society and
his mood. With female emancipation his
position has changed. How does that
make him feel? How is he, here and now?
Who needs him? What does he think?
Does he have anything new to say? Now
it’s his turn! Piss is a unique opportunity
for him to talk to us. The stage belongs to
him, he’ll have a spotlight of his own. Now
he’s the boss. Once again he’s the leader.
King! Piss is the final play in Brekling’s
trilogy on men and women. First she wrote
War – on our relationship with each other,
love and marriage. Women demanded
respect and left men. In the following play
– Sorry! – the focus was on women. All
on their own. In Piss the microphone is
handed to the men.
+ Characters
10 male, 6 female
+ Premiere
12/10/07 The Royal Danish Theatre
+ Publisher
Nordiska Aps
+ Contact
[email protected]
The autobiographic works of Erling
Jepsen describe his upbringing in Gram
in the southernmost province of Denmark.
They concern incestuous relations in the
family but their unique mixture of truth
and fiction infuses the great sorrow with
an uncomfortable humour. In With Kind
Regards Jepsen’s alter ego, Allan, has
become a grown man, residing in the
capital. Though his upbringing fills his
mind it has been years since his last visit
to his childhood home. He receives news
that his father is dead and decides at
least to send flowers with a card reading
“With kind regards”. The bouquet has
unforeseen consequences. It touches his
mother deeply and she invites him back
home. Now Allan visits his mother with his
sister, who has become mentally ill as a
result of her experiences with her father
on the family’s sofa. Allan gets the feeling
that his mother had a responsibility too.
That she knew what was going on but
abandoned her daughter to get some
peace herself. Maybe his father in fact
cared for him? In one instant his hidden
desire to be acknowledged by his father
turns his sympathies upside down. Did
his mother in fact kill his father? Like
a modern Hamlet, Allan attempts to
get to the bottom of his father’s death.
Allan never reaches any insights into
the circumstances, but he returns to the
capital feeling – much to the amusement
of the locals – firmly convinced that he
was loved by his father.
+ Reading Committee
Benedikte Hammershøy Nielsen /Dramaturg, The Royal Danish Theatre, Karen-Maria Bille /Head of Dramaturgy, The Royal
Danish Theatre, Jeppe Kristensen /Dramaturg, The Royal Danish Theatre
www.etc-cte.org
Madis KÕIV /1929
(and Hando RUNNEL)
FILLING THE BARN
KÜÜNI TÄITMINE
+ Characters
7 male, 6 female
+ Premiere
20/09/1999 Endla Teater, Pärnu
+ Translations
French
+ Publisher
Ilmamaa (Estonian)
L’Espace d’un Instant (French)
+ Contact
[email protected]
Thirteen agricultural workers are
enclosed in a barn, with the task of storing
the harvest of hay. The work must be
finished at six that evening, but one feels
from the outset of the play that they’ll
never make it. Part of the hay is wet, they
fear that the fermentation will set off a
fire. This fear is reinforced when some of
the characters start smoking. One of the
workers, sent to probe the pile of hay to
see if a lot of it is wet, goes missing for an
entire act. They notice that hay has been
plied up outside the barn, against the door,
blocking the protagonists inside. Jealous
of a boy who has several times hidden in
the hay with some of the women present,
another worker kills him with a blow of his
pitchfork. The missing worker reappears,
declares that he has found an exit and
leads the others out while the hay, the
barn and the theatre catch fire. The play
is punctuated by nine zany philosophical
monologues and nine songs. The text
of the play is written by Madis Kõiv, the
songs by Hando Runnel.
+ Reading Committee
Dominique Dolmieu/ Director, head of the Maison d’Europe et D’orient, Paris
The propositions for this selection have resulted from the permanent work of the reading committee of the Maison d’Europe et
d’Orient for plays in Estonian. The members of this committee are: Antoine Chalvin (linguist, teacher of the Estonian language at
the Parisian “National Institute of oriental languages) and Jean-Pascal Ollivry (translator)
www.etc-cte.org
Heini JUNKKAALA
Laura RUOHONEN
Bengt AHLFORS
SEXTON
LONEHOLM
THE MAN WHO REFUSES
TO USE ELEVATORS
+ Characters
3 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
28/01/06 Kajaani City Theatre
+ Translations
English
+ Publisher
Finnish Dramatists’ Union
+ Contact
www.sunklo.fi
Sexton is getting ready for his
confirmation at a church camp. During the
day he whittles the key to the Kingdom
of Heaven in the woodshed and has long
conversation with youth worker, Veera.
In the evening he is forced to witness the
melt-downs of the camp’s parson. The
young people of the play are cought up in
the tempests of puberty. Over the course
of time it is revealed that the adults in the
camp are no different, but made of the
same fragile wood as the youth.
YKSINEN
+ Characters
1 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
21/09/06 Teatteri Jurkka
+ Translations
English, Danish, French, Spanish,
German, Russian
+ Publisher
Nordic Drama Corner
+ Contact
www.dramacorner.fi
Two women, a retired ophthalmologist
who wants to build a house, and a young
single-parent architect, are stranded on
a remote island when their motorboat
doesn’t start. Thus begins this classicallyproportioned play, recounting the events
of a single twenty-four hour period. In this
play, nature takes stock of the women just
as the women take stock of each other. The
rich widow’s ironic indifference collides
with the architect’s rigid dogmatism in
a way which makes the audience laugh
and think at the same time. The play asks
big questions: the place of an individual
in the cosmos, the status of women, and
the helplessness of modern people in the
face of nature when technology fails.
HISSVÄGRAREN
+ Characters
1 male
+ Premiere
22/08/07 Helsinki City Theatre
+ Translations
Swedish
+ Publisher
Bengt Ahlfors
+ Contact
[email protected].fi
A tragicomedy about an old man living
in a seventh-floor flat in the city. He has
lived there all his life. Friends, relations,
former workmates, and even his dog have
all died or drifted out of touch. The only
friend he has to talk to is the building’s
old-fashioned lift, which he calls Enok.
He can tell Enok anything, all about the
secret love of his life, Grace Kelly, whom
he was connected to by fate: they shared
the same birthday. But the only proper
human contact the old man has is when
he gatecrashes weddings and funerals.
The portrait of this lonely old man is
painted by his memories. Childhood fears,
humiliations, shameful events – painful
parts of life, great hopes and death. The
play gives a face to those old people on
the staircase that no one has greeted in
years, who nobody will miss when they
go. (Finnish Theatre Magazine 07)
+ Reading Committee
Annikki Ellonen /Dramaturg, Satu Rasila /Playwright, director, member of the Finnish Dramatists’ Union,
Merja Turunen /Head of Dramaturgy, Helsinki City Theatre
www.etc-cte.org
Olivier PY /1965
Joël POMMERAT /1963
Valère NOVARINA /1947
THE COMIC ILLUSIONS
THE MERCHANTS
THE UNKNOWN ACT
LES ILLUSIONS
COMIQUES
LES MARCHANDS
L’ACTE INCONNU
+ Characters
2 male, 4 female
+ Premiere
Théâtre National de Strasbourg
+ Publisher
Actes Sud — Papiers (2006)
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Premiere
07/07/07 Cour d’Honneur of the Palais
des Papes, Avignon
+ Publisher
P.O.L.
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
4 male, 1 female, a multitude of masks,
2 musicians
+ Premiere
Centre Dramatique National Orléans
+ Publisher
Actes Sud — Papiers (2006)
+ Contact
[email protected]
Farce or nightmare? The whole world
suddenly seems afflicted with an epidemic
of love for theatre. The poet Myself resists
this enthusiasm for his work at first, but
soon lets himself be drawn to the most
prestigious posts. His colleagues, the
actors Ms Mazev, Mr Fau, Mr Girard and
Mr Balazuc remain sceptical about this
cosmic success of their art and juggle
with masks and with the definitions of
theatre…
After dealing with the world of politics
and finance Joël Pommerat enters that
of work and questions this ancient value
which is in the process of extinction. The
Merchants is the third part of a trilogy (after
In the World in 2004 and With One Hand
in 2005). In The Merchants it is people
who only have their bodies and their ability
to work as a means of being in the world
whose voices are finally heard: pregnant
women, a little boy, babies, men chained
to their work. Like in the other parts of the
trilogy, Joël Pommerat describes a society
undergoing a transformation; here, he is a
witness to the decline of a myth as old as
the world, in a world where all myths are
fading away. In an ironic and tragic mode,
the workers in the drama create a black
comedy where these merchants of their
own bodies wonder about the possibility
of another form of being outside of the
constraint of work. While maintaining the
body of the actor and the desire to “dig
wells” at the centre of his writing, Joël
Pommerat continues his search for new
forms capable of exposing a reality which,
in life, escapes from us. As a result, he
opens his theatre to contradictions,
restrains the dialogue to the maximum and
gives himself leave to paint all possible
motifs, the goal always being to attain the
point of balance on stage between the
actor, the spoken word and space.
The Unknown Act is an archipelago of
contradictory acts: a fairground act, an
underground prologue, two-person stunts,
circus accidents, somersaults, riddles. So
many figures, attractions, like so many
movements of a ballet… ‘The rhythmic
order’, ‘Circular comedy’, ‘The Rock of
shadow’, ‘Lost pastoral’: four movements
generated from each other and flung to the
cardinal points. The following characters
enter and turn: Nihil, The Hop Runner,
Jean who ropes, Raymond of matter,
the Worker of the Drama, the Machine
to say a lot, the Cantor, the Queen of
Spades, the Naked Man, the Spiral
Woman, the Disacrobat, the Mind, Other.
The foundation of the world is shifted
off centre: the stage is divided into two,
into four... Everything passes from stage
left to stage right, in the whirl of animal
magnetism. Nihil sometimes slips prayers
into the human wall. Outside the world still
seeks its renewal. The painting remains
on the ground, like overturned words.
+ Reading Committee
Jacques Baillon /Director of the National Theatre Centre, Laurent Lalanne /Head of Authors Department
Selected by the Production Assistance Committee of the Centre National du Théâtre under the supervision of Jacques Baillon
and Laurent Lalanne
www.etc-cte.org
Irakli SAMSONADZE
Tamaz CHILADZE /1931
SWEET, SAD SCENT OF
VANILLA
BIRDIE DIED IN GLEN
+ Characters
5 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
06/11/06 Rustaveli National Theatre
+ Contact
[email protected]
A modern Georgian vaudeville or a
phantasmagorical comedy, as it is referred
to by the author, opens on a newly wed
couple, Maya and Guram, who come back
from their honeymoon to start building
their life together. However, everyone
intervenes: Maya’s parents, the inquisitive
neighbour Noshrevan, Guram’s former
mistress Magda who, it turns out, works
with Maya for an NGO defending women’s
rights and, most importantly, a mysterious
stranger – who arrives from the United
States at the end of act one. The stranger
turns out to be Giorgi, Noshrevan’s son
who has spent enough time in the States
to lose his identity. Following the advice
of an American psychoanalyst, he tries
to rebuild his life by forgetting the past
and constructing a new ego. Conversing
with his dog named Zigmund Freud or
Zigi, Giorgi looks for the two sensations
he is unable to erase from his memory:
the scent of vanilla of the cake his mother
used to bake and the eternal beloved he
has lost. Meanwhile, Maya’s father Lado
is having an affair with Guram’s mistress
Magda, Maya’s mother Mary is having
an affair with the neighbour Noshrevan,
Maya is having a baby and Guram wants
to divorce and hide himself away from his
awful family. In the end, love triumphs.
Giorgi finds his lost beloved who happens
to be Maya. She gives birth to his, and not
Guram’s baby.
+ Characters
4 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
06/12/07 Rustaveli National Theatre
+ Contact
[email protected]
Once uponish then
Birdie died in Glen.
High and dry it smelled,
Low and raw it swelled.
Way too large for pot,
Spooned it seemed a dot.
Huge a meal for clan
Couldn’t fill a man.
(The standard beginning of Georgian
fairy tales.)
Once uponish then... there was a
man, named Andro. First he was a nonconformist, an ardent fighter for freedom;
he even went to jail twice and served a
sentence as a political prisoner. Later,
however, he came to power. God granted
him everything: a beautiful wife, a
charming mistress, resources and ability.
The play opens in Andro’s villa where
he struggles with a timeless dilemma for
politicians, whether to sign or not sign a
document, the content of which is never
made clear. Is Andro feeling remorse over
the decisions he is responsible or is he
just afraid? Many try to persuade Andro
to sign the document. Andro resists.
Huge a meal for clan, Andro in the end
couldn’t fill a man. He is betrayed even by
his bodyguards, who leave the doors and
the garden unattended, thus letting in a
beggar who murders him. And only one
person mourns – Andro’s halfwit father
David, who was himself an ardent fighter
for freedom once.
+ Reading Committee
Ketevan Kvantaliani /Translator, PR Manager of the Rustaveli Theatre, Irina Gogoberidze /Theatre Critic, Translator, AICT,
Natalia Tvalchrelidze /Journalist, Head of Communication Department at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, Cultural News
host at the English language Radio
www.etc-cte.org
Thomas FREYER /1981
Dirk LAUCKE /1982
Martin HECKMANNS /1971
AMOK MY CHILDREŃS
GAME
OLD FORD ESCORT
DARK BLUE
A MAN IS BORN
AMOKLAUF MEIN
KINDERSPIEL
ALTER FORD ESCORT
DUNKELBLAU
+ Characters
1 male, 2 female (variable casting)
+ Premiere
28/05/06 Nationaltheater Weimar in
co-production with Theater an der
Parkaue, Berlin
+ Translations
French, Polish
+ Publisher
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
3 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
27/01/07 Emma-Theater Osnabrück
+ Publisher
Gustav Kiepenheuer
Bühnenvertriebs GmbH
+ Contact
[email protected]
Three young people on a search: for
a home, for an identity, for an emotion
– perhaps merely for an opponent. Their
parents have lost out in life; their teachers
have lost their authority. While dawdling
through life, one may notice that all desires
come to nothing. Then plans are made
and games are played. Who’s afraid of the
bogey-man? Amongst the youths, major
ideas are hatched, intensifying in dynamic
and force, until fantasy and reality are no
longer discernible from one other.
A temporary employment agency
in dilapidated Eastern Germany binds
together the destinies of: Schorse (42),
Boxer (late 20s) and the young Paul,
son of a beverage wholesaler in whose
warehouse the three stack beer crates,
day in, day out. Every morning Schorse
rounds up his two colleagues in his old
Ford Escort and drives to the industrial
estate with AC/DC ringing in his ears
and the same old subject on his lips: his
wrecked marriage to Karin, his son Phillip
whom she keeps from him and his chronic
lack of money which prevents him from
keeping them happy. It is not an auspicious
day on which Boxer has the idea that
they could drive to Legoland together;
the little fellow would like that, especially
on his birthday. Schorse loves this idea,
but although Paul objects, he has no say
in the matter. The only problem is that
Karin won’t release the boy. As Schorse
and his colleagues accidentally run into
the boy on the street playing truant, they
kidnap him right away and whisk him off
in the general direction of Legoland. Thus
begins a desperate road-movie through
the ‘Mansfelder Land’ (an area of southern
Sachsen-Anhalt), illuminated by dreams
of freedom, adventure and ‘Route 66’.
KOMMT EIN MANN ZUR
WELT
+ Characters
3 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
24/03/07 Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf
+ Publisher
Suhrkamp Verlag
+ Contact
[email protected]
Quite simply, it is Bruno’s story which
is told: birth, childhood, orientation,
success, family, setbacks, illness, death.
Is that all? What is life? Bruno is driven
by inner voices which tell him his own
life story as if it was already in the past.
They assume corporeal form and begin to
intervene: as his aunt and Tina, as Suze,
as time, as body, as buddy, a producer
and the police. But Bruno wants more
than to merely follow well-trodden paths.
A man is born, unsure, curious, and open
to temptation – what does the world have
in store for him?
+ Reading Committee
www.etc-cte.org
Anja HILLING /1975
Andreas MARBER /1961
Dea LOHER /1964
SENSE
THE BITING FREQUENCY
OF GUARD DOGS
THE LAST FIRE
SINN
+ Characters
5 male, 5 female
+ Premiere
15/09/07 Comédie de St.Etienne and
Thalia Theater Hamburg
+ Translations
French, English
+ Publisher
Felix Bloch Erben GmbH & Co. KG
(German), Editions Lansman (French)
+ Contact
[email protected]
In ‘Eyes’ Phoebe falls reluctantly in love
with Fred, the blind DJ. ‘Nose’ is about
the seductive aromas in Tommy’s father’s
bakery. Tommy and Karl were inseparable
friends – until they fell in love with the
same girl. In ‘Skin’ we meet Jule, who
can’t stand being touched, who causes
herself physical harm in her search for
physical self-awareness, who steals from
Jasmin and is kissed by her in a kebab
shop. In ‘Ears’ student representative
Albert, a champion of the spoken word,
falls in love with, of all people, the shy and
almost mute Natasha. And in ‘Tongue’,
Beate, who is really only interested in
music and smoking pot, meets Laurent
from the Cape Verde Islands, who is
afraid of spiders but can cook really well
– and misses out on love.
DIE BEISSFREQUENZ DER
KETTENHUNDE
+ Characters
4 male, 4 female
+ Premiere
+ Publisher
S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Theater &
Medien
+ Contact
A medium-sized Hamburg business
is where Andreas Marber sets his new
comedy on the themes of globalisation
and its unpleasant consequences. As
absurd and as funny as the external
circumstances and the interacting
characters at first seem, the hidden truths
which lie behind the façade are anything
but hilarious. Peter Vischer is a failure par
excellence. While stranded in Bangladesh,
where he has reached an all-time low both
socially and career-wise, he is presented
with the opportunity of a lifetime to become
general manager of a Hamburg textile
import company. But this rather hopeful
path ends quite abruptly when Vischer
takes the market-leading discounter head
on. While we follow our subject through
the stages of his failure, quite by-the-bye,
the author sheds some light on a business
system which consumes such victims with
great ease. Is everybody not expendable?
In his play, Andreas Marber poses the
question as to exactly how much defeat
a man can stomach before he falls into
despair, how long he can hold out on the
crazy battlefield of “unbridled capitalism”
and how he can survive this futile game.
DAS LETZTE FEUER
+ Characters
4 male, 6 female
+ Premiere
+ Publisher
Verlag der Autoren
+ Contact
[email protected]
A deserted neighbourhood at the edge
of town. A boy dies in a car accident.
Rabe, a stranger, is the only witness. The
former soldier has drifted to this urban
wasteland. But something is not right
about him. Soon balances begin to shift
between the residents of the surrounding
streets, their relationships becoming more
brittle, their very existence threatened. Is it
the accident, the death of the child, which
permeates their worlds? Or is it that Rabe’s
presence and influence are weaving their
slow, inexorable influence? Increasingly,
all hope for a better life dissipates. In
her latest play, Dea Loher describes
individuals on the edge of oblivion, guilt,
remembrance and the desire for contact
beyond the threshold of pain.
+ Reading Committee
www.etc-cte.org
Sakis SEREFAS /1960
Vassilis CHRISTOPHILAKIS
Yannis MAVRITSAKIS
NUM MUMS! / YUM!
UNFORGETTABLE
BLIND SPOT
ΜΑΜ!
INOUBLIABLE
TΟ ΤΥΦΛΌ ΣΗΜΕΊΟ
+ Characters
1 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
10/10/06 Theatro tou Notou, ‘Amore’
Theatre, Athens
+ Publisher
Editions ‘Kedros’
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
3 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
14/01/08 Theatro tou Neou Cosmou,
Athens
+ Translations
German
+ Contact
[email protected]
Over seven years, a solitary schoolboy,
Joseph, and the solitary driver of a school
bus, Grand, develop a strange friendship.
Sitting next to each other during the bus
journeys, they chat and confide their
secrets and their experiences on the
subject of happiness, love, memory and
death. For the schoolboy, this relationship
constitutes an initiation into the life
which awaits him. For the driver, it is an
opportunity to remember and to re-evaluate
his past life. Seven stages of initiation are
marked out by the seven dishes which
the driver offers the child, one per year,
accompanied by rich commentaries. For
his part, as if it were a rite of passage, the
schoolboy is challenged for seven years
with finding the ideal recipe for the perfect
tarama salad. Other characters include
a father who loves motorways, a mother
who only eats whole-grain rice, a grandmother who always wears red sports
socks, a cruelly attractive schoolgirl, a
host of other pupils. What life lesson is
hidden in the dishes?
Unforgettable is the name of a small
café at the far end of town. Its clients are
mostly young people who live in a cold and
indifferent world, without thinking about it
too much. Until the day a schizophrenic
killer arrives; he hopes to find the meaning
of life through violent death. As he doesn’t
succeed, he keeps killing… Around him,
a couple suffering from boredom, two
problematic adolescents, a middle-aged
waitress. The café, a place to meet and
communicate, has become a place of
boredom, interrupted only by violence and
murder. The play is a black comedy, whose
characters are in perpetual movement,
like in a dance performance.
+ Characters
8 male, 3 female, 2 others
+ Premiere
25/01/08 Athens, Theatre Poreia
+ Translations
French, English, Italian, Spanish,
Romanian
+ Publisher
Editions Nefeli, La langue du theatre
+ Contact
[email protected]
Niki (a name which means victory in
Greek) is badly shaken by her husband’s
death. She no longer has the strength to
keep going, to work, to continue – and
yet her vital needs remain. An enormous
contradiction appears between her own
life and the life in which she demands that
which is most essential: to continue and
live despite the perspective of death, the
impossibility of duration, loss. But the gulf
separating those who direct the blind but
incessant movement of world and those
who feed it with their flesh is also revealed
by Niki. Niki is in the middle, oscillating
between present and past, here and
elsewhere, the visible and the invisible, the
world of winners and the world of losers.
It is this oscillation which the play follows,
in Niki’s confrontation with today’s liberal
reality, depicted with a sharp cynicism.
Yet Niki cannot submit to the blindness
of life, nor be satisfied with the lucidity of
abandon. She will attempt to penetrate
into another world, in search of a third way:
that of the miracle. She decides to cross
death to reach love. There will be almost
no proof of her ‘victory’. Only the vision of
the street remains to bear witness to the
blood, the scattered limbs and the entrails
of a human body. With the relatively low
damage to the lorry door that hit her...
+ Reading Committee
Petros Markaris /Dramaturg, Dio Kangelari /Theatre critic, Maria Efstathiadi /Translator and writer,
Nikiforos Papandreou /Artistic Director of the Piramatiki Skini Tis Technis – Theatre Amalia
www.etc-cte.org
Istvàn TASNADI /1970
Janos HAY /1960
PUBLIC ENEMY
THE STONE WATCHER
KÖZELLENSÉG
A GEZAGYEREK
+ Characters
16 male, 3 female, monks and grooms
+ Premiere
Katona Jozsef Studio Theatre,
Budapest
+ Translations
French
+ Publisher
L’Espace d’un instant (French)
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
7 male, 4 female
+ Premiere
22/09/01 Theatre Csokanai, Debrecen
+ Translations
English
+ Publisher
Palatinus
+ Contact
[email protected]
Tasnàdi has adapted Kleist’s short story
Michel Kohlhaas to write a strong, hardhitting play, retaining the key elements
of the original story, reworked, honed
down and presented in a fresh light.
The universal and timeless character of
Michael Kohlhaas’s revolt and combat
tends to encapsulate all legitimate or
justifiable revolts for all the outcast who
are victims of systems or of iniquitous and
outmoded regimes. Tasnàdi takes hold of
the character and makes him a symbol
of popular revolt against injustice and
privilege The great originality of the play
lies in the fact that the horses, Kleist’s
blacks, change status here: from a simple
pretext for their master’s revolt in the short
story, they become the protagonists of
their own story and witnesses to that of
Michel Kohlhaas. The horses, who form
a sexualised couple, transform and are
in some way invested with an outside
perspective which in many respects
evokes the viewpoint of those subject
to oppression and injustice wherever it
occurs.
A mining village in Hungary. The slightly
retarded P’tit Géza is hired at the stone
quarry which was recently bought by
Germans who insist that safety standards
be respected. The young man is very
serious about this first, probably underpaid
job, which consists of sitting in a lookout
tower and watching stones go by on a
conveyor belt. Green button, red button.
If something goes bad, he has to press.
But that’s the thing, nothing ever happens.
He is depressed and feels useless. The
workers simulate an accident in order
to keep Géza there... It doesn’t work,
he leaves all the same, convinced he is
responsible for someone’s death.
+ Reading Committee
Françoise Bougeard /Translator, Dominique Dolmieu /Director, head of the Maison d’Europe et D’orient, Paris
d’Orient for plays in Hungarian. The members of this committee are: Françoise Bougeard, Anna Lakos and Júlia Róbert
www.etc-cte.org
Sigtryggur MAGNASON
/1974
IMMINENT
YFIRVOFANDI
+ Characters
2 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
24/05/07 Reykjavik Arts Festival
+ Translations
English (in preparation)
+ Publisher
Naiv co/ Sigtryggur Magnason
+ Contact
[email protected]
Sometimes they fall asleep together
on the sofa. Sometimes he falls asleep
on the sofa and she gets up and goes to
sleep in her bed. Sometimes it’s the other
way around. It sometimes happens that
they fall asleep together in their bed. It
happens. Sometimes they dance. Sorry.
They used to dance. They would perhaps
get up from the sofa, put a record on or
simply turn on the radio. Yes. Then they
danced. In the living room. They didn’t
really need any music. The rhythm was in
them. Inside them. They last danced in the
living room August 16th, 1981. The play
takes place in a present day home. There
are three characters: She (the mother),
He (the father) and The Boy (the son). The
son is dead and has been since august
9th, 1981. Now 27 years old, he has grown
up with his mother and is a big part of
her life. She communicates with him and
confides in him. The son also functions
as a storyteller, a vehicle leading towards
the secret, towards sorrow, towards the
circumstances of his own tragic death.
Slowly the audience discovers that the
boy is only a memory, a ghost, killed in his
crib, only six-weeks old, by his mother.
Bjarni JÓNSSON /1966
MISHAP!
ÓHAPP!
+ Characters
4 male, 4 female
+ Premiere
21/09/07 Icelandic National Theatre,
Reykjavík
+ Translations
English, German
+ Contact
[email protected]
Not only is Joanna renovating her
apartment, along with her husband Harry,
but she also has made plans for a public
rally against an imminent teachers’ strike.
As Joanna prepares for the rally, the world
of her stripped down apartment morphs
into a TV show. Discussing interior design
and food recipes they also talk there
about the teachers’ strike and interview
Joanna, praising her commitment. They
also make Joanna and Daniel reenact
a scene from Daniel’s office where they
first met. But Harry, the husband, has a
different story to tell; one that sells even
better than the rally. It turns out that the
couple were involved in a car accident
which caused the death of Joanna’s
seven year old daughter. Harry won’t face
up to the fact that his reckless driving
caused the accident. As he dishes out his
story, blaming everybody except himself,
Joanna leaves the stage. Back home
Joanna looks deflated. Meanwhile Harry
puts his marriage to the test. He wants
Joanna to make love to him. What follows
is a “love-making” scene which evolves
into a violent, dramatic action. Finally,
when Joanna stabs Harry with Sven’s
kitchen knife, the TV-people all look away.
Now that they’re done with “all the drama”
they are more at ease. They sit and chat,
enjoying their dinner in new apartment;
the one they just got their hands on, for
a bargain price, although the previous
owners didn’t finish renovating it.
+ Reading Committee
Sveinbjörn I. Baldvinsson /Playwright, Silja Aðalsteinsdóttir /Editor and Theatre Critic, Hallmar Sigurdsson /Stage Director
The Reading Committee was established by Iceland ITI
www.etc-cte.org
Enda WALSH /1967
Abbie SPALLEN
Conor McPHERSON
THE WALWORTH FARCE
PUMP GIRL
THE SEAFARER
+ Characters
3 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
16/03/06 Town Hall Theatre, Galway
+ Translations
German, Polish, Korean
+ Publisher
Nick Hern Books
+ Contact
[email protected]
The Walworth Farce begins with a
play within a play. Dinny, a 50-something
Irish man from Cork and his two grownup sons Blake and Sean are confined in
a squalid flat on the Walworth Road in
a run down area of London. Every day
the father and his sons act out the same
story with the same props. The story is
Dinny’s construction of the events of his
last day in Cork after which he fled to
London (the boys were sent on after him
by their mother). The plot of the day has
become more fantastical over time to
the point where Dinny was a rich brain
surgeon who argues with his brother
over his mother’s will at a family funeral.
The brothers forced by their father into
this compulsive re-enactment have
become doubtful about its truth over time.
Pathologically afraid of the outside world,
only Sean leaves the flat daily to buy
the provisions that they need to restage
the funeral. One day Sean picks up the
wrong bag of shopping in Tesco’s and the
check out girl Hayley follows him home
to give him his shopping. The complex
and fragile set created by Dinny cannot
survive the intrusion of any stranger and
the made up farce becomes real tragedy.
Hayley’s intrusion forces all the brothers’
temptations and doubts to the surface in
the face of Dinny desperately trying to
maintain his control over them.
+ Characters
1 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
04/08/06 Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
+ Publisher
Faber & Faber
Pumpgirl is set in a border town in
Northern Ireland’s County Armagh.
Pumpgirl, a tomboyish garage pump
attendant in a rundown petrol station,
becomes obsessed with Hammy, a local
race car driver, and they embark on an
affair. Hammy’s lonely wife, Sinead,
is also having an affair which results
in an unwanted pregnancy. The three
characters speak directly to the audience
as they share their funny, brutal and
disturbing story.
Mark O’ROWE
TERMINUS
+ Characters
1 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
13/06/07 Peacock Theatre, Dublin
+ Publisher
Nick Hern Books
Terminus is a blackly comic vision of
Dublin which tells, through interconnecting
monologues, the story of three nameless
characters. A is a woman trying to help
one of her former students, who is about
to undergo an illegal and very dangerous
late-term abortion. B is her daughter who
is rescued from certain death by C, a serial
killer who traded his soul to the devil for a
singing voice that he is too shy to use. B
makes love to C, a winged demon made
out of worms, plunging the characters into
a nightmarish, fantastical world.
+ Characters
5 male
+ Premiere
21/09/06 National Theatre, London
+ Translations
German, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian,
Danish
+ Publisher
Nick Hern Books
+ Contact
[email protected]
Divorced and without permanent
employment, fifty-something Sharky
returns to a small town costal town
outside Dublin to look after his alcoholic
older brother Richard who has become
blind due to his drinking. The brothers
and their friend Ivan drink steadily through
Christmas Eve; they are visited by another
friend Nicky Giblin who lives with Sharky’s
ex wife. Nicky brings a stranger with him
for a poker game. It is revealed to Sharky
alone that the stranger Mr Lockhart is
actually the devil and the stakes of the
game are Sharky’s soul; as a young man
Sharky had killed a man in a fight and he
played cards with the devil and won his
freedom from prison and the devil has
come to collect the debt. Drink drives
the play as Richard pours abuse onto his
brother and Ivan lets his family down, but
at the end redemption comes from and
unexpected source.
+ Reading Committee
Jim Culleton /Artistic Director of Fishamble: The New Play Company, Dublin, Colin Teevan /Playwright and translator, associate
artist West Yorkshire Playhouse, Lecturer in Dramatic Writing University of Newcastle, Jack Bradley /Playwright, Literary
Associate (Sonia Friedman Productions) and former Literary Manager of the National Theatre, England
www.etc-cte.org
Fausto PARAVIDINO /1976
Edoardo ERBA
GENOA 01
NORTH FACE
GENOVA 01
PARETE NORD
+ Characters
4 male, 3 female (in version produced
by Fondazione Teatro Due)
+ Premiere
28/02/02 Jerwood Theatre, London
+ Translations
English, German
+ Contact
www.faustoparavidino.it
+ Characters
3 male
+ Premiere
11/03/08 Teatro Due, Parma
+ Contact
www.edoardoerba.it
Commissioned by the Royal Court
Theatre in London Genova 01 is a civic
discourse on the events surrounding
the Genoa G8 meeting in 2001. A
brief tragedy, an ‘instant play’ where
everything is narrated. The characters
are not represented onstage, there is only
a chorus constituted by representatives of
mankind.
Vincenzo is a shy and myopic 10 year
old boy. Papa is a fifty year old braggart
who always seems to be sure of himself.
One summer’s day Papa takes Vincenzo
to the mountains to give him a life lesson
and to make him feel like a man. When he
begins to realise that they have lost their
way and that they are really in difficulty,
the son loses his glasses. Now there is an
exhausted father and a frightened child
hanging on to the mountainside. Papa
desperately clings onto words, up to the
moment when these disappear too. And
Vincenzo realises that on the mountain as
in life, he will have to continue alone.
+ Reading Committee
Paola Donati /Theatre expert, Luca Fontana /Dramaturg, Karina Arutyunyan /Actress and director
www.etc-cte.org
Jeton NEZIRAJ /1977
Jeton NEZIRAJ /1977
Fadil HYSAJ /1953
WAR IN TIMES OF LOVE
THE TOWN IS GROWING
LUFTA NË KOHËN E
DASHURISË
QYTETI PO RRITET
THE PROSPECTOR OF
THE HIGH PEAKS
+ Characters
3 male, 7 female, 4 others
+ Premiere
16/10/07 Roundhouse Theatre, Dover
Discovery Centre, Kent, UK
+ Translations
English
+ Publisher
Multimedia Center
+ Contact
[email protected]
Four women in an insane asylum have
created an imaginary world, which they
share. (Extract from the play) “…I faced
him and spat at him, and trust me, he did
the same to me. “Son of a bitch!” I said,
“How dare you spit on me?” Then, I came
up with the worst insult you can give a man.
“Your thing,” I said, “is like the smallest
finger on my hand, and your balls are as
small as two small buttons that old women
sew onto the jumpers they knit.” Oh you
should have seen him! He was trembling
like a wild horse. He began to slobber, he
screamed, he fell to the ground and rolled
around in anger and then, he cursed me
shamelessly. “You are a whore!” he said.
I can’t get over it. It was intolerable. He
is a pervert! It was as if the sun fell down
on my head. I couldn’t see anything, just
a blazing, blinding whiteness. I remember
nothing after that… The doctors said that
I had two broken teeth and a dislocated
jaw. The bastard... I will never forgive that
cursing. Me, a whore!? Ugh!...”
+ Characters
7 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
02/07 Teatri Oda
+ Contact
[email protected]
The Town is Growing is a story about
a girl that had an accident. The story
unfolds from a letter that the girl’s father
has dropped in the complaint box. A
persistent father searching for justice for
his daughter, who faces many officials
and doctors. A cleaner from City Council,
who is told that dreams “awaken”, sent the
letter to the media. The story of the girl
becomes a media sensation.
UDHËSI I MAJES SÊ
LARTË
+ Characters
2 male, 1 female, human mass
+ Premiere
10/11/06 Teatri National de Prishtina
+ Translations
French, German
+ Publisher
Sali Bashota – Ndermarrja botuse ‘Faik
Konica’
+ Contact
[email protected]
In a deserted plain, a mass of men is
waiting under a tree for the arrival of His
Majesty. These human beings are now
used to waiting and the arrival of His
Majesty will possibly change the routine
of their lives. A visionary and a policeman
are in charge, making sure the people who
come that way are treated as provocateurs
or spies. After being questioned, they
are hung by the balls from the tree, then
become part of the waiting human mass.
The final traveller, a Foreigner, whose
task is to climb the High Peak, stops close
to the human mass under the tree. He
wishes to rest before continuing his way.
After being tortured, he admits he is His
Majesty’s Envoy (although he isn’t) and
that he has brought the famous message
according to which the waiting mass is
authorised to walk in circles around the
tree. But the exalted human mass doesn’t
wait to listen to the end of the message
and sets off, leaving only the foreigner, the
policeman and the visionary who hopes
that the mass will come back in order to
continue waiting.
+ Reading Committee
Dominique Dolmieu /Director, head of the Maison d’Europe et D’orient, Paris
The proposition for the selection of Jeton Neziraj’s plays resulted from the permanent work of the reading committee of the
“Maison d’Europe et d’Orient” for plays in Albanian. The members of this committee are: Anne-Marie Autissier, Arben Bajraktaraj,
Ndoc Cefa, Elisabeth Chabuel, Ilir Dragovoja, Robert Elsie, Mandi Gueguen, Ardian Marashi, Nikson Pitaqaj, Irena Rambi,
Sulejman Rushiti and Arben Selimi
The propostion for the selection Fadil Hysaj’s play: Jeton Neziraj /Playwright
www.etc-cte.org
Alvis HERMANIS /1965
Alvis HERMANIS /1965
LATVIAN LOVE
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
LATVIEŠU MĪLESTĪBA
KLUSUMA SKAŅAS
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Premiere
Spielzeit’europa, Berliner Festspiele
and Jaunais Rīgas Teātris
+ Contact
[email protected]
A play about Latvia and Latvians,
loneliness, men, women and the miracles
that occur. The original theme of this play
was men/women seeking each other
through personal dating ads. This is an
opportunity to tell true or imagined stories
of Latvian love, how people meet and
break up, their passions and desires.
The utopias of the 68ers – Woodstock,
Simon & Garfunkel, dreams of love and
peace and making the world a better
place… Director Alvis Hermanis, designer
Monika Pormale, and the outstanding
ensemble from the New Riga Theatre turn
the clock back 40 years and show the old
people from their hit show Long Life when
they were young, living in the Eastern
version of communes in the collective
flats of Soviet-era Latvia. A play without
language, using only the music of Simon
& Garfunkel, which premieres in Berlin at
spielzeit’europa.
+ Reading Committee
Rita Grinberga /Translator, member of the Latvian reading committee of the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient, Paris
www.etc-cte.org
Julius KELERAS /1961
58 DREAMS
58 SAPNAI
+ Characters
1 male, 1 female
+ Contact
[email protected]
A philosophy student, 23 year old
Sima, has been living in a lonely, remote
suburban summer cottage for 58 days,
closed up like a nun. She needs to be
alone in contemplation after her appalling
experience: 58 days earlier she was raped
by a group of youths. A 27 year old young
man Kostas visits Sima every day after
work and brings food to her. The play is set
in the last evening of autumn, with Kostas,
who has just arrived, present. Sima tries to
avoid any contact with the outside world,
so tonight, as always, she communicates
with Kostas through the window. Kostas
wants Sima to go with him to the city with
modern values, that are still worthy and
credible, as Kostas believes. Meanwhile,
Sima has to solve her inner dilemma, and
to leave without solving it would mean a
defeat to her ideals and values. In this
play two young people try to restore a
truth that has shattered into thousands of
pieces and this attempt makes their lives
meaningful. In this so-called romantic
tragedy, though, there is a good amount
of humour and irony. Nevertheless this is
a play about inner action, inner turmoil,
where thoughts painfully emerge in the
dialogues of characters who sometimes
do not connect with each other. They
emerge not as rational decisions, but
more like painful Hamlettype reflections
about man’s contemporary situation.
Gintaras GRAJAUSKAS
/1966
A GIRL, OF WHOM GOD
WAS AFRAID
MERGAITĖ, KURIOS
BIJOJO DIEVAS
+ Characters
10 male, 3 female
+ Contact
[email protected]
Marija, the main character of the play,
tells a story about her adventurous
and vivacious life. Little by little she
draws the audience into the fantastical
and mystical atmosphere of her world.
Everything there seems very real and
familiar – her childhood stories about the
adorable airplane constructor Antanas
Gustaitis (who was a real person) and
the caricatured everyday life of ‘modern
Lithuanians’. However, this familiar reality,
so full of incredible details, effaces the
lines between reality and dreams, between
visions and present time. What is really
going on here? Is Marija a victim or a
murderer? What do we see here – a story
of madness, a criticism of consumerism, a
brief course on the history of Lithuania, a
post-Soviet state? Probably all of this and
more…
+ Reading Committee
Valdas Gedgaudas /Theatre critic, poet, Aurelija Dvilytė /Theatre critic, Jūratė Grigaitienė /Critic, Ramunė Marcinkevičiūtė
/Theatre critic, Šarūnė Trinkūnaitė /Theatre critic, Aušra Martišiūtė /Chairperson, expert in literature and dramaturgy
www.etc-cte.org
Guy WAGNER
Guy WAGNER
NOTTURNO
(THE END, MY FRIEND)
NOTTURNO (TOO LATE)
NOTTURNO
(D’ENN, MÄI FRËND)
+ Characters
1 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
26/08/08 Théâtre d’Esch in the KUFA
+ Translations
German
+ Contact
[email protected]
In D’Enn, mäi Frënd (The End, my
Friend) the two characters are also
bound to one another. They are siblings,
without its being clear if they are brothers,
sisters or brother and sister. One figure
is confined to a wheelchair and is
physically dependent on the other – who
is psychically dependent on the first. In
the course of the play, it becomes clear
how the catastrophe came about: their
father was playing god with life and death.
The play is based on the third and fourth
of the 21 Points concerning Physicists by
Friedrich Dürrenmatt: “A story has been
thought through to the end when it has
reached its worst possible conclusion.”
And: “The worst possible conclusion is not
foreseeable. It comes about by chance.”
NOTTURNO (ZE SPÉIT)
+ Characters
2 male
+ Premiere
26/09/08 Kulturfabrik (KUFA) Eschsur-Alzette
+ Translations
German
+ Contact
[email protected]
Ze spéit (Too Late; originally titled
The End of the Matter) was inspired by
a newspaper article from 22 May 1979,
according to which an old man killed his
neighbour in the ward, “because he kept
asking him the time every five minutes,”
and, “got on his nerves with other stupid
questions”. It is an endgame played out in
a hospice for the dying, where loneliness
is part of the remains of life; it is a game
that turns on responsibility and guilt.
+ Reading Committee
Charles Muller /Director of the Théâtre d’Esch/Luxemburg, Olivier Ortolani /Dramaturg, Josée Zeimes /Subeditor of the cultural
serial of the weekly Le Jeudi, Marie-Paule von Roesgen, Actress, Germaine Goetzinger /Director of the National Literary Centre
of Luxembourg, Denise Besch /Attaché of the Ministry of Culture
www.etc-cte.org
Clare AZZOPARDI
Joe FRIGGIERI
Simone SPITERI
THE BAN UNDER
THE BED
CARAVAGGIO:
THE INVESTIGATION
LACUNA
L’INTERDETT THAT
IS-SODDA
CARAVAGGIO :
L-INKJESTA
+ Characters
1 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
03/11/06 St James Creativity Centre,
Valletta
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Premiere
19/10/07 Teatru Manoel, Valletta
+ Contact
[email protected]
In the 60s, Malta was torn by a serious
conflict between the Catholic Church and
the MLP, the Maltese Labour Party. On
8 April 1961, the labour party executive
was banned by the Church. The members
of the party could neither receive the
sacraments nor be buried in the sacred
ground of cemeteries. The plot where
these people were buried progressively
came to be called ‘Il-Mizbla’ – the Dump.
The play starts with a monologue from
Mimì, a young girl who was buried in the
Dump in the 60s and whose soul continues
to wander there. Mimì has been waiting
for her mother to come and join her on the
other side for a long time. She needs to
give her something – we never discover
what. Mimì talks about her memories of
life.
This monologue is followed by that of a
gravedigger whose story is centred on his
experiences as a cemetery employee with
his friend Giljan, who has since passed
away. The gravedigger complains about
irregularities in Malta; he also speaks
of situations which tend to escape our
attention, although we are obliged to
confront them when the time comes to be
put under the ground.
Michelangelo da Merisi, better known
under the name of Caravaggio, arrived in
Malta in July 1607, after fleeing from Rome
where he had been sentenced to death
for killing a man in a duel. Consecrated
Knight of the Order of Malta, he remained
there up to October 1608, when he had to
again flee after wounding another knight.
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of
his arrival in Malta, Joe Friggieri wrote
and directed a dramatic performance of
the life and work of the painter such as
it was perceived by his contemporaries,
admirers or critics. Basing himself on
known documents and early biographies,
the author brings back to life the
characters which influenced Caravaggio’s
life. Placing him in a modern context, he
portrays a man whose virulence inspired
artistic ability. The play takes a debate on
the relevance of erecting a monument to
Caravaggio as its pretext in order to stage
the kind of political clashes which are well
known to the Maltese public.
+ Characters
4 female, 3 musicians
+ Premiere
Theatre of the Mediterranean Institute
Theatre Program (MITP), Valletta
+ Contact
[email protected]
Lacuna, written by Simone Spiteri, is
inspired by Sepja, a series of novels by
Trevor Zahra, a children’s author but who
writes these works, full of observation and
humour, for adult readers. Rather than
present a plot, the play seeks to gather
themes from these introspective writings
with a hint of black humour. The actors use
practically no set or props, forging around
these universal themes their own story of
four women who have nothing in common,
who neither know who they are, nor where
they are, nor who the three others are…
There is only one single bizarre thing
which unites them – they can all sing the
same song. The audience is embarked
with these women on their voyage of
discovery, in the hope that gradually it will
ask the same questions of itself. Before
the bell rings. Before each one of us sings
a last song. Before we are carried away
by sleep.
+ Reading Committee
Vicki Ann Cremona /Ambassador of Malta to France, Associate Professor, Theatre Studies Division, University of Malta, Chris
Gatt /General Manager, St James Centre for Creativity, Anthony Attard /EU Projects Co-ordinator, St James Centre for Creativity
www.etc-cte.org
Nicoleta ESINENCU /1978
Nicoleta ESINENCU /1978
FUCK YOU, Eu.ro.Pa!
WITHOUT SUGAR
+ Characters
1 female
+ Premiere
19/01/07 Théâtre SortieOuest, Béziers,
France
+ Translations
French
+ Publisher
Espace d’un instant (French)
+ Contact
[email protected]
This twenty page play is a monologue for
a young woman; the writing is nervous and
quick-paced, with short, often aggressive
sentences. As implied by the exclamation
point in the title, this monologue is first
of all a cry, but one which, behind the
totally provocative gesture, hints at the
deeper reasons for a strongly motivated
revolt and bitterness. One cannot ignore
the historical and political reality of the
‘soil’ from which this writing sprung
– Moldavia, a small Romanian-speaking
State, which became independent after
the dismemberment of the ex-Soviet
Union – nor the upheaval caused to the
destinies of this youth delicately balanced
between two worlds. A post-communist
society, overwhelmed by poverty, where
traces and memories of the former regime
haven’t disappeared yet and where hope
of material well-being still seems distant.
ZÜCKER FREI/
FARA ZAHAR
+ Characters
1 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
19/01/07 Théâtre SortieOuest, Béziers,
France
+ Publisher
Espace d’un instant
+ Contact
[email protected]
“Direct writing, which immerses
us in the mindset of the post-Soviet
generation of the countries of the exUSSR.” Two young people, a brother and
sister, are “angry”, with their family, with
school, with Moldavian society “in posttransition”, with the rest of the world. We
observe a society dominated by clichés
and readymade formulas, where every
individual is conditioned, sterilised by the
void. There is no classical conflict to relate
here rather a whole series of anecdotes,
enumerations of technical and scientific
terms which accumulate and come down
in flurries, sometimes quotations, stupid,
reductive life rules, which the young
people oppose with the only weapons
they have: humour, vulgar provocation,
the refusal to even “breathe”, to consume
and therefore to continue to live.
+ Reading Committee
Dominique Dolmieu
Director, head of the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient, Paris
d’Orient for plays in Romanian. The members of this committee are: Alexandra Badea, Mihai Fusu,Claudiu Groza, Doina Papp,
Mirella Patureau, Sébastian-Vlad Popa, Danny Rossel and Benoit Vitse
www.etc-cte.org
Rob DE GRAAF /1952
Eric DE VROEDT /1972
Peer WITTENBOLS /1965
PEACE
MIGHTYSOCIETY4
THE FOURTH REICH
VREDE
+ Characters
3 male, 1 female, 1 dead person
+ Premiere
25/11/06 Theatre of Arnhem
+ Contact
[email protected]
Talking is digging ever deeper ditches,
until each of us is standing on our own,
very small and very inaccessible patch
of ground, says Awram in this comedy
about handling grief, in which it becomes
painfully clear that the more people talk
to one another, the further apart they
drift. In the middle of the night, four
people meet in Awram’s house, where
his partner Roy has just passed away.
With Vera, the sister of the departed and
her husband Broes, he reminisces about
the man he lived with for over fourteen
years. Ster, an ex-lover of both Vera and
her deceased brother, also makes his
appearance later. In their conversations
in the presence of the laid-out corpse, the
mutual and difficult relationships between
these people are exposed and painful
memories are raked up. The presence of
death raises questions about life. All the
characters struggle with questions of how
people relate to one another, why they
stay together or separate, and whether
people can ever really reach each other.
All love is illusion, remarks Vera. They are
locked in the ideas they have formed of the
other person and of that life with them. But
clinging on to this illusion only reinforces
the sense of being alone. And yet in this
wilderness of confusion and sorrow, there
is a reason for staying with the other
person; a mutual connection that is the
last straw to clutch at in the uncertainty
of existence.
+ Characters
3 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
27/02/07 FRASCATI, Amsterdam
+ Publisher
Mightysociety/Toneelgroep Amsterdam
+ Contact
[email protected]
Mightysociety4 by Eric de Vroedt is the
fourth part of a series of ten productions
about pressing, topical political and social
issues. In part 4, we see a well-to-do family
comprising the European parliamentarian
Henriëtte Draaier, her husband Raymond,
the successful entrepreneur, and her son
Bas-Jan, a journalist. The family gets a
surprise visit from two people they don’t
know, Dick and Sharon, who have come to
set things straight and demand their rights.
Dick is one of Raymond’s employees in
a branch that is being closed down and
Sharon has come to get a job. The arrival
of these two visitors exposes the extent
to which the characters are caught up in
the nets of the globalized world and how
each of them tries to keep a foothold in
this culture of corruption, hypocrisy and
egotism. After all, in a society in which
people derive their identity from hard
work, achievements and success, there
is no place for doubt and uncertainty. Yet,
while everything appears within reach and
the world is closer than it has ever been,
people are becoming more and more
estranged from one another and from
themselves. Mightysociety4 is a trenchant
and confrontational satire that creates a
chastening analysis of our times through
direct and often amusing dialogues.
HET VIERDE RIJK
+ Characters
3 male, 4 female
+ Premiere
03/03/07 Theatre of Arnhem
+ Publisher
Toneelgroep Oostpool
+ Contact
[email protected]
Former GP Hans has had enough of
the hectic lifestyle in the Netherlands
and decides to go somewhere far away
in Europe with his wife Hilde to start a
new life. In a large, derelict building, they
live with a simple country couple, Hanna
and Edo, who are expecting a child soon
and are very devoted to their faith in God.
However, the relatively peaceful existence
of these two couples is violated when
Mathilda and her retinue appear. In this
authentic and unspoilt spot, she wants to
set up a centre of pleasure, where carnal
delights are to be celebrated. Everything
the two couples stand for is destroyed
by this trio. A fierce battle develops
between Hans and Mathilda, which puts
the mutual relationships into precarious
balance. When Hilde and Hans give in
to the physical desires they have pent
up for so many years, it gets painfully out
of hand and breaks up their relationship.
Mathilda’s dreams are also shattered
when she is driven away by her retinue.
The ideal of paradise falls apart. As long
as everyone has their own view of what
an ideal world should look like, this ideal
world will always remain a utopia. In Het
Vierde Rijk, however, Wittenbols shows
how, despite this, people never give up
and always cherish the hope of a blissful
existence.
+ Reading Committee
Anja Krans /Head Expertise and Information Dept, Theater Institute Netherlands
The Theater Instituut houses a museum and a library, gathers current information and documentation and organizes events such
as discussions, conferences, workshops, exhibitions and international presentations. It publishes books,compact discs and other
materials and participates in various international networks
www.etc-cte.org
Arne LYGRE /1968
Erlend SANDEM /1977
Christopher NIELSEN /1963
SHADOW OF A BOY
BARCODES
MEN WITHOUT VALUE
SKUGGE AV EIN GUT
STREKKODE
VERDILØSE MENN
+ Characters
2 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
23/03/06 Det Norske Teatret
+ Translations
German, Hungarian, Swedish
+ Publisher
Colombine Teaterförlag
+ Contact
+47 90097736
+ Characters
3 male
+ Premiere
26/05/06 Nationale Scene, Bergen
+ Translations
German
+ Publisher
Solum Forlag
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
4 male, 1 female, a rock band
+ Premiere
08/03/08 Torsovteatret/
Nationaltheateret, Oslo
+ Contact
[email protected]
Tom is a boy of 14 when he loses both
his parents in a car accident. His foster
mother was a close friend of his mother
and lived in the same house in a twin
apartment. She has known Tom since he
was a little boy, and they have always had
a close relationship. Lygre plays with time,
changing back and forth from scene to
scene, following Tom from child to young
man, throwing light on the different stages
of his life. Another woman moves into the
house and changes the old relationships.
This is a story about growing up, erotic
awakening, motherly feelings confused
by attraction, and possessiveness within
relationships.
In a rough contemporary jargon,
Erlend Sandem has written a strong and
relevant play which focuses on the new
generation of the affluent society, and
also questions whether or not human
beings are controlled by faith or must be
held responsible for their own actions.
Ole, Nick and Fred are best friends. Three
years of school is over and the future is
waiting. They have everything they need
and have always gotten whatever they
wanted, but their dreams only stretch to
the next day. The three wish to enjoy life
with parties, sex and drugs – chasing the
ultimate ecstasy. Their trips away from
reality do not only lead them to golden
highs – they form the basis for foul lies,
double-dealing and deceit and entangle
the boys in a complex and fateful net of
mutual addiction and vengefulness, which
will end up deciding their future.
Christopher Nielsen’s Men Without
Value is a musical featuring the hits of
Joachim Nielsen: Jojo is all alone at home
and wants to see the world. He doesn’t
have to wait long before Kleggen – ‘Sticky’
– makes his entrance. Kleggen brings
beers and friends, and he has a funny tale
to tell. It won’t be the last funny story that
evening… An old alcoholic and four drug
addicts recount their social descent. The
story begins in a studio in the workers
district, moves on to prison before ending
up in the street where our friends beg from
passers-by. Along the way they speak of
women and drugs, of friends who die, of
friendship which survives everything. And
of an increasingly hard daily life. Even the
final overdose won’t bring the relief which
Jojo hoped to find.
+ Reading Committee
Ola Bø /Dramaturg (Det Norske Teatret), leader of the Drama Committee in the Norwegian Arts Council,
Therese Bjørnebo /Theatre critic, journalist and editor (The Norwegian Shakespeare- and Theatre Magazine), member of the
Drama Committee in The Norwegian Arts Council
www.etc-cte.org
Krzysztof BIZIO /1970
LET’S TALK ABOUT
LIFE AND DEATH
POROZMAWIAJMY O
ŻYCIU I ŚMIERCI
+ Characters
2 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
03/01 Teatr Wspolczesny, Szczecin
+ Translations
German, Serbian, French, Czech,
Hungarian
+ Publisher
Dialog (No. 12, Poland, 2000)
+ Contact
[email protected]
Let’s Talk about Life and Death, shows
three members of one family, who barely
communicate with each other. “Do you
want to tell me something?” they ask each
other in passing and, without waiting for an
answer, they rush to their own daily affairs.
The telephone plays a crucial role in their
lives (and in the structure of the play).
They are selfish, ruthless, success-driven
and self-confident. Their interests centre
around money, sex, double-dealing and
the feeling of power. However, problems
emerge: Red learns that she has cancer,
gangsters raid Blue’s workshop, and
White’s girlfriend gets pregnant. Only the
misfortunes they encounter cause them to
start noticing one another and overcome
their mutual indifference. The first honest,
real conversation between the three of
them is painful yet cathartic: the family
members confess all their sins to each
other. The break-up of the family, which
remained in existence only on paper,
seems now complete. Yet, unexpectedly,
the characters make an effort to
communicate, and to begin anew.
Małgorzata
SIKORSKA-MISZCZUK /1964
DEATH OF THE
SQUIRREL-MAN
ŚMIERĆ CZŁOWIEKAWIEWIÓRKI
+ Characters
4 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
28/12/06 Teatr Usta Usta, Warsaw
+ Publisher
Dialog (No. 5, Poland, 2007)
+ Contact
[email protected]
Although the play refers to the real
members of the terrorist group, the Red
Army Faction, and to the bloody events
that shook up Germany in the 1970s, it
is by no means a realistic, historical play.
Instead, it shows revolution in a playful
and grotesque manner, depicting the
revolutionaries as pop culture icons. In a
series of cartoon-like, surrealistic scenes,
we follow the progress of a character
named U (Ulrike Meinhof) who teams up
with Baader, the Anti-man (who pops out
of a “jar of poetry”) and his vulgar girlfriend
Ensslin – a couple who go from door to
door, telling a fairy tale about the Colour
Red. Together, they outwit a Melancholy
Cop and see the kind-hearted SquirrelMan – a symbol of bourgeois society – die
once a day over and over again, whilst
unsuccessfully attempting to express his
affection to U. Finally, U is imprisoned and
sentenced to death. In the hilarious and
absurd reality of the play, the Melancholy
Cop’s heart can grow together again,
even though he has been shot through
it. The Squirrel-Man lives on despite his
many and varied grotesque deaths. The
characters’ elaborate speeches and
the fairytale-like format make the whole
story seem even less realistic, with the
characters resembling rowdy, simpleminded Muppets.
Michal WALCZAK
GRANDMOTHER
BABCIA
+ Characters
11 male, 4 female
+ Premiere
11/11/07 Teatr im. Osterwy in Gorzów
Wielkopolski
+ Contact
[email protected]
Walczak’s play starts out like a crime
story. In a family house, somebody has
killed the grandmother. The son, Karol,
starts his investigation, interrogating the
family members one by one. However,
these first scenes soon change into a
nightmare: Karol, in order to uncover the
truth, tortures his wife and threatens to kill
her. In the meantime, two older gentlemen
appear in the town; they came to attend
a festival called “a parade of historical
figures”. One of them talks about the book
he recently received as a present: it is a
story about the mysterious murder of a
grandmother. While taking a walk, they
notice that the book’s description of a
house fits perfectly the house that they
have just passed... The men decide to act
as detectives and they slowly discover that
nothing happens by accident, and that at
night the town speaks the language of ...
lampposts and kerbs. The imaginative
author constructs an unreal world,
where animals and objects can speak,
patriotic ghosts appear from the “beyond”,
and pleasant old men turn out to be
messengers of Death. In the background,
a family drama is being played out – a
parody of a bourgeois tragedy, in fact
– the husband cheats on his wife, there
are never-ending quarrels (between the
wife and her mother-in-law) and intergenerational fights (between the parents
and their daughter). All is told with great
humour; the plot keeps our attention until
the very end. And only one question keeps
coming up: who killed the grandmother?
+ Reading Committee
Malgorzata Semil /President, Polish centre of ITI; Editor of New Plays from Poland, a newsletter published on the website of the
Polish Theatre Institiute
www.etc-cte.org
Jacinto LUCAS PIRES /1974
Pedro EIRAS /1975
José Luís PEIXOTO /1974
EXTRAS
A STRONG SMELL
OF APPLES
THE MORNING
FIGURANTES
+ Characters
6 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
Teatro Nacional S. João, Porto
+ Translations
French
+ Publisher
Cotovia
+ Contact
[email protected]
Four men and three women are
gathered in a neutral space, lit by
projectors – at the end of the play we learn
that it is a television studio. The speeches
– individual memories or traumatic
moments – alternate with the main story
(a man “meets” a woman’s hand). These
characters attempt to tell (each other’s)
stories in chorus, guided and set off again
by the narrator, João, despite the irruption,
four times, of a strange and macabre
couple (two men).
UM FORTE CHEIRO A
MAÇÃ
+ Characters
8 male, 5 female
+ Premiere
26/08/04 Pont-à-Mousson – Festival
La Mousson d’été, France
+ Translations
French
+ Publisher
Campo deas Letras
+ Contact
[email protected]
A family is gathered for a dinner. There
are 13 of them, like at the Last Supper.
One of the members of the family has
an announcement to make. That of his
decision to commit suicide. In dialogues
that stop and start and rarely lead to
exchange, each person reveals his
bitterness, his disillusion, his failure,
his anxiety. As always in the work of
Pedro Eiras, the play is a reflection on
responsibility and innocence, questioning
the values of contemporary society.
A MANHÃ
+ Characters
2 male, 3 female, an invisible dog and
everything invisible
+ Premiere
Teatro Municipal S. Luiz, Lisbon
+ Translations
French (in preparation),
German (in preparation)
+ Publisher
Editions Bertrand
+ Contact
[email protected]
In an ageing, drowsy village in the
south of Portugal, the characters, all more
than 70 years old, give form to their fears
and desires in a language which spans
time and linguistic heritage. A truculent
language, rich in images but solitary. The
scenes bring to life the seasons and the
months; each scene is a time in which life
flows, reinvents itself, between laughter,
disarray, expectation and hope. There
are traces of Beckett (names of the male
characters) and Chekhov (names of the
three women) in this play which recounts a
lifespan in four seasons: times of secrets,
illusions, forgetting and a frenzied desire
to kiss someone else without always
daring to. This is why the play and the
performance also recall the mysteries and
trestle stages of medieval fairs.
+ Reading Committee
Ilda Mendes dos Santos /Member of the Portuguese committee of the Maison Antoine Vitez, Portuguese dramaturgy research
and translations
www.etc-cte.org
Patricia PORTELA /1974
FLATLAND TRILOGY
(FLATLAND I, FLATLAND
II, FLATLAND III)
TRILOGIA FLATLAND
(FLATLAND I – FLATLAND
II – FLATLAND III)
+ Contact
[email protected]
A multimedia production about the tragic
life of a flat man who realises one day that
he is lacking a third dimension. Flatland
I – Upwards and not northwards. Where
the flat man thinks about bi-dimension
and perspective, and ends up discovering
that his temporary existence in the world
in 3D is only possible if spectators are
watching him. Happy with his discovery
but unhappy with this dependence, the
flat man develops a strategy to acquire
tri-dimensional immortality. Flatland II –
being and being seen Where the flat man
develops a strategy to eternally maintain
himself in 3D. He organises an expedition
into the world of illusion and terrorism:
theatre is terrorism and the terrorism
transforms itself into theatre; both create
a temporal fiction. The flat man becomes
the wanted man and penetrates into the
televised world. Flatland III – from a true
story.
José Maria
VIEIRA MENDES /1976
MY WIFE
A MINHA MULHER
+ Characters
3 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
09/07 National Theatre Dona Maria
+ Translations
French
+ Publisher
Artistas Unidos
+ Contact
[email protected]
A father, a mother, their son (Nuno),
his wife (Laura) and a family friend
(Alexandre) are all together in a holiday
house. The heat is stifling. The days
pass by, heavy, dry and bitter; insults are
exchanged but conflicts remain ignored,
repressed. Although this life together
becomes increasingly suffocating and
unbearable, it is impossible to overcome
the unspoken and see a way out. The
play fits into a trilogy on intergenerational
relations; it proposes a reflection on
memory, on reprisal or repetition, on love,
on writing for theatre also where, like in
the play, everything is dark and light. The
play was written after reading Strindberg’s
one act play Playing with Fire.
+ Reading Committee
Ilda Mendes dos Santos /Member of the Portuguese committee of the Maison Antoine Vitez, Portuguese dramaturgy research
and translations
www.etc-cte.org
/fyrom
Zanina MIRCEVSKA
Goran STEFANOVSKI /1952
Dejan DUKOVSKI /1969
WERTHER & WERTHER
THE DEMON OF
DEBARMAALO
EMPTY CITY
+ Characters
3 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
Skopje
+ Translations
French, Serbian, Slovenian
+ Contact
[email protected]
After losing his illusion about love, the
infinite nothingness of the Void opens up
before Werther. Even creativity cannot
save him because it too appears as an
illusion subject to manipulations. Werther
is a writer who has the exceptional gift of
producing an enormous quantity of words
which he puts together in surprising
“expressionistic” images related to this
pathological fear of facing the End. This gift
comes essentially from his pathologically
depressive state – he sees the Void in front
of him like an incarnation. Other people
make money from his gift/affliction. Albert
– the theatre manager – sells his talent
as if he belonged in the Guinness book
of records, because the young author is
“capable of writing for 23 days, twenty
four hours a day, without stopping, and
producing 1,987,203 days, in other words
more than one word a second.” In this world
of figures, prestige and records, Werther,
with his authenticity and his particularity,
is put through the mill. Albert sells him like
a fairground phenomenon; he lives thanks
to the scandals which Werther leaves in
his wake, like a frightened animal who
hides in the ruins of destroyed buildings
for a long time. The manipulation of his
creativity is what kills him in the end.
DEMONOT OD
DEBARMAALO
+ Characters
8 male, 3 female
+ Translations
French, Serbian
+ Contact
[email protected]
Kotsé the barber suffers many injustices and, being unable to fight back,
he decides to take justice into his own
hands. In a drastic and pitiless way. Using
his razor, he eliminates everyone who,
without scruples, perpetuates the chaos
in Macedonia. But that’s not all: he does
not hesitate to use his victims’ flesh to
make grilled kebabs which are highly
appreciated by his fellow citizens. Through
the character of the barber Kotsé, who to
a certain extent recalls the protagonist of
Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver and that of
Christopher Bond’s The Demon Barber of
Fleet Street, Goran Stefanovski imagines
a man who decides to clean the town of
Skopje (the capital of Macedonia) of what
he considers to be the ills of society:
organised crime, the urban mafia. What
characterises Stefanovski’s barber is that
he himself ends up participating in the
destruction of the values which he wanted
to fight against. Thus, in this totally corrupt
society, where Robins Hoods end up
laundering dirty money, where murder
is no longer murder, he becomes a true
hero, a sort of Jesus Christ celebrated by
the political elite.
PRAZEN GRAD
+ Characters
2 male
+ Premiere
07/04/07 Plan-B Theatre, Copenhagen
+ Translations
Danish, German
+ Publisher
Verlag der Autoren (German)
+ Contact
[email protected]
After many years apart, two brothers
meet by coincidence in an empty city,
ravaged by war. They are captured
between enemy lines, each of them a
soldier of the opposite side. As they find
themselves being brothers at war, this is
their final desperate night and both, past
and present conflicts must be settled
before dawn. They wander about the
vast town as if there was no tomorrow,
entering a “boutique” to try on clothes and
shoes, drinking champagne at a bar and
breaking a safe at a bank, playing roulette
at the casino and some Shakespeare on
the empty stage of the theatre, visiting a
brothel and a church, in search of remedy,
relief and reconciliation. As dawn breaks,
they seem to be ready to meet their fate.
A psychologically intense and oddly
humorous text about the tragic absurdities
of war.
+ Reading Committee
Dominique Dolmieu /Director, head of the Maison d’Europe et D’orient, Paris, Maria Béjanovska /Journalist and translator
d’Orient for plays in Macedonia. The members of this committee are: Maria Béjanovska (journalist and translator), Ivan Dodovski,
Milos Lazin, Frosa Pejoska-Bouchereau (lecturer, head of Macedonian Studies at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and
Civilisations (INALCO), Paris)
www.etc-cte.org
Mihai IGNAT /1967
Radu F ALEXANDRU /1943
THREE FLIES AND
A SPIDER
MR SISYPHUS
PATRU CEPE DEGERATE
+ Characters
4 male, 4 female
+ Translations
French
+ Publisher
Editions “Brumar”
+ Contact
[email protected]
A hospital waiting room, four men of
different ages and backgrounds (a reserve
general, an accountant, a bodyguard
and a taciturn young man), a medical
assistant attracted by one of the patients,
vanity, curiosity... of an unhealthy kind
– such are the ingredients of this drama.
Three of the patients pick on the fourth
– Luca, who has survived a suicide
attempt. In return, Luca uses what he has
learnt about the others to provoke them,
depicting them in a pathetic light. He
highlights their hypocrisy, their vanity and
their pettiness: the presumptuous general
“terrorises”” his daughter, the frustrated
accountant despises his wife and
thinks himself undervalued, the boorish
bodyguard only finds satisfaction in sex
and violence. The conflict, initially limited
to verbal exchanges, begins little by little
to degenerate into physical aggression. A
blow struck by the accountant becomes
the starting point for psychological
blackmail: Luca begins to manipulate
the three others, exploiting the general’s
authoritarian streak, the accountant’s
frustrations and the bodyguard’s stupidity
and aggressiveness. Tensions and vanity
cause the conflict to escalate and lead
to unexpected “alliances” and “fronts”,
creating situations of an absurd comedy
which end in the murder of Luca. His
final line reveals to us that this was his
intention, at least from a given moment.
DOMNUL SISIF
+ Characters
1 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
18/05/08 ARCUB, Bucarest
+ Translations
English
+ Publisher
Ed. ”Universalia”, Doina Uricariu
+ Contact
[email protected]
The life of a couple who have been
married for 40 years is shaken up by
the anxiety (caused by ageing and the
approach of the end) which takes hold of
WOMAN. MAN decides to draw her into
a game intended to at least restore part
of the love for life and love which she
has lost. In the first scene, we witness
an “accidental” encounter in a park, on a
bench, between WOMAN and a man who
seeks to seduce her. In the second scene,
whose action is anterior to the first, we are
given an explanation of what happened in
the first: we learn the cause of WOMAN’s
crisis and MAN’s project. The last scene is
again set in the park and we see the end
of the game which shows the husband’s
success in recharging his wife with a new
energy.
+ Reading Committee
Alexandru Boureanu /Director, dramaturg and teacher at the Theatre Departement of the University of Craiova,
Mircea Cornisteanu, Directeur of the Teatrul National ‘Marin Sorescu’ Craiova
www.etc-cte.org
Moussa AKHMADOV /1956
Ivan VYRYPAEV /1974
Mouradine OLMEZ
THE WOLVES
JULY
BLOOD AND ASH
БЕРЗАЛОЙ
ИЮЛЬ
КРОВЬ И ПЕПЕЛ
+ Characters
5 male, 3 female, other soldiers and
people
+ Premiere
18/12/02 rehearsed reading at
Footsbarn Theatre, Cartoucherie, Paris
+ Translations
Chechen (original), French
+ Publisher
L’Espace d’un instant (French)
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
1 male
+ Premiere
24/10/06 Praktika Teatr, Moscow
+ Translations
English, French
+ Publisher
Korovaknigi
+ Contact
www.vyrypaev.ru
+ Characters
22 male, 10 female
+ Premiere
18/04/08
+ Translations
Balkar (original), Russian, French
+ Publisher
L’espace d’un instant (French)
+ Contact
[email protected]
This is the monologue of an old
monomaniacal man who was placed in an
asylum after his house burnt down and who
imagines he has devoured his dog and his
nurse. In the end, the old man, left lying
in his own excrement, is taken away by
his two sons who came to Smolensk from
Arkhangelsk to find him. This monologue,
a verbal flow blending litany, delirium and/
or madness and veering into scatology
was performed in Moscow by a young
woman (Paulina Agoureeva, an actress
at the Piotr Fomenko workshop) carried
along by the torrent of words which she
uttered with a graceful virtuosity which
lightened and added a poetic character to
the text.
The action takes place in the Cherek
gorges in Balkaria in the 1990s. The
heart of the subject is the imaginary trial
of those responsible for the tragic events
which occurred in the region in autumn
1942. After ceding Rostov to the Germans
in August-October 1942, the 37th Army
was forced to retreat to KabardinoBalkaria. Following this defeat, 600 to 700
men from Kabardino-Balkarie returned
home after being abandoned to their fate
by their command. They were considered
as ‘bandits’ or ‘deserters’ by the Soviets.
After skirmishes between the deserters
and the soldiers of the Red Army close
to the villages of Moukhol and Saoutou
in November 1942, General Kozlov gave
the order to Lieutenant-colonel Chikine
to do what was necessary to liquidate the
groups of bandits in this area. The orders
given, each more cruel than the last,
gave a free hand to the NKVD troops.
The detachment in charge of executing
these orders committed acts of genocide
against the civil population of the Cherek
district: many testimonies by survivors
reveal the atrocities committed: entire
families exterminated without the slightest
sign of pity, villages pillaged and burned.
Following these events, thousands of
Balkars were deported to Central Asia.
Chechnya, winter 1944. Following
Stalin’s order, the Soviet Union organised
the deportation of the entire Chechen
people to central Asia and Siberia. Half
would never return. In the mountains of the
south of Chechnya, only a few survivors
still haunt the ruins of the country, going to
ground in the forests, among the wolves.
Moussa Akhmadov uses this sinister
episode of the history of the northern
Caucasus to evoke the new extermination
campaigns undertaken by “democratic”
Russia, with the blessing of the West.
He plunges into the infinite solitude of
his people, exposed to the contempt of a
world greedy for new demons, an inventor
and architect of terror.
+ Reading Committee
For the selection of the play by Ivan Vyrypaev: Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu /Head of Research at the CNRS, Paris, Member of
the Russian committees at the Maison Antoine Vitez and the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient
Dominique Dolmieu /Director, head of the Maison d’Europe et D’orient, Paris
The selection of the plays by Mouradine Olmez and Moussa Akhmadov have resulted from the permanent work of the reading
committee of the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient for plays in Russian. Committee members: Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu, Maria
Chichtchenkova, Philippe Frison, Sophie Gindt, Larissa Guillemet, Alexandra Koulaeva, Anne Le Huérou, Shirin Melikoff, Aude
Merlin, Amandine Regamey, Anne Seiller, Silvia Serrano, Eve Sorin, Virginie Symaniec and Simon Tordjman
www.etc-cte.org
Maja PELEVIC /1981
Branko DIMITRIJEVIC
JUMP GIRL
GODOT ON THE HOT
TIN ROOF
SKOCIDJEVOJKA
+ Characters
4 male, 3 female, chorus of 5 girls
+ Premiere
04/08/07 Budva
+ Translations
English
+ Publisher
Serbian National Theatre
+ Contact
[email protected]
This play is a kind of melodrama; it has an
unusual structure, with lyrical choruses, is
and based on a Montenegrin legend from
the 15th century and the story of Stjepan
Mitrov Ljubisa, a 19th century Romantic
writer. The legend tells a story about Ruza
and Stevan, a young couple from different
Montenegrin tribes whose love is banned
by their parents and society. In the time
of turmoil and strife between Montenegrin
tribes and the rising Ottoman empire,
Ruza is promised to another man, who
is better for the reputation and interests
of her family. Cursed by their families,
they make a romantic betrothal on a wild
beach. But very soon, Ruza has to pay for
the rescue of her fiancé from a Venetian
prison with her chastity. However, Stevan
cannot understand the greatness of this
sacrifice and rejects her; at the end she
decides to kill herself. She jumps from
a cliff, because she only believes in real
love. That cliff is named after her Jump
girl or originally Skocidjevojka. The place
exists on the Montenegrin coast.
GODO NA USIJANOM
LIMENOM KROVU
+ Characters
3 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
14/03/08 Serbian National Theatre
+ Contact
+381 64 339 1424
This is an existential tragicomedy set
in contemporary Novi Sad. This is a story
about a group of young people – three
girls and three boys – on the roof of an
ordinary apartment building. Three girls
(Tamara, Vesna and Maja) and three boys
(Godot, Ozzie and Mickey) who, among
other things, dream about meeting aliens,
quarrel with strange birds, exchange and
hide their identities, play love games (and,
finally, fall in love), celebrate the birthdays
of famous people together (Samuel
Beckett, Niccolo Machiavelli, Erich
Fromm, Aristotle, Pasolini) and, above
all, experiment with natural and manmade
electricity.
+ Reading Committee
Milivoje Mladjenovic /General manager of Serbian National Theatre, Aleksandar Milosavljevic /Head of Drama department ,
Branko Dimitrijevic /Dramaturg , Svetislav Jovanov /Dramaturg
www.etc-cte.org
Lubo BURGR /1964
/and company
THE SAD LIFE OF
IVAN T. (A PUBLIC
RECONSTRUCTION
OF AN EMERGENCY
MEETING 8/7/2005)
SMUTNÝ ŽIVOT
IVANA T. (VEREJNÁ
REKONŠTRUKCIA
MIMORIADNEJ SCHÔDZE
8/7/2005)
+ Characters
5 male, 4 female
+ Premiere
12/11/06 Centre for contemporary
culture A4 - zero space
+ Contact
[email protected]
Burgr is the director of a small
independent company Skrat Theatre and
of whose plays are based on the collective
work of actors and writers. The Sad Life of
Ivan T. has a somewhat particular position
in the context of the productions of the
Skrat Theatre. Its untypical character lies
in the method used to composed the text.
In this play one finds an articulation of
very distant times, leading to a very open
critique of the social-political atmosphere
in present-day Slovakia. The other
principal aspect of the text is based on the
overlapping of two spaces, one is an office
for the extraordinary meeting of councillors
8/7/2005, the other is the rustic world of
Ivan T., his hunting, deer and Christmas
dinner. The poetics of the plays written
in the Skrat Theatre (Skrat means ‘Short
Circuit’ in Slovak) is very special, focusing
on people who are outsiders and marginal
in society, but very full of emotions and
interesting banal stories, sad and funny at
the same time.
Iveta HORVÁTHOVÁ /1960
Michal DITTE
WOMAN FETISHISTS
TERRA GRANUS
FETIŠISTKY
+ Characters
5 male (voices), 6 female
+ Premiere
12/01/08 Studio of Slovak National
Theatre
+ Publisher
Divadelný ústav (Theatre Institute)
+ Contact
[email protected]
The play Women Fetishists is dedicated
to women by women so there is a chance
of avoiding the generic stereotypes which
occur in our everyday communication.
The play is made up of attractive, light,
modern dialogues, which are presented
by an eccentric, famous movie and theatre
actress, her devoted manager, her sweetly
problematic daughter and the past,
from which the beautiful and irresistible
model is created. This beautiful model
is considered to be the main character
Marily’s sister. She wanted to commit
suicide because she was considered a
love fetish for those around her. When
we add some more representatives,
admirers, important male voices in the
phone and hip-hop DJs we end up with a
brand new cocktail for going from intimate
backstage to media glory. However the
greatest popularity can hide a wounded
human soul.
+ Characters
1 male, 5 female
+ Premiere
16/02/08 House of Culture TlmačeLipník
+ Contact
[email protected]
Terra Granus, or the Land near the river
Hron, rises up from the lower Pohronie
landscape. This project was developed
through acting workshops where the
inspiration was the history of Pohronie:
the deportations of Jews, displacements,
population movements and HungarianCzechoslovakian conflicts. The result is
six acts and six stories about different
people which are connected by the theme
of the search for asylum, the search for
one’s roots and constant migration. Every
single act is really well constructed,
humorous, but especially ironically
absurd. Terra Granus is a collage which
depicts the reality of life in a provincial
small town.
+ Reading Committee
Dasa Ciripova /Theatre Theoretician (Theatre Institute Bratislava). Dasa Ciripova works in a Theatre Institute and as a theatre
journalist contributes to the theatre magazines Kod and Salto; she is committee member of a New Drama festival specialized in
contemporary Slovak drama. She was authorized to choose three contemporary Slovak plays for the Book of Plays by the director
of the Bratislava Theatre Institute, Vladislava Fekete
www.etc-cte.org
Matjaž ZUPANČIČ /1959
Simona SEMENIČ /1975
Dane ZAJC /1929
THE CLASS
I, VICTIM
BABA YAGA
RAZRED
JAZ, ŽRTEV
JAGABABA
+ Characters
5 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
16/12/06 SNG Drama, Ljubljana
+ Translations
English, Serbian
+ Publisher
Prešernovo gledališče Kranj
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
1 female
+ Premiere
12/10/07 Klub Gromka, AKC
Metelkova, Ljubljana
+ Translations
English
+ Publisher
Preglej
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
10 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
22/09/07 SNG Drama, Ljubljana
+ Publisher
Beletrina, Študentska založba
The Class is a black comedy that hits
a painful nerve: the question of modern
mysticism as it is created by contemporary
technocracy and all-embracing management. In his play, a candidate appears
in front of the corporate experts for retraining the sole representative of an entire
department which was to be abolished.
He is slightly insecure and somewhat
confused as to what is expected of him,
but he’s determined to succeed and ready
for anything. No sacrifice is too great if it
means we can enter a happy, new class
of people with jobs and a guaranteed
income. The Class reminds us that we
have probably never lived so precariously
in terms of employment: today we may
have success and luxury or at least a more
or less decent living wage, but tomorrow
everything could suddenly turn upside
down. However exposed we are, though,
we are not alone. Marketing experts
have developed all kinds of systems
and mechanisms to help us. There are
therapists, stylists, experts in information
technology, communications, marketing,
transfers, and so on, who are trying to
cloud our vision. And they are somehow
on the right track, because we’re already
floating in a haze of fear: fear of losing our
jobs, of being incompetent, of coping with
an insecure position in life. In depicting
these new mechanisms, Zupančič is both
witty and obnoxious.
In the monodrama I, Victim Simona
Semenič concludes the text and the
actual performance, saying: “Let me
smoke!” Before that we find out all about
wet beds, suns and clouds, butt herpes,
barstools and hospitals, epilepsy and a
doctor’s conscience. And power. The kind
of power that does not care. But it should
because there’s no plague and nobody is
going to die just like that. With her play,
Simona has created a courageous, radiant
and honest work in which she deals with
everything, including herself. Still – there’s
a will, there are Romantic Souls, there is
an old Slavic mythical figure Črtomir and
there is Milan and that means everything
is going to be just fine. After all: There’s no
way to happiness! Happiness is the way!
Baba Yaga is set in the “heart of the
fire”, at the intersection of human and
mythical worlds, where Almighty Nature
appears. Charcoal burner Gregor, who
keeps the charcoal pile burning overnight
during the Ember Week, is also a poet.
His perception of the world is sensitive
and comprehensive: trees and people,
real and fairy tale creatures, cruel stories
from this world and the world beyond,
dreamlike visions and real shadows – all
keep him company while he watches that
his charcoal pile does not collapse and
burn to dust and ashes. If it did, his life
would collapse as well. While guarding the
pile, he is visited by dead charcoal burners
who lost their battle with Almighty Nature.
The deceased declare that before their
death, the devil sent them the apparition
of a beautiful girl who sucked out their life
energy in a delightful stupor. The beautiful
girl visits Gregor, too, and arouses his
lust, which is eventually satisfied by
their strange wedding. This wedding will
perhaps forever unite weak man and
Almighty Nature, bringing together a living
world of low human interests and the world
of the dead with bad conscience and
unsettled accounts. In a wild dance, all the
stories merge into one – hot blood and the
cold grip of death, dreamlike images and
sharp rocks, wild heartbeat and scattered,
torn limbs. Although linked to the mythical
world of folk tradition, Dane Zajc’s farewell
play is deeply personal. He worked on it
for years and did not really want to finish
it completely. What he left us is both the
ecstatic poetry of eros and thanatos, and
an ironic view of ultimate human acts.
+ Reading Committee
Tomaž Toporišič /Dramaturg (Mladinsko Theatre), Assistant Professor (University of Primorska, Koper), Tea Rogelj /Dramaturg
(Slovensko narodno gledališče Nova Gorica), Mateja Pezdirc Bartol /Specialist in Slovene drama, Assistant Professor (University
of Ljubljana)
www.etc-cte.org
/castilian-speaking
Paco ZARZOSO /1966
Juan MAYORGA /1965
EXILE
HAMELIN
EXILIO
+ Characters
2 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
Teatro de los Manantiales, Valencia
+ Contact
[email protected]
Six one-to-one meetings between four
of the tenants of a house in an urban
environment, from down the stairway
to the roof. A woman writing a thesis
about tears; an illegal immigrant from the
Caribbean, hiding in a flat that isn’t hers;
a man that comes back from a year’s
journey around the world; and a man that
lives in two places, one with his wife and
son, the other with his lover. A succession
of weird situations, such as a dream-like
letter to an unknown addressee read by
someone else; a man unable to open his
own door, trying to jump from one balcony
to the other; a rabbit tied to a rope on the
building’s roof, waiting to be slaughtered...
All these people are, in a certain way,
exiles. Banned from nature, from real life,
from their identity. Although they almost
seem to live in niches, their vital paths
come out to be more interwoven than it
may seem at first sight.
+ Characters
+ Premiere
12/10/05 Teatro de La Abadía, Madrid
+ Translations
French, Polish, Portuguese
+ Publisher
Ñaque Editora
+ Contact
[email protected]
A judge presents the accusation of
sexual abuse of a lower class boy to the
press. Guided by a voice that pronounces
all the stage directions, the audience
witnesses the different and confusing
aspects of the story: The judge’s own
relationship to his wife and son, who
suffers from his dedication to his work.
The professional deformation of the
psychologist, who’s asked to collaborate
on this project. The almost perverse
involvement of the press. The boy’s friend
really seems to have acted out of a sincere
feeling towards the boy and his family,
although he’s very well acquainted with
other men who have sex with youngsters.
And the boy’s parents may have been
perfectly aware of what was happening,
but pretended not to know, because the
friend’s support was more than welcome.
“Nobody gives nothing for nothing.” A
tale full of suspense and allusions to our
society’s most delicate values, written for
a bare stage.
José Ramón FERNÁNDEZ
/1962
NINA
+ Characters
2 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
01/06/06 Teatro Español, Madrid
+ Translations
English, French, Polish
+ Publisher
Teatro Español
+ Contact
[email protected]
A rainy night in autumn. A young
woman, Nina, returns to the coastal
village of her childhood and unexpectedly
runs into her boyfriend, Blas, who works
in the hotel where she’s staying. Although
they’re still in their thirties, they look back
on their lives and all those things they
once dreamed of. Fifteen years ago she
went to the city in order to be an actress,
but she didn’t make it, whereas he stayed,
failing in his schoolmaster career and in
his marriage. Nina: “We can start a new
game, but not play the game again.” Two
persons on the threshold of adulthood, in
an encounter immersed in references to
Chekhov, in particular The Seagull, but
also other plays and his overall spirit. In
the playwright’s own words: “Nina is a
combat between despair and the will to
live; to keep on living tomorrow morning.”
+ Reading Committee
Ronald Brouwer /Artistic coordinator at the Teatro de La Abadía (Madrid), translator, José Sanchis Sinisterra /Playwright, theatre
director and dramaturgy teacher, Javier Villán /Theatre critic and writer
www.etc-cte.org
/catalan-speaking
Pau MIRÓ /1974
David PLANA /1969
SINGAPORE
MATCH DAY
SINGAPUR
DIA DE PARTIT
+ Characters
2 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
20/11/07 Teatre Nacional de
Catalunya, Barcelona
+ Translations
Spanish (Castilian) (in preparation)
+ Publisher
Teatre Nacional de Catalunya
+ Contact
[email protected]
+ Characters
3 male, 2 female, 1 extra character
+ Premiere
15/05/08 Teatre Lliure, Barcelona
+ Contact
+34 932 892 770
A young girl in her 30s dies, and her
father, her close friend and her lover
become very affected. After her death, the
differences between them (their origins,
their social class and their age) disappear.
During a blackout in the city, the three
meet in a kitchen in the dark. When the
lights come back, they became aware that
they miss her a lot and, in a perverse way,
they try to bring her back to life. Singapore
is a positive tale. A mambo, allegro ma
non troppo. A tale full of fury and common
sense; a tale about reconciliation with
someone who has left us…
A Barça match provides the excuse
to analyse football, politics and the
murky dealings that surround the rules
of confrontation between two sides
competing for something that cannot be
divided between them, for the victory of
one is the defeat of the other.
+ Reading Committee
Sergi Belbel /Artistic director of the TNC, Esteve Miralles, Feliu Formosa, Toni Casares, Jordi Castellanos
www.etc-cte.org
Rasmus LINDBERG
Jonas Hassen KHEMIRI
Sofia FREDÉN
THE DAY DAY DIED
INVASION!
THE WHITE BABY
DAN DÅ DAN DOG
+ Characters
2 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
24/02/06 Jämtlands läns teater, Aulan
Järpens Gymnasium
+ Translations
English
+ Contact
[email protected]
Lindberg’s play is a high velocity
portrayal of a number of absurd situations
taking place at a small reception following
a funeral. Edith’s husband has just passed
away and Edith herself has discovered a
large and worrying lump on her cheek.
The priest mumbles to himself. Doctor
Herbert informs Edith about her terminal
condition, she then goes out with her
dog, Dan, who kicks the bucket. Herbert
starts a love affair with Amanda, Sonny is
abandoned and shuts himself up in a box.
With fast paced dialogues and scenes
relying on visual imagery, this is a play
where ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ people
become interchangeable, as internal and
external realities are melted down into
one. All as a single day marches toward
night.
+ Characters
3 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
10/03/06 Stockholms Stadsteater
+ Translations
English, German, Norwegian, French
+ Publisher
Norstedts
+ Contact
[email protected]
Invasion! tells the story of Abulkasem,
the menacing Arab character of Almqvist’s
play Signora Luna. In Invasion! the identity
of Abulkasem is being investigated and
multiplied. Abulkasem is a homosexual
dancer. Abulkasem is a slang word that can
signify anything. Abulkasem is an applepicking refugee, a famous theatre director
and a paranoid journalist – all at the same
time. Abulkasem is a constant threat for
some and a mental encouragement for
others. Invasion! is a play dealing with the
(de)construction of a threatening identity
– more specifically the identity of the Arab
male, feared both in Almqvist’s historic
play and today’s Western world.
LILLA LIVET
+ Characters
+ Premiere
09/03/07 Göteborgs Stadsteater
+ Translations
English
+ Publisher
Columbine Teaterförlag
+ Contact
[email protected]
Deputy prime-minister, Eva Olsson,
gives birth to a child. Not willing to take
time off her busy political schedule, she
hides the fact of the baby’s birth, forcing
it onto her ex-husband shortly after
delivery. Ex-husband, Hans, brings the
baby home to his new girlfriend, Marie
and an uncertain reception. Marie, herself
in need of constant coddling, breaks up
with Hans, banishes him and the baby to
the garage. Later, when the two kiss and
make up, she passes the child onto Lars,
her ex-boyfriend, a convicted killer. Lars
sells it to two lesbians in a bar. One of these
women happens to be the deputy prime
minister’s grown up daughter, Esmeralda.
Esmeralda’s lover, Vivi, feeling jealous,
gives the baby away. The child is last seen
in a toilet at Stockholm’s International
Airport where it is mistakenly repatriated,
together with an African refugee family,
to Eritrea. Meanwhile, journalists have
found out about the baby and Eva needs
to get it back to save her political career.
After failing to convince the local welfare
office of their responsibility to locate the
baby in Africa; Eva, Hans, Marie, Lars
(also a possible father to the baby after
a night with Eva at a party convention),
Esmeralda and Vivi travel to East Africa to
locate and bring home their baby. They all
come into possession of different babies
when suddenly, the girl, miraculously now
a precocious ten year old, walks in to the
lobby ready to travel home to Sweden.
+ Reading Committee
Swedish Centre of the ITI
www.etc-cte.org
/french-speaking
Mathieu BERTHOLET /1977
Manon PULVER
Valérie POIRIER /1961
MEPHISTO/
ONLY AN ACTOR
AT THE END OF THE
TETHER
FAR FROM THE BALL
MEPHISTO/
RIEN QU’UN ACTEUR
AU BOUT DU ROULEAU
+ Characters
4 male, 7 female
+ Premiere
17/01/06 Comédie de Genève
+ Publisher
Actes Sud – Papiers
+ Contact
[email protected]
In Mephisto/Only an Actor, Mathieu
Bertholet evokes the emblematic and
ambiguous German performer Gustaf
Gründgens, once renowned for his
portrayal of Goethe’s ‘Mephisto’. Once a
revolutionary idealist, Gründgens went on
to become one of the Nazi regime’s most
submissive artists. During Hitler’s regime,
the actor compromised his principles to
further his career while his old friends and
enfants terribles, Erika and Klaus Mann,
the children of Thomas Mann, chose
exile, fighting fascism with their literature
and theatre. Klaus Mann eventually
wrote the novel Mephisto, pinning down
the pitiful and clichéd opportunism of a
performer misguided by Nazism… From
the honed tip of his quill, Mathieu Bertholet
sketches these restless lives swept up
in the course of history and probes the
complex relationships between artists
and authority.
+ Characters
2 female
+ Premiere
12/12/07 Comédie de Genève
+ Publisher
Bernard Campiche Editeur
+ Contact
[email protected]
At the End of the Tether is a comedy
of exhaustion, of capillary burn-out, where
the links which two individuals – two
women as it happens – have with their own
images become unravelled. The comedy
of appearances and headlong rush is
here pushed to its paroxysm: two women
express their personal failure in a dialogue
that is at the same time destructive and
burlesque, caught between the desire to
manipulate and the need to confess...
A magnificent duo of actresses serving
the subtle writing of Manon Pulver where
the futile rubs shoulders with the essential
for our greater enjoyment.
LOIN DU BAL
+ Characters
4 male, 6 female, penguins
+ Premiere
11/03/08 Théâtre de Poche, Genève
+ Publisher
+ Contact
[email protected]
In a retirement home, everyone is
getting ready to celebrate Mrs Anchard’s
one hundredth birthday. A man arrives,
in search of his father. Following a
misunderstanding by one of the old men
he is adopted, and in a short time, he
will transform the absence of hope into
the dynamic of life. But strange animals
begin to populate the place and suddenly
the party veers into inhumanity as the
television cameras entrusted with the task
of immortalising the jubilee look on.
Nadège REVEILLON /1974
VENUS VOCERO
+ Characters
4 female
+ Premiere
03/04/08 Les Osses
+ Publisher
+ Contact
[email protected]
Venus, the greatest voice in the world,
has just died. Who to better eulogize
the deceased than wailing mourners? A
polyphonic ritual evolves in front of our
eyes. As they lament, four women reveal
the portrait of a singer that Milo could have
dreamed of. Venus comes to life and leads
us into the heart of a voice, into the heart of a
woman. In her first play, Nadège Reveillon
explores an archaic theatrical form, the
vocero: a funeral song with deep rhythms.
+ Reading Committee
Stéphanie Leclercq /Assistant director, Anne Bisang /Director of the Comédie de Genève, Arielle Meyer MacLeod /Dramaturg,
Christine Barras /Bookseller, Stéphanie Chassot /Commnication & distribution at the Comédie de Genève
www.etc-cte.org
/german-speaking
Reto FINGER /1972
Lukas BÄRFUSS /1971
Laura DE WECK /1981
COLD COUNTRY
THE SAMPLE (THE
GOOD SIMON KORACH)
FAVOURITE PEOPLE
KALTES LAND
+ Characters
3 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
06/10/06 Nationaltheater Mannheim
+ Publisher
S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Theater &
Medien
+ Contact
What happens when the modern world
crashes through to the ancient? When a
young woman leaves her home in search
of a new future? Hanna’s brother died two
years ago. The mother believes the lad
threw himself off the mountain in a fit of
melancholy. In truth it was the father who
drove him up the cliff face in a kind of test
of his manhood; even though he knew the
son was afraid of heights. Even the vicar
knows the truth but he does not tell. So
that the father will continue to send him
the daughter who he has been groping
since she was a child. In front of the
railway station Hanna meets a young man
from town, Tobias. He tells of a different
life, of poetry readings and his shared flat.
Reto Finger describes a society in the
process of change, of disorientation and
self-discovery, the clash between village
and town life and the dogged attempt of a
young woman to assert herself within it. In
her search for another, better existence,
she follows Tobias to the city. But there
she feels alienated. Her disappointment in
Tobias’ promises of happiness ends once
again in an act of senseless violence.
DIE PROBE (DER BRAVE
SIMON KORACH)
+ Characters
3 male, 2 female
+ Premiere
02/02/07 Münchner Kammerspiele
+ Publisher
Wallstein Verlag GmbH
+ Contact
[email protected]
A woman has a child and after some
years of parental bliss the husband begins
to have doubts about his fatherhood and
decides to have it tested. Finally he receives
confirmation that he is not the father, or
to put it another way, that the donors of
the two samples are not blood-relatives.
This is where the play begins. Lukas
Bärfuss questions family bonds during
a time of maximum transparency. What
role if any, does social parenthood play,
when biology has become a touchstone
for loyalty, honesty and affection? The
child becomes a comic focal point for
our morality and our sense of upbringing,
family and heredity. Scientific advances
have made this ‘sample’ a possibility. The
biological truths which follow will change
social reality for ever.
LIEBLINGSMENSCHEN
+ Characters
2 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
29/03/07 Theater Basel
+ Translations
Russian
+ Publisher
Verlag Autorenagentur
+ Contact
[email protected]
Jule feels fine, Lilli feels fine and so does
Anna. Darius is afraid he has failed his
exams and Sven would prefer to appear
seductive, or at least normal. Everybody
thinks its great that Anna has been going
out with Philip for years, Jule doesn’t
really care that Lilli has been sleeping with
Darius, and Darius is not really bothered
by any of this - he prefers to rebel against
school rules and his own inadequacy. Five
young people become more and more tied
up in their own little world in which love
affairs, exam stress and loss of orientation
become unhealthy dance partners. Laura
de Weck paints an entertaining, punchy
portrait of a young generation caught up
between hunger for experience, desire for
love, aimless impulse and fundamental
insecurity. Bit by bit, a deep and painful rift
reveals itself beneath seemingly harmless
everyday communication. At the end one
dies, another loses his mind and a third
escapes into the waves.
+ Reading Committee
www.etc-cte.org
Özen YULA /1965
Murathan MUNGAN /1955
THE UNOFFICIAL
HÜRREM
PAPER STONE CLOTH
GAYRI RESMI HÜRREM
+ Characters
3 female, 1 puppeteer, women
+ Premiere
Grand Municipality Theatre İstanbul
+ Publisher
Mitos-Boyut
+ Contact
[email protected]
In a secret harem room of the Ottoman
Palace, the old Sultan Hürrem talks with
a young concubine who resembles her
very much. She speaks about her life, her
love, her political influence, the intrigues
in the palace. She regrets having wasted
her life for power and misses her country.
All the stories being told are reflected
by puppet plays. And as the room has
been discovered and forcefully entered
she kills the young women, disguises
her as herself and flees. The play gives
an insight into the life of the Sultan and
Ottoman women.
TAŞ KAĞIT KUMAŞ
+ Characters
8 male, 8 female, 8 other characters
+ Premiere
Not yet staged
+ Contact
[email protected]
Through three different concepts, this
play depicts human beings under constant
pressure from the historical change brought
about by modernisation. The first section
is about ‘paper’. The playwright reflects
on the different approaches to paper
in Western and Eastern traditions. The
second section is on ‘stone’. Stone-writingphotography-picture; these concepts are
presented to reflect on ‘culture’, contemporary time, war, history, the delusion
of reality as images and life. The third
section is on the adventure of clothing:
The ritual of dressing, the ‘kefen bezi’ (in
Islamic tradition the corpse is buried in
a white cloth which is called the winding
sheet), the bourka, modern clothing,
fashion... All ending in the inhumane,
insane pictures of death.
+ Reading Committee
Literary council of the Turkish State Theatres
www.etc-cte.org
Alexandre MARDAN /1956
Alexandre VITER /1972
Neda NEJDANA /1971
DAUGHTERS-MOTHERS
A STATION, OR THE
TIMETABLE OF DESIRES
FOR TOMORROW
WHEN THE RAIN
RETURNS
ДОНЬКИ-МАТЕРІ
+ Characters
2 female
+ Premiere
07/06 Odessa Russian Drama Theatre
+ Translations
French, English, Russian, German
+ Publisher
Dramaturgie contemporaine (1, 2007)
+ Contact
[email protected]
The doorbell rings at Valentina’s
apartment and a young woman, Katia,
appears. Katia calls Valentina, “mother,”
and Valentina calls Katia, “daughter”.
They prepare the family dinner. But they
are not mother and daughter and they
never met before now. Valentina and
Katia are prostitutes, paid by a client
whose fantasy is to sleep with a mother
and her daughter. The client arrives. But
something unexpected occurs…
СТАНЦІЯ, АБО РОЗКЛАД
БАЖАНЬ НА ЗАВТРА
+ Characters
3 female
+ Premiere
03/11/06 Theatre MIST, Kiev
+ Translations
Russian
+ Publisher
Andrii Savchuk; Artur Gorin
+ Contact
[email protected]
Three different young women find
themselves in a strange station where
something extraordinary is happening:
many prodigies occur but no train or plane
arrives. Their desires are being fulfilled,
but these are secret, unspoken desires...
For example, to become a man for a
woman. But there is one thing they can’t
do – leave the station. What do women
want? Does fulfilling desires make us
happy or not? This false paradise is a trap
and getting out of it is almost impossible...
Or possible? But how?
КОЛИ ПОВЕРТАЄТЬСЯ
ДОЩ
+ Characters
3 male, 3 female
+ Premiere
Atelier 16, Kiev
+ Translations
Russian
+ Publisher
Andrii Savchuk
+ Contact
[email protected]
The action takes place in the small town
of N. where nothing ever happens. Noone can die or be born, no-one can get
married... And it hasn’t rained for a long
time, to such an extent that you can see
mirages. The inhabitants invent events,
bury ghosts, find false reminders in the
ground. They also play strange games
of chance. For example, the company of
four people: the editor in chief of a journal,
a historian who works in the museum,
a cemetery director and a woman who
makes wedding dresses. They make bets
on strangers. When will the next stranger
appear? They play with strangers cruelly.
But one day a woman comes to this town
and opens the café ‘Under the umbrella’.
She is running away from a personal
drama of destroyed love, and so is looking
for peace and quiet. But this time the
game is different. The play-acted murder
really happens, and the desert town finally
receives the rain it had waited so long for...
+ Reading Committee
Nadia Miroshnychenko /Researcher at Less Kurbass Center of Theatrical Art, opera and theatre critic, Dominique Dolmieu
/Director, head of the Maison d’Europe et D’orient, Paris. The propositions for this selection have resulted from the permanent
work of the reading committee of the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient for plays in Ukrainian. The members of this committee are:
Dmytro Bogomazov, Alain Guillemoles, Oxana Melnychuk, Nadia Miroshnychenko, Ines Stepanchuk
www.etc-cte.org
Judith ADAMS /1950
David GREIG
CLICKWIND
YELLOW MOON
+ Premiere
13/06/07 Bradford University
+ Contact
[email protected]
Clickwind is set in the year 3007 after
environmental disaster has made the
world outside biospheres uninhabitable.
Each audience member is guided through
this ‘new world’ by Professor Appleton
towards a confrontation with Lucifer as
he falls from the heavens. Clickwind uses
science, history and Milton’s Paradise Lost
as inspiration for a new kind of theatre.
+ Characters
2 male, 1 female
+ Premiere
28/09/07 TAG Theatre Company at
Citizen’s Theatre, Glasgow
+ Publisher
Faber & Faber
+ Contact
[email protected]
Silent Leila is an introverted girl who
has a passion for celebrity magazines.
Stag Lee Macalinden is the deadest of
dead end kids in a dead end town. They
never meant to get mixed up in a murder…
but now they need a place to hide. Yellow
Moon explores what it means to live in a
celebrity-obsessed world and what it is
that defines who you are when you’re 17
years old.
+ Reading Committee
Alex Chisholm /Associate Director (Literary), West Yorkshire Playhouse, Katherine Mendelsohn /Literary Manager Traverse
Theatre, Edinburgh
www.etc-cte.org

The European theatre today: the plays nr 8

Transcription

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