The text is difficult to define in terms of genre. The author's writing is distinguished by radical creative freedom: he decisively plays with the registers of burqa, parody, grotesque, travesty and satire.
DRAMATIC PERSONS: 19 (3 women, 16 men)
The text has not yet been published or performed. The Slovenian Theatre Institute has two versions of the text. The older version consists of 59 numbered pages in A4 format (ref. K t 3385/2), and the newer one consists of 75 pages (ref. K t 3385/2).
Writer and playwright Emil Filipčič (1951) is a versatile artist with an extremely extensive literary oeuvre. Even before his first literary publications, he burst onto the scene with his provocative series Butnskala on Radio Študent (together with Mark Derganc). Also his first prose work Kerubini was written in tandem (with Branko Gradišnik).
Filipčič's style is characteristically relaxed, playful and humorous, full of mythological, political, literary, philosophical and even sporting references. Intertextual and metafictional references create a sense of anarchy, which comes to life in the chaos of genre and the constant breaking down of stereotypes. With her first stand-alone novel Grein Vaun (1979) established himself as one of the leading protagonists of the so-called new Slovenian prose, with his debut play Kegler (1981), however, with unusual and radical satirical gestures, he indicated the main characteristics of his theatre writing. In the background of the author's literary world, one can suspect the hippie movement, communes, experimentation with drugs, beatnik literature and the sexual revolution. But it all starts with a parodic attitude towards the literary canon and ideologies, even though the literary tradition is ever present in the author's plays and we cannot imagine them without Pirandello, Jarry, Beckett and, above all, Ionesco. In Filipčič's texts we can recognise the influence of the films of Luis Buñuel and, above all, Federico Fellini, and in his writing we can also see traces of popular culture, from Monty Python's Flying Circus to Alan Ford. Filipčič's playwriting adopted Slovenian attempts at absurdist drama and theatrical experimentation of his time (Glej Theatre, Pekarna and its predecessors). His writing is cynically destructive and at the same time parodically burlesque. The original use and combination of grotesque elements creates humour with a touch of absurdity, anguish and sadness. In a surrealist manner, it tirelessly combines the fantastic and the real and achieves humour through travesty, parody and persiflage. It also shares with the drama of the absurd a subversive verbal comedy: language games, trivial declarations, a Babel-like confusion of languages and linguistic registers, loose speech, illogic, semantic emptiness, patheticism and a Beckettian disintegration of meaning. His literature contains many of the characteristics of postmodernism: the fusion of the seemingly incompatible, the rapid alternation of the sublimely euphoric and the banal, the mixing of high and low literature, pop culture and the classics, the introduction of metafiction, and an all-round stylistic looseness.
The playwright's plays had a great resonance in the Slovenian cultural scene, as eight of his works were staged soon after their creation. According to Kegler (SNG Maribor, 1981) took the theatre stage in Prisoners of freedom (SMG Ljubljana, 1982), Altamira (SNG Ljubljana, 1982) and Sick Bride (SMG Ljubljana, 1984). The following text Atlantis (SMG Ljubljana, 1988) and File - baron Münhausen, which was staged as A divine tragedy (PG Kranj, 1989), drama 20th Century Fox (radio play entitled Stampedo, 1990), Psyche (SMG Ljubljana, 1992) and Merry home (SMG Ljubljana, 1996). In the following decade, a puppet play was staged King Alcohol (LG Ljubljana, 2002). Some of the texts are still waiting to be realised on stage: Bakhantke (1992), Indestructible (1995), Slave to the campaign (or King Peter the Sixth, 1997) and Pastor (2002). More recently, a theatre version of the Butnskale (co-production SMG Ljubljana and PG Kranj, 2016) and comedy Figaro is getting married (1994, reading performance, SNG Ljubljana, 2016).
Roman Ervin Kralj (1986) is a true literary-genre mix, as the author also included a play Altamira and Sick Bride, novel Autumn is (1995) also contains a comedy Psyche. In the meantime, a novel X-100 (1988). They follow: Keops pyramid (2005), Problems (2009, Prešeren Fund Prize), Mojstrovka (20123), The secret of pleasure (2013) and Seraph of Šarhova 2 (2015). The author has also published several short story collections and written screenplays for Three contributions to the Slovenian frenzy (Chronicle of Madness, 1983), youth film May and the little spider (1988) and Butnskalo (1995). He has also acted in the last two (in Butnskali the main character Ervin Kralj). He also starred in films by František Slaka (Eva, Crisis period) and in productions of his own plays: he appeared as Dingo in Altamiri, Adolf in Divine tragedies, Emil Filipčič in drama Merry home and in a puppet play King Alcohol. He has also acted in plays by other authors. La discreta enamorada Lope de Vega (MGL, 1988), in Feydeau's Fleas in the ear (SNG Ljubljana, 1996), in Gogol's To the Auditor (1997) and in Jovanović's Kozarcky Clinics (SSG Trieste, 1999).
PUBLICISTS, CRITICS AND LITERARY HISTORIANS ON THE PLAYS OF EMIL FILIPČIČ
In presenting the writings on Filipčič's drama, we have focused, due to the vastness of the material we have in the Slovenian Theatre Institute, mainly on texts that deal with the author's dramatic oeuvre as a whole or that attempt to place it in a broader literary-historical context. Some of the articles presented in the SLOGI library are also available online. Here we also provide some links to articles that are only available in electronic form.
The first comprehensive account of Emil Filipčič's dramatic texts was published by Taras Kermauner in 1984 in Problems (The last stage of Luddism, 22. 1984, No. 9-11, pp. 112-122).
The text is under a revised title (The limits of Luddism or the renewed quest for national power) also printed in the book History of Lipizzania, Today's Slovenian Drama 4 (Slovenian Theatre Museum, 2001).
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Kermauner also dealt with Filipčič's texts in his last work on drama, which he published (Between drama and memory, subtitle Between dreams and wakefulness, 2008).
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Posthumous publication of the work is available at the Digital Library of Slovenia Medved's Dramatics (Priests, townspeople, workers 4Among other playwrights, Kermauner also discussed Filipčič:
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Kermauner's article is also linked to a thought by Tomaž Toporišič:
"Filipčič's subsequent comedies of the 1980s, or the outlandish black comedies such as Atlantis, were, in the opinion of Taras Kermauner, whom we join, a complement to Filipčič's drama with a concrete analysis of the 1970s in Slovenia. And just as Atlantis, in a particular, Filipčič-esque paratactic way, subverted the political 1970s (we continue to use Kermauner's argument), namely that of the partisan generation and its adolescent opponents, who found themselves on the verge of crime, drugs, appearance, play, nothingness, Psycho, ten years later, reckons with a different and different historical period, or the present: with the for self-development Slovenia." (Zvon, 10. 2007, No. 3, p. 54)
Tomaž Toporišič, ten years younger, in his analysis of the relationship between dramatic texts and different media, also discusses all four "incarnations" of other Slovenian playwrights or their works. Butnskale, radio play, film, comic strip and theatre production (Slavic magazine, 65. 2017, No. 1, pp. 53-64).
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The 12th issue of the theatre magazine is also largely dedicated to Filipčič's drama. Masks (III. 1988-89). In addition to the print Atlantis and images from performances of the author's texts (17 photographs and posters), an analysis of some of Filipčič's plays entitled The Pathology of Modern Drama, written by Simon Kardum (pp. 29-39).
In the Proceedings Postmodern and contemporary Slovenian drama Tina Kosi analyzes the author's plays in relation to postmodernism (Dramatika Emil Filipčič, AGRFT, 2005).
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In the book Slovenian drama in the second half of the 20th century author Silvija Borovnik dedicated a separate chapter to Filipčič's drama (Slovenska matica, 2005).
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In his writings, Matevž Rudolf considered Emil Filipčič as a representative of the drama of the absurd:
»Filipčič builds his plays primarily on grotesqueness, which is one of the basic characteristics of the drama of the absurd. With grotesque, Filipčič discovers the truth in things, which is either hidden or most often taboo. His comic milieu is, as we have already mentioned, an associative comedy of the intellect, based on unusual word connections and the merging of their meanings with the unexpected, even bizarre."
This is the thought of Matevž Rudolf in an extensive article in the magazine Language and literature (Emil Filipčič between Luddism and the drama of the absurd, JiS 53. 2008, no. 5, p. 61). Matevž Rudolf already discussed the author's plays in his diploma thesis (Emil Filipčič and the drama of the absurd(Faculty of Arts, 2005).
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Rudolf also published an analysis of Filipčič's drama in the theatre magazine that was published at the time of the performance. Butnskale (Absurd? Absurd!, Theatre list of the Prešeren Theatre Kranj and the Slovenian Youth Theatre 2015/16, p. 18)
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Blaž Lukan is with the record Drama as (self)creation accompanied the publication of nine of Filipčič's dramatic texts (Dramas, Cankar Publishing House, 2014, pp. 701-715).
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The aforementioned edition was also reviewed by critics Anja Radaljac, Matej Bogataj and Aljaž Krivec, among others:
- – Anja Radaljac is about Drama pens in the online edition Literature (19. 3. 2015).
- – Matej Bogataj is the result of the Filipčič family Drama presented in Youth (6. 11. 2015, No. 45, p. 70) and in the broadcast From the book market on Radio ARS.
- – Aljaž Krivec published his account of Filipčič's drama in magazine Modernity (79. 2015, No. 10, pp. 1395-1397)
In his research on the Slovenian reception of Pierre Corneille, Tone Smolej also wrote about Filipčič's adaptation. Psyche, which he treats as an example of a travesty of a classical text.
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At the premiere Butnskale were organized in Kranj on March 29, 2016 symposium on Filipčič's dramaSome of the participating authors published parts of their contributions in the theatre magazine that came out during the performance, and Aldo Milohnić adapted his into an article. Filipčič's Atlantis, which was published in the journal Literature (29. 2017, no. 307-308, pp. 215-225).
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Two parts of the radio show are also dedicated to the symposium on Filipčič's drama. The stage: in the first, with the title On the (no longer) drama of Emil Filipčič, the contributions of Aldo Milohnić and Muanis Sinanović are presented. It was broadcast on April 19, 2016 on Radio ARS..
Text by Matevž Rudolf entitled Emil Filipčič, the crazy creator of the world, was broadcast a week later (Radio ARS, The stage, 26. 4. 2016).
The Slovenian Theatre Institute also has theatre lists and reviews of performances of Filipčič's plays, interviews with the author, and presentations of his works published in daily newspapers.
EDITIONS, TYPESCOPES AND MANUSCRIPTS
- Magazines, theater lists, monographic publications
The book edition of nine of Filipčič's plays in 2014 filled a major gap: for more than two decades, some of his drama texts were only available in magazine editions and theater lists, while most of them remained in typewritten form. The author included three plays in his novels Ervin Kralj and It's autumn.
The first Filipčič dramatic text to be printed was a play entitled File - baron Münhausen (Mentor, 1986, No. 2).
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In the same year, in the novel Ervin Kralj (1986) games released Altamira and Sick Bride.
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In three years it will be in the magazine Masks The drama Atlantis was published (March 1989, issue 12, pp. 103 – 116)
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As an original contribution to the mixing of literary genres, we should also mention the text How should I respond to France Pibernik? Instead of answering the literary historian's questions, Filipčič sent France Pibernik an excerpt from Atlantis, which is also partially published in the book Relationships in contemporary Slovenian drama (1992, MGL Library, no. 114).
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Theater play Psyche was first published at the premiere in the theatre magazine (Gl. list SMG, 1993/94). Psyche was published for the second time as part of Filipčič's novel Autumn is (1995).
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In the fortnightly Views The fifteenth scene from Filipčič's novel was published in 1996. Bacchante (6. 3. 1996, No. 5, p. 28) with accompanying text by Boris Pintar (Bacchantes in the bird grove). When the play Veselja dom was performed at the Slovenian Youth Theatre, the text was printed in the theatre's newsletter (1996/97, no. 1). In the magazine Dialogues the first three acts of the drama were published in 1998 Slave to the campaign (36. 1998, no. 11-12, pp. 79-110). A selection of the author's plays was published in 2014.
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- Typescripts and manuscripts
Filipčič's plays were frequently performed, and the Slovenian Theatre Institute has amassed a considerable number of typescripts of his plays. Here we present only typescripts of unpublished works and typescript versions of published plays that are titled differently from their final printed versions.
On February 16, 1989, the premiere took place at the Prešeren Theater in Kranj. Divine Tragedies, which is a remake of the game File – Baron Münchhausen and is also published on our websites.
Among the author's unpublished and unperformed texts are: Bakhantke (sig. K t 3111) and Indestructible (sig. K t 3386). Both are published on our website.
In the SLOGI library we have a copy of the manuscript of the last, fifth act of the play Slave to the campaign (1997, sig. K t 2789):
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Unstaged drama Pastor We have two versions in the library, and the newer one has also been published online.
On December 21, 2002, the premiere of the text took place at the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre. King Alcohol (with subtitle delirium with puppets and live music in three acts). The play, co-designed and directed by Barbara Bulatović, was not published.
The same applies to the adaptation of the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. Enchanted place, which was written by Emil Filipčič together with Barbara Bulatović, also the director of the production. The premiere took place at the Šentjakob Theatre on December 29, 2003.
Also a theatrical version Butnskale, which was created in 2016, has not yet been printed, but is available on our website and in our library.
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Cemetery manager: »"I take revenge by strictly not believing a single word, neither my own nor someone else's." (Kegler, Dramas 2014, p. 10)
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Drama text Pastor is a sequel to Filipčič's first drama Kegler (1981), which was staged at the Maribor Drama Theatre under the title Bowler 6 (It was supposedly the sixth version of the text, the premiere was on November 14, 1981, the play was directed by Voja Soldatović). The bold dramatic writing, which flirted with fantasy, represented a radical questioning of values, transience, interpersonal hierarchies and violence. With stylistic and linguistic inventiveness, the author visionarily parodied inter-party rivalries and the struggle for power.
The turbulent events moved from the opening scenes in the morgue to the decadent domestic environment of a financial tycoon. Filipčič established a Fellini-esque atmosphere in the finale, reminiscent of the parties of today's political and economic "elect". In Kegler we find the beginnings of most of the characteristics of the author's dramatic poetics: intertextuality, the destruction of theatrical illusion, relativism, the mixing of genres, the editing technique, the fluidity of dramatic characters and theatre within theatre. Individual characters are aware that they are playing in theatre and co-shape the performance, the story and the events. Among the dramatic characters who constantly change roles, Filipčič's alter ego also appears, this time with the name Adolphus. For Kegler is also characterized by a kind of foresight, a premonition of the future (let's just mention the criticism of the party system, corruption and mafia tactics - all these phenomena have been in the world since time immemorial, but it is nevertheless unusual that they appear in a Slovenian drama around 1980), which can also be traced in other Filipčič plays.
Pastor, which Filipčič wrote a good twenty years after Kegler, is directly related to events, procedures and persons from KeglerThe events are reminiscent of the vicissitudes of a senior club, as the author aged the characters by a good three decades. He made two exceptions: Tone, who died in Kegler and Karlinca, who allegedly committed suicide at a very early age, remained young. Both are said to have Pastor returned from the other world, and everyone else is said to have accumulated almost double the years between the two dramatic events.
When and where?
The events apparently take place in a single day, September 11, 2001. The title character, a priest, storms onto the scene with news of the fateful events in New York. The setting for all five acts is a kitchen, which transforms into a wrestling ring, a courtroom, a torture chamber, and a space rocket as needed. Time and space abandon logic: the author uses montage techniques to combine possible and completely fantastic realities.
Homo politician
Kegler: Man must have double morality because it is the cornerstone of the social system. (p. 26).
Both the title characters, Kegler and the priest, founded parties in the leaden times, the Party of Law and the People's Party. In the 1981 game, Kegler dies tragically at the end: already wounded, he is shot by his aide Janko Cvetežar, but his death was clearly only apparent: at almost ninety years old, he became the oldest and most popular MP, while Janko is the most hated. Their party is no longer the Pathological Institute, but the concrete Slovenian National Party under the leadership of Zmago Jelinčič. Protagonists Pastor In their conversations, they also mention a few more or less well-known concrete figures from our political, public and artistic worlds, as well as from the world of popular culture (e.g. Franc Rode, Boris Cavazza, painter Aleksandar Jarec and others). Filipčič constantly intertwines non-literary reality and fictional events.
The dead in the world of the living
The play's leitmotif is the sudden return of a deceased person. Karlinca's arrival from the afterlife into a world that has been changing in the meantime is in itself a rewarding dramaturgical tool. In the time between Keglers and To the pastors the world was changing particularly dramatically: along with all the technological innovations that have radically changed our lives, we Slovenians also survived stormy political changes and finally declared our own country. When Kegler's daughters forcefully fill in the events of the last thirty years with their introductory conversation, the text takes on psychedelic tones: one of Janko's security guards turns into a space monster, the other into a transvestite. Apparently, in a world where the dead drink coffee with the living, anything is possible.
Suicide
V Kegler People often hint that Karlinca will hang herself. She got pregnant, her father offered her to his underling Janko, and she cheated on her fiancé Marko with Adolphus, which plunged her into even greater despair. Considering that in To the pastor appears as a twenty-year-old, apparently took her own life shortly after finishing Kegler.
Karlinca is not as innocent as she seems and has returned to the world with a special mission. She uses every opportunity to agitate. Her goal is group suicide, but individuals, led by the most determined, the priest, stand in her way again and again.
Adolphus also objects to Karlin:
You'll have a hard time convincing us, Karlinca, but on my last drunken voyage I was thinking the same thing as you. Namely, I got into a good mood while you were talking. And it's a vicious circle. In the moment when a person is completely on the dog, when he is at a dead end, a universal will is born in him, independent of all the concerns of reason, faith awakens in his heart again. (p. 21)
Active age
Pastor is also a play about old people who refuse to give in to younger people and their ideas. Karlinča's agitator's view of old age is only seemingly righteous, given her hidden intention:
You are pensioners, pretending to each other that life is worth living, when in reality you would rather spit bile around yourself. Why do you, like madmen, rape yourselves with constant activity instead of making room for the younger generations? (p. 20).
Karlinca and other critics of active aging have no power. The grotesque world of the elderly, who cannot and will not let go of their acquired privileges, is also personified by the octogenarian Atanas:
"Of course, Mr. Member of Parliament, I work twenty-four hours a day. In addition to these two functions, inspector of internal affairs and investigating judge, I also perform the work of the main representative for the sale of Živalski carstvo chocolates in Slovenia – I made that commercial for you, Miro, just so you know – I am the president of the Špica bocce club, a member of the board of directors of the Union brewery, vice-president of the Rocket Society of Slovenia, secretary at the Ljutomer production plant for the production of electronic controls Elgo Vidonci, and occasionally I am also a guard in the public toilet at Tromostovje. In short, I have an overview of what is happening and I know what I am doing.. .” (p. 29)
Slave to the campaign
Like most of Filipčič's dramatic characters, Atanas is also constantly active. Dramatic action is action in the literal sense: murders, suicides, physical and psychological torture, transformations into extraterrestrial beings, space travel, wrestling, filming commercials. In the second act, the kitchen turns into a wrestling ring: the men transform into sumo wrestlers and actual and verbal duels ensue. Life is a struggle and sooner or later there are victims. A murder occurs in the bathroom, the kitchen becomes a courtroom. Before the kitchen becomes a rocket at the very end and the dramatic characters become astronauts, they naturally have a lot to do with the most important side thing in the world. The Slovenian national football team did not manage to finally qualify for the World Cup (for the first time in history) in September 2001, but euphoria was in the air.
Theology and science, faith and nihilism
Atanas is also the leader of the scientific reductionists, who, based on an unwavering faith in science, have imagined how they will order the world. There will be no more pregnant women and the human race will be renewed through cloning. Clones will be banned from art and will be given telescopes as a substitute for novels and films: monasteries will be converted into astronomical observatories. Governments are incompetent because they support athletes and artists, which is unacceptable:
From now on, there will only be photographs of scientists in the newspapers!… There will be no more religious leaders! All religious books will be burned! And all art books, novels, plays, poems and similar nonsense… After all, it is perfectly clear to any scientist who has mastered the Pythagorean theorem to any extent that all athletes and artists are imbeciles. Film, radio and television will be banned. I wonder how people will find themselves then, hahaha! We don’t need an Academy for art, nor for philosophy, because these bastards, philosophers, excuse me, despise science…(Atanas' monologue on page 43)
The end of the play is completely open: we do not know what will happen to the characters and where they are going. In fact, we do not even know who they are. The main characters passionately debate the essence of existence, so that the chaotic events, in accordance with the title, end in theological tones.
Infantilization
Because the pastor resists scientific reductionism, Atanas's two aides, retired police officers, break him down with electric shocks.
The fourth act turns into the last: physical abuse turns into psychological abuse. The kitchen becomes like a game Figaro is getting married turns into an astronomical rocket. The priest, at the dictates of his tormentors, must act out an infantile scene. The scientific reductionists have won and humiliated him.
Role reversals
The identities of individuals change and are uncertain. Person A suddenly becomes Person B or someone who has not yet appeared in the text: in this case there are again two possibilities. He becomes a new fictional person or a well-known person from real life.
Towards the end, the priest claims that his name is not Štefan Škerjanc, but Emil Filipčič. Moreover: he was never a priest and all the other characters are fictional. We witness a complete fluidity of characters. Emil Filipčič is suddenly also a priest, although his alter ego is Adolphus, who towards the end of the play has a more than two-page long (autobiographical) monologue about his childhood.