With its subtitle Slovenian Experimental Dramatic and Performative Texts from the Modernist Period (1966–1986), the anthology The Generator:: for Manufacturing Any Number of Drama Complexes gives a sufficiently simple indication of the nature and time of the emergence of the texts gathered into this book – it includes almost 60 texts of 30 Slovenian authors, selected by Blaž Lukan. The key formal criterion by the selection of the texts to include texts that were “lost”, “dispersed” or “inaccessible,” and with that, “obscure” based on the transience or low visibility of their newspaper, journal or even book publication. The primary purpose of publishing them here is thus to enable their (renewed and commented) accessibility and draw attention to them. The selection covers the period of Slovenian (literary) modernism; the second half of the 1960s mark the break with tradition and the establishment of avant-garde tendencies in Slovenian literature and other arts. The selection of works included within the book is diverse. It ranges from ostensibly “traditional” dramas, which experiment with the language, the psychological foundations of the characters or the dramatic action through innovative dramatic forms that are either genre hybrids or already cross the borders of poetry, prose or essay, all the way to radical forms of “drama”. The selection also includes performative texts – synopses, scripts or merely performative concepts – and describes already staged productions or performances and even “paradramas” or “pseudo-dramas” which, by their primary nature, are not even dramas but through today’s (postdramatic) prism become precisely that.
Blaž Lukan received his PhD from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, University of Ljubljana (UL AGRFT) in 2006. In addition to working as a dramaturg in theatre and film, he writes theatre reviews, accompanying texts in published plays by Slovenian and foreign authors and academic papers on drama and the theory of performing arts. He was the artistic director of the Glej Experimental Theatre (1985–1988) and the Celje People’s Theatre (1989–1993). He works as an assistant professor of dramaturgy at UL AGRFT and head of the Dramaturgy and Performing Arts Department.
Selected and Edited by: Blaž Lukan
Reviewers: Gregor Moder, Darko Štrajn
