20.500.12556/RUL-181022 Gledališče v dramatizirani družbi tekoče moderne Theatre in the dramatised society of liquid modernity Knjiga se usmerja v analize prepletanja drame, gledališča, uprizoritvenih praks in politike, ki ponujajo ključne vpoglede za gledalke in gledalce ter raziskovalce in raziskovalke uprizoritvenih umetnosti, sodobne sociopolitike in kulturnih študij. Na izbranih primerih knjiga prikazuje, kako so drama, gledališče in uprizarjanje nasploh vedno politični; kako nastanejo tam, kjer nastane politika. Pokaže, kako v sodobnem gledališču in družbi osebno postane politično in obratno. Kako se suverenost (nad la­stnim telesom) transformira v strastno iskanje osebne (spolne) identitete. Kako tran­sgresivna drama v dramatizirani družbi (Williams) razkriva svojo kompleksnost na nepričakovane načine, na primer z izumljanjem samosvojega telesnega jezika. Hkrati pa knjiga opozarja, da je postkomunizem v modi, politični misleci in mislice ter ak­tivistke in aktivisti, kot sta Alain Badiou in Slavoj Žižek, pa sprejeti kot nosilci bakel idealizma, ki se je takoj po padcu Berlinskega zidu leta 1989 zdel nemogoč. Karl Marx znova pomeni več kot zgolj kip, Leninovi kipi se uničujejo in postavljajo v izmenič­nem ritmu. Toda tudi nostalgija je boleča in neizprosna – in bolj ko je boleča, bolj je mamljiva za dramatizirano družbo ter gledališče. Politične avtoritete v tem sodobnem svetu žargonov pravšnjosti (Adorno) kot da ne bi obstajale več, kot da bi se raztopile v genealogijah modernega »jaza« in »biopolitiki« v vseh njenih nelagodnih posledicah. The notes for this book were written during a period of exceptional diversity in performative practices, both in aesthetic and cultural contexts. Today, performance literally permeates society – it has become its primary mode, a process unfolding within an extremely complex system of theatricalisation, both in theatrical and non-theatrical environments. Drama has long ceased to be a privileged form of representation and spectacle. It often emerges more as a collaborative, devising act than as a (mostly) individual, authorial one, just as acting is no longer solely the domain of dramatic or non-dramatic actors and performers. Audiences very quickly transform into spect-actors, simultaneously witnesses, observers, voyeurs and much more. Immersion and immersion-based experience have become the buzzwords of the day. Christopher Balme observes in his chapter “Thresholds of tolerance and the publicity of scandal” of the book The Theatrical Public Sphere, that the strong wave of protests accompanying performances in recent decades (let us recall Romeo Castellucci, Oliver Frljić and Christoph Schlingensief ) “lead us to reconsider the relationship between theatre and the public sphere from a historical perspective” and that “the idea of a self-satisfied, art-enjoying theatre public, which pursues its constitutionally protected right to view performances of a blasphemous nature in the privacy of its publicly subsidized institutions poses anew the question of the public nature of theatre” (Balme 167). A more intriguing question, however, is why the protesters, despite their obviously unlawful actions – since the rights of the audience take precedence over the right to protest against blasphemy – continued with their actions, thereby risking arrests, fines and imprisonment. Responding to the contemporary society of the spectacle and its relentless hyperproduction, scholars of theatre and performance studies – and creators themselves – have revitalised research methods in the face of new challenges and opportunities. Older research methods have been updated, and new ones have emerged – often in response to the development of postmodern, mediatised and globalised twenty-first-century culture. The book analyses the intertwining of drama, theatre, performance practices and politics, offering crucial insights for students, spectators and researchers in the performing arts, contemporary sociopolitics and cultural studies. Through selected examples, the book demonstrates how drama, theatre and performance are always political – arising in the same arena in which politics arises. It shows how in contemporary theatre and society, the personal becomes political and vice versa. How sovereignty (over one’s own body) transforms into a passionate search for personal (sexual) identity. How transgressive drama in a dramatised society (Williams) reveals its complexity in unexpected ways, for example, by inventing its own physical language. At the same time, the book shows how post-communism has become fashionable and how political thinkers and activists such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek have been embraced as torchbearers of an idealism that seemed impossible in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Karl Marx once again means more than just a statue; Vladimir Lenin’s statues are being destroyed and erected in alternating rhythms. Yet nostalgia is painful and relentless – and the more painful it is, the more seductive it becomes for a dramatised society and theatre. In this contemporary world of Adorno’s “jargon of authenticity”, political authorities seem to no longer exist, as if they have dissolved into the genealogies of the modern “self ” and “biopolitics”, with all their discomforting consequences. The book opens with a chapter that reflects on the sociology of theatre in this age of transition. Drawing on theories of late modernity and fluid societies, the discussion asks: What is the role of performance when social structures are constantly shifting? How does theatre operate in a world marked by precarity, rapid communication and the erosion of traditional ideologies? These questions set the foundation for a broader investigation into how contemporary theatre has evolved as a response to these conditions. From this sociological perspective, the following chapter traces the development of critical performance practices, starting with the neo-avant-garde movements of the mid-twentieth century and progressing through to the politically charged post-postdramatic theatre of the twenty-first century. These practices reject traditional narrative and representational structures in favour of fragmented, participatory and confrontational forms that directly engage with sociopolitical issues. The legacy of the avant-garde is not merely aesthetic – it continues to challenge dominant ideologies and institutional norms. The fourth chapter examines two case studies – the work of Romeo Castellucci and that of Oliver Frljić – as emblematic examples of the theatre of discomfort. The controversial and frequently censored works of these directors destabilise audience expectations and trigger public debate. In doing so, they push the limits of what theatre can articulate and how it can act in the public sphere. The violent reactions to their productions remind us that performance still holds the power to provoke, disturb and politicise. The next chapter explores how the desire to tell stories has transformed in Slovenian theatre from the neo-avant-garde to the post-postdramatic period. It examines how contemporary playwrights and theatre-makers continue experimenting with the redramatisation, refiguration and recharacterisation of theatrical mechanisms, while reflecting on their practice, their texts and the contexts of reception. They function as “rapsodic authors”, engaging in a direct dialogue with readers, audiences and future interpreters. The analysis situates these developments within the postdramatic and intermedial paradigm, showing how – through figures such as Dušan Jovanović, Milan Jesih, Matjaž Zupančič, Oliver Frljić, Simona Semenič, Katarina Morano, Žiga Divjak and Varja Hrvatin – Slovenian drama and theatre have moved from “absolute drama” towards non-hierarchical yet cohesive intertextual and intermedial structures. Dialogue, once the core of dramatic writing, has become only one possible discursive mode within a rhizomatic and decentralised textual landscape. Tracing the evolution from the 1970s neo-avant-garde – inspired by Jerzy Grotowski and Richard Schechner and developed by authors such as Lado Kralj, Vlado Šav, Dušan Jovanović, and Tomaž Kralj – the sixth chapter emphasises how performative processes and collective creation replaced traditional mimetic representation. Performances such as Pupilija, papa Pupilo pa Pupilčki (Pupilja, Papa Pupilo and the Pupilčeks), Spomenik G (Monument G), Igrajte tumor v glavi (Play a Tumour in the Head), Limite (Limits) and Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience), as well as Dragan Živadinov’s ritual projects of the 1990s, illustrate this shift from representation to presentation and the construction of new forms of theatrical fiction. Finally, these aesthetic and theoretical changes are contextualised within what Alain Badiou calls the “century of unrest” and set in dialogue with Derrida’s critique of logocentrism. The dominance of the visual (ocularcentrism) and the performative turn destabilised the traditional position of the dramatic author. The chapter also attributes this shift as bringing the “crisis of the playwright” to an end, fulfilling Antoine Vitez’s idea that theatre can be made from anything. Central to this exploration is the deconstruction of the binary between representation and presentation – a key conceptual shift that has defined much of contemporary theatre since the neo-avant-garde. The book highlights how post-millennial theatre has embraced immediacy, embodiment, political agency and presence as counter strategies to mediatised and commodified culture. This shift not only redefines aesthetics but also repositions the spectator as an active participant in meaning-making. The book then turns its attention to regional perspectives, focusing on Trieste, Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade – cities situated between the periphery and the centre of European cultural flows. By examining the unique historical and political conditions of these urban contexts, the book uncovers how historical avant-gardes, retro-avantgardes and post-Yugoslav performance practices have contributed to a dynamic and politically resonant theatre culture. A dedicated chapter explores brutalist theatrical techniques, tracing a lineage from Sarah Kane’s raw emotional intensity to the provocative strategies of Simona Semenič, Anja Hilling, Milena Marković and Oliver Frljić, who use radical dramaturgy to confront violence, trauma and marginalisation. As theatre-making continues to evolve, the book considers the shift from directorial to compositional practices: the move towards collective authorship, process-based creation and the de-centring of hierarchical production models. This reflects a broader transformation in how we think about authorship, structure and the role of the audience. The book explores how new forms of expression, relationality and political engagement emerge from processes of constructing and deconstructing – both at the level of artistic form and within the relationships between creators, audiences and the broader social structures. By analysing the creative methods of key twentieth- and twenty-first-century theatre reformers – Antonin Artaud, Richard Schechner, Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine – alongside contemporary practitioners such as Armando Punzo, Oliver Frljić Romeo Castelucci and the collective She She Pop, the book highlights their shared effort to transcend traditional dramaturgical codes. Through the act of assemblage, theatre becomes a space where meaning and understanding of the world are co-created, generating new forms of the aesthetic and ethical exchange between self and community, between individual and society. A key focus is also on how contemporary theatre responds to colonial and neocolonial structures of power. Through subversive performative strategies and deconstructive methods, these artists challenge dominant narratives not only thematically but also formally, revealing intricate interconnections between aesthetics, politics and identity. The book thus situates theatre as a critical, participatory practice that continuously reconfigures social and artistic relations. Finally, the author examines how key concepts in performance studies – such as liveness, embodiment and political agency – have been reinterpreted and reappropriated in European (post)socialist journals and cultural periodicals. These discursive spaces not only reflect ideological shifts but actively participate in shaping the critical vocabulary of performance in post-communist contexts. Throughout the book, the analysis is underpinned by a commitment to rethinking methods of research in theatre and performance studies. It engages with philosophical, procedural and practical perspectives that challenge rigid binaries between theory and practice, intellect and emotion, and embodiment and reflection. Echoing thinkers like Marx, Gramsci, Althusser, Eagleton, Jameson and Žižek, the book insists that no approach to art, including theatre, is free from ideology. Even the most experimental or abstract practices remain situated within broader political and ideological structures. As Baz Kershaw points out, a dramatised and theatricalised society fosters awareness of culture as a construct; it places the political and economic forces that stimulated this construction at the centre of an unstable society of performance. When democracy and capitalism converge, performance gains power – or at least the illusion of power – “because multiparty democracy continually weaves staged contest into the fabric of society. Especially in highly mediatised societies, performance becomes the key factor of negotiations of authority and power” (Kershaw 206). Naturally, the author is also interested in what happens to “drama” in the conventional sense of the word in a dramatised and theatricalised society of spectacle, meaning dramatic texts and their stagings as part of performing social norms and the transgression of those norms. How, as Raymond Williams wrote in his seminal essay “Drama in a Dramatized Society”, “we live in a society which is at once more mobile and more complex, and therefore, in some crucial respects, relatively more unknownable, relatively more opaque than most societies of the past, and yet which is also more insistently pressuring, penetrating and even determining” (Williams 14). The fact is, continuing his argument, that despite the apparent retreat of classical dramatic manifestations of traditional drama, “presentation, representation, signification” remain at the heart of both drama and society: “Drama broke from fixed signs, established its permanent distance from myth and ritual and from the hierarchical figures and processions of state,” yet it has also maintained its presence beyond the theatricality of the public sphere as “a more serious, more effective, more deeply rooted drama: the dramatization of consciousness itself.” (Williams 17–18) In this, the book attempts to critically examine research methods and enrich them through dialogue with philosophical, procedural and practical reflections on creative processes that resist unproductive dichotomies and rigid binaries – those that separate embodiment and intuition from intellectual practices, emotional experiences, and ways of knowing. At the same time, one is aware that even in theoretical approaches to art, there is nothing that can entirely escape ideology. Not even art, although its performativity and polysemy seem to give it some advantage over other discursive modes of speech. Therefore, by analogy with Terry Eagleton and his analysis of literary theory, one can also say of performance studies that, just as “criticism is not an innocent discipline, and never has been” (17), performance studies too always privilege certain critical practices – and even when they attempt to avoid modern ideologies, they – often unconsciously – reveal a dependence on them. In a time when the global climate crisis, the resurgence of authoritarian politics, and the erosion of public discourse demand new forms of cultural and political engagement, the book argues for a renewed role for theatre – not just as entertainment but as a space of resistance, reflection and transformation. Through this lens, performance becomes not only a mirror of society but a tool for imagining and enacting change. As we face the challenges of the twenty-first century, theatre can and must become a site of eco-rationality, critical inquiry and collective imagination. This is also where the book’s ecological horizon comes into view. Last, though not least, we must also ask how, and to what extent, theatre – as part of “culture,” which modernism positioned in opposition to “nature” – can offer provocative methods of theatre-making and research that could lead towards such eco-rationality. How can it encourage alternative ways of thinking about theatre and creation through critical scholarly engagement, which seems especially urgent in these turbulent times? sociologija gledališča drama uprizoritvene prakse uprizarjanje politika politični vidik kulturni vidik družbeni vidik dramatizirana družba družbena gibanja študije primerov gledališče teorija 20.-21. stoletje družba spektakla theatre performative practices society of the spectacle politics sociology of theatre true false true Založba Univerze v Ljubljani Slovenski jezik Angleški jezik Neznano 2026-03-23 09:40:50 2026-03-27 15:29:51 2026-09-07 14:42:51 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 Ljubljana 2026 Ljubljana 213 str. 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 792.01"19/20" 978-961-297-786-3 10.4312/9789612977863 270359299 Gledalisce_v_dramatizirani_druzbi_tekoce_moderne_knjiga.pdf Gledalisce_v_dramatizirani_druzbi_tekoce_moderne_knjiga.pdf 1 76048886EBF4032D15FD3AB495511B49 c762496ae0230d36188fdd8b69b01303e25f4faa11f9e34108cf5687902c0e06 f28684bd-2693-11f1-b0ab-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=231085 https://ebooks.uni-lj.si/ZalozbaUL/catalog/book/892 1 47e177ba-29e9-11f1-b0ab-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=231503 Akademija za gledališče, radio, film in televizijo Filozofska fakulteta 0 0 0