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Dária Fehérová (SK)
 

The „Real“ Contemporary Drama – Always Looking Back (In Anger)?

20 years after The Velvet Revolution is concidered to be a great anniversary of freedom in our countries. Nevertheless, I myself belong to the group of people who were born in the 80-ies and do not actually remember anything from that period. So not only in the everyday life, but also in the theatre I am free of any memories about what was and what was not allowed and without a „post-socialistic syndrome“ the generation of my parents (and even my sister’s generation) suffers from.

So there is a generation of students, young critics, directors and playwrights, who are not directly influenced by anything connected with communism. We are those, who sometimes say: „Come on, it’s 20 years over, what do you still need to analyze?“ These are the creators who try to reflect actual, contemporary problems that are part of their lives; they don’t look back anymore.

Certain generation of young playwrights still reflects on communism, but their look is different and more or less mediate (meaning not first-hand). Therefore they use much more irony than drama. Or, they let go entirely of the syndrome of the revolution and created their own, original styles, I daresay unique not only in terms of Slovakia but also abroad. A great disadvantage of these plays lies in their incapabilty to be transformed into any other country, or any other language, because they are very site specific. On the other hand, isn’t this a certain post-comunistic syndrome? Is it possible to erase or somehow forget this part of our history, even if we never actually lived it?