The East-West Map: The perception of Slovenian post-dramatic theatre in the East and the West

Tomaž Toporišič

The paper maps the specificity of the reception of Slovenian post-dramatic theatre production in the East (especially in the republics of Yugoslavia) and in the West (especially in Western Europe) and examines how these practices broke through the national frameworks and embedded themselves in intercultural exchange. It also deconstructs the constructs of post-socialist art, which originated in contact with the two perspectives of East and West, as illustrated by examples of theatre phenomena from the 1970s until today: Pekarna Theatre, KPGT, Mladinsko Theatre, NSK, Tomaž Pandur. The aim is to sketch out the map of artistic, production, festival, critical and theoretical networking which arose between the East and the West and often produced diametrically opposed readings of Slovenian theatre.

Tomaž Toporišič, PhD is a dramaturg, translator, theatre theoretician and critic. His primary research interests are contemporary performing arts and literature, especially the interaction between the two fields. In 1995 he co-founded the Exodos Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts and, from 1997 to 2003, was the artistic director of the Mladinsko Theatre. He has published numerous papers and four books on contemporary plays, theatre and performing arts. Currently he is a dramaturg of the Mladinsko Theatre in Ljubljana. As an assistant professor, he teaches the sociology of theatre at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana and semiotics of culture in the Cultural Studies Programme at the University of Primorska in Koper.