Monodramatic Strategies of Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Play “Our Class”

Abstract

Janna Bortnik. Monodramatic Strategies of Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Play “Our Class”. The article examines the features of modern Polish monodrama and monodramatic strategies of modern Polish dramaturgy on the example of Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s play “Our Class”. The poetics of monodramatic character in modern Polish dramaturgy are characterized by the following characteristics: the plays acquire the characteristics of the “brain drama” of the sole subject of action caused by the crisis of mentality; the subject is creating, describing, exploring different images of his own divided consciousness, embodied by many characters but manifesting as different voices of the same subject; the main form of play is a monologue (characters rarely engage in dialogue, tell stories, take on the role of narrator, in dialogue, the characters turn to the audience, or themselves); the authors realize existential themes and problems, identify the person alone with the hostile and unjust world in a state of choice; realize the conflict of “collision with oneself as with another”, transferring it to the level of consciousness of the reader / viewer; decisive in constructing the plot is a metonymic-associative retrospection (the appeal of the actors to the past, storytelling). The plot of the play is dominated by the cyclical component and the chronotope of the object; in the cycles of plot-building significance the motives-associations of the characters, which are formed by their memoirs-narratives, are realized; the main form of content is a confession / parody of confession.