Abstract
The following chapter outlines an approach to the adaptation of The Island that structures the performance as simultaneous moments of tension. Tension is not expressed in dramatic action but stems from the characters’ existential anguish. The aim of this chapter is not to provide a detailed and final proposal for the performance but to test the possibilities of applying the theoretical concepts and theories discussed earlier. Specifically, I will explore how predications shape the stage configurations of the performance.
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Notes
- 1.
“‘The gigantic shadows of fascism and Stalinism’ darkened all the possible horizons of the postwar period” (Foucault qtd. in Toole 1998, p. 135).
- 2.
My translation of the quoted sections.
- 3.
In the play Refugees by Zlatko Topčić, the stage directions describe the role of the character narrator Pehlivan [tightrope walker, acrobat]: “Lights go off, and we again see only Pehlivan on the stage. He guides us through the story and the stage space. We are in a different place, an inn, where the two of them [the characters Aziz and Abaz] are looking at the bottom of their glasses. Pehlivan introduces the characters by putting his hand on the shoulder of the one, then the other” (Topčić 2000, p. 781). Pehlivan plays a similar role to that of the Stage Manager in the play Our Town (1938) by Thornton Wilder.
- 4.
Pfister demonstrates that in the modern drama this request is violated in various ways. In the eighteenth century, the normative call for time-space unity began to be violated. Different locales and continuous and noncontinuous successions of episodes are represented on stage. Thus, the request for the permanence of locale and time continuity is disregarded. The space-time discontinuity implies the narrative function, which in drama, unlike in epic forms, is implicit and not explicit. Drama establishes either open or closed time-space structures that do not necessarily coincide (Pfister 1988, pp. 250–252).
- 5.
According to Souriau, everything in theatre is magnified and exaggerated. “Tout ce qui entre dans cette boite, puis en sort, fait partie, entre cette entrée et cette sortie, de l’univers de l’oeuvre, mais sous une forme lourdement, grossièrement matérielle et concrète” (Souriau 1950, p. 18).
- 6.
All quoted sections and further in the text are taken from the English translation of The Island.
- 7.
In the novel, Katarina plays Chopin. In the performance, she is reviving her youth when she was playing in a punk band, which would change the time frame of the novel, published in 1974 to situate Katarina in the Yugoslav punk scene of the 1980s.
- 8.
Djordjevic isolated the five speech constants that are indispensable elements of every utterance: intonation, intensity, loudness, tempo, and timbre. Each utterance must have one dominant speech constant. Only intonation and intensity can perform a dominant role (Djordjević 1981).
- 9.
Such a scenic realisation conveys the meaning of the narrative discourse that defines the communicative situation: “The sea is rough, beating against the rocks, smashing itself into powerful jets and millions of drops. It will smash him too, the raging water, like hammer and scissors, will shred him to bits, he will end up smashed and torn on a sharp rock, the sea will absorb him into itself, and neither of them will ever eat fish again … She would arrange a beautiful funeral for him, though he’d be missing if the sea didn’t return him …” (Selimović 1983, pp. 7–8).
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Garić-Komnenić, S. (2024). The Island as Theatre Discourse. In: Bosnian Literary Adaptations on Stage and Screen. Adaptation in Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47134-6_6
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