Original scientific paper

DOUBLE CODING FOLK THEATRE. METATHEATRICAL STRATEGIES IN MATE MATIŠIĆ’S WAX FIGURES (LJUDI OD VOSKA)

Marina Protrka Štimec

Abstract

The kind of consensus among critics that the field of popular/rural/folk functions as a reference in Mate Matišić’s dramas didn’t lead to their connection to folk theatre, mainly because of the widespread opinion considering this genre as oversimplified, shallow or even retrograde. Apart from this, his attitude toward exposing paradoxes of writing that, as L. Hutcheon claims, makes us »aware of both the limits and the powers of representation« is genuinly postmodern. Being »both deconstructively critical and constructively creative«, in a way that Hutcheon describes it, Mate Matišić’s play Wax Figures (Ljudi od voska) could be read as a postmodern reuse of folk theatre conventions: sentimentality, bipolar narration, specific oral songs (ganga), local idiom of »collective of little people« and cyclic festive temporality, social critique and engagement. In this play they are used as a way of framing and a stage for writing and performing as an action for itself. By performing on the scene an authorial writing, a stage drama and/or psychoanalytical session Matišić introduces postmodern strategies that combine the diegetic shift with the mimeticall aspect of grotesque, parody and transgression in play which are all linked to politics of meaning and responsibility.

Keywords

Mate Matišić; Ljudi od voska (Wax Figures); theatre; folk; performance; authorship; postmodernism

Hrčak ID:

200136

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/200136

Publication date:

9.5.2018.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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