How is it still possible to affirm writing a dramatic/play text in 2022? After the postdramatic and after the ‘no-longer-dramatic’ texts and after the ‘rise of the novel’? Playtexts, performance texts, dramatic texts always coming in as ‘secondary’ to the poetry and the prose, always existing in-between the concepts, in-between the worlds: literature and theater; writing and performing, speaking and doing; words and images. And yet they remain resistant and persistent and present themselves as endless fields for artistic exploration and expression.

The course aims to enable students to critically reflect on their working modalities as well as to analyze the broader field of artistic and textual production within which their own conditions of production are shaped.

While consulting several contemporary practical examples with a special focus on the new writing for the theater in the post-Yugoslav countries, as well as theoretical texts from the Performing Literatures Volume of Performance Research Journal, we will try to conceptualize, analyze and write play texts which not only mirror and fit contemporary performing, staging, and theatrical practice, but possibly also precede it.

presence, an outline of the text, author’s statement