Theatre
Veliki briljantni valček
Not translated into English
Drago Jančar · 1985
Synopsis
Simon Veber, a historian, is forcibly committed after a restless night to an institution whose motto is that freedom liberates, and which sets out to re-educate those who disturb order. Volodja, a brutal orderly, is tasked with transforming him, by an accelerated procedure, into a Polish insurgent named Drohojowski, under the doctor's eye; music, he assures him, uplifts man. Around him, other inmates undergo the same treatment: the musician Emerik, the painter Ljubica, the rebel Rajko, a religious fanatic.
Context
The play, in three acts, was written shortly before the political changes that led Slovenia to independence; it premiered in 1985 at the National Theatre in Ljubljana, then two days later in Maribor. The hospital stands for life in a totalitarian state, and the play asks why free and intelligent men submit to an authority that wants to destroy them, without giving an answer. A study from the University of Łódź reads it as a grotesque in waltz rhythm.
Who it is for
A grotesque play in three acts, which reads as well as it performs; it has existed in French since 2007.
Prizes and reception
Revived in 2012 by the theatres of Ljubljana and Maribor, in a production by Diego de Brea, for the European Capital of Culture.