Sports Play
Produced by Berislav Juraic
“A marathon effort lifted by humour… could be just the ticket…playfully barbed staging…cutting humour and inspired set design…” The Times
“This is an acutely intelligent rendering of an important bit of literature…” Andrew Haydon, Postcards from the Gods
Sports Play (written in 1998) is a post-dramatic text that explores the marketing and sale of the human body and of emotions in sport. Jelinek questions contemporary society’s obsession with fitness and body image and rejects the romanticized notion of sport as portrayed in today’s media. She considers sport as a mass phenomenon and as a medium for chauvinism and fanaticism – sport as war. At the same time this is one of Jelinek’s most personal plays in which she styles herself as “Elfie Electra” and mixes anger with self-irony.
Elfriede Jelinek (b. 20101946) is an Austrian writer. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004 for her ‘musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power’. Ein Sportstück (Sports Play) premiered at the Burgtheater, Vienna in 1998.
http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/36768/elfriede-jelinek-game-on
30th July- 4th August, 7.30pm
£12/10
Recommended for ages 16+
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