The Process of Revisiting the Classics in Matei Vișniec’s Theatre. Or About the Fragility of Seagulls in Canonical Drama

Abstract

Dramatic rewritings—adaptations, updates, additions and hybridizations of genres—have the role of dynamizing the literary substrate and framework, often configuring a bridge between history events or episodes through which a society passes across eras. Matei Vișniec deconstructs and recomposes Shakespearean or Chekhovian characters, reworks the material of classical authors’ plays in a new form on a seemingly improvised frame, contextualising both hypotext and hypertext. Through these returns, a constant dialogue with memory is operated, with the revitalization and remembrance of important moments in the becoming of a culture, a theatre or an artist. Textual improvisations also show themselves as a way of productive reception. Our analysis1 will focus on texts that go through the process of rewriting the classics of universal literature, from The Chekhov Machinery, to Richard III Will Not Take Place or Scenes from the Life of Meyerhold and Why Hecuba—these are plays that revisit texts and characters, melting them into the mould of the present with tragi-comic, grotesque, derisory accents. In a perspective beyond spatial and temporal landmarks, the playwright creates a palimpsest from fragments about humanity across eras, about the great errors West to East of Europe, and themes that cross literary, theatrical and creative borders.