274 UDK 821.163.6.09-2“1966/1986“ DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2023-1/274-291 Izhodišče razprave je idejna in tematsko-motivna (torej znotrajliterarna) analiza besedil iz zbornika Generator:: za proizvodnjo poljubnega števila dramskih kompleksov: slovenski eksperimentalni dramski in uprizoritveni teksti iz obdobja modernizma (1966–1986). Namen prispevka je osvetliti izbrana besedila skozi perspektivo, ki mi je med njihovim prebiranjem v Generatorju umanjkala; gre za žensko perspektivo, pravzaprav za njeno odsotnost. Prispevek se ukvarja s posledicami, ki jih lahko ima odsotnost ozaveščenosti glede manka ženske perspektive v slovenski dramatiki na reprezentacijo žensk in ženskosti, zlasti če gre za zabrisan učinek patriarhalne ideologije, ki se prikazuje kot univerzalna in merodajna izkušnja, čeprav so izkušnje drugih spolov iz nje izključene. Namen prispevka je raziskati reprezentacije žensk(osti) v slovenski dramatiki in ozavestiti morebitno učinkovanje patriarhalne ideologije ter njene posledice z idejno, tematsko in motivno analizo samih dramskih besedil. Pri tem se posebej posvetim razliki med moško in (maloštevilno) žensko dramsko pisavo. Besedila iz Generatorja vzamem zgolj kot študijo primera, da bi prikazala obstoj določenih simptomov v slovenski (eksperimentalni) dramatiki v danem časovnem obdobju (1966–1986). Razlike v reprezentaciji žensk(osti) na kratko osvetlim, razvojno gledano, tudi širše, s časovne distance, in sicer prek primerjalne analize s sodobno žensko dramsko pisavo, predvsem z dramoletom Nemi lik Simone Hamer (2010). Ključne besede: slovenska dramatika, modernizem, eksperiment, ženska pisava, dramatičarke, reprezentacija žensk, ženskost Nika Leskovšek je doktorirala iz študijev scenskih umetnosti na Akademiji za gledališče, radio, film in televizijo Univerze v Ljubljani. Deluje kot raziskovalka, gledališka kritičarka in dramaturginja. Bila je selektorica in članica žirij več slovenskih gledaliških festivalov. Na UL AGRFT je izvoljena v naziv asistentka-raziskovalka za habilitacijsko področje dramaturgije in študijev scenskih umetnosti. nika.leskovsek@agrft.uni-lj.si 275 Nemi liki: dramatičarke, ženska pisava in reprezentacija žensk(osti) v slovenskem dramskem eksperimentu (1966–1986) Nika Leskovšek Akademija za gledališče, radio, film in televizijo, Univerza v Ljubljani Predgovor in poskus samokritike 1 Odsotnost ženskih dramatičark v zgodovini slovenske dramatike (1966–1986) Izhodišče za pričujoči prispevek 2 je bil zbornik Generator:: za proizvodnjo poljubnega števila dramskih kompleksov. In sicer me je k pisanju razprave na temo reprezentacije žensk(osti), ki v slovenski dramatiki (tega obdobja) ironično poteka skorajda brez ženske perspektive, spodbudila naslednja misel iz uvodnika urednika zbornika Blaža Lukana: V dramah in uprizoritvenih tekstih iz antologije namreč lahko prepoznavamo tematsko in jezikovno imaginacijo, resničen dramskoeksperimentalni izbruh, ki ga lahko – vsaj tak je videz – po šestdesetih in sedemdesetih letih v slovenski dramatiki identificiramo šele ali spet po letu 2000, s pojavom vrste izrazitih postdramskih imen zdaj že srednje in mlajše generacije piscev, točneje pisk (npr. Simona Semenič, Simona Hamer, Iza Strehar, Varja Hrvatin). Posebej opozarjam na pojav pisk […], ki je v slovenski dramatiki novost, saj so bile desetletja v manjšini; v knjigo so uvrščena le tri imena, tudi v širšem izboru jih veliko več ni bilo. (Lukan 27) Od tridesetih avtorjev oz. umetniških kolektivov, ki reprezentirajo obdobje med letoma 1966 in 1986, so v zbornik Generator umeščena tri ženska imena: Svetlana 1 Predgovor oz. »poskus samokritike« sem razvila v odziv na podlagi diskusijskih komentarjev na moj prispevek »Zakon III. branje« za Amfiteatrov znanstveni simpozij »Gledališki eksperiment na Slovenskem (1966–1986) in njegovi odmevi«. Knjiga oz. zbornik Generator je bil tudi miselno izhodišče pričujoče konference za premislek o eksperimentalni in slovenski dramatiki. Tukaj objavljena verzija razprave je predelana in nadgrajena v samostojno znanstveno in argumentativno podkrepljeno obliko. »Poskus samokritike« sicer izvira iz Nietzschejevega uvoda k Rojstvu tragedije iz duha glasbe (dostopen v slovenskem prevodu (1995)), v katerem Nietzsche (samo)kritično pokomentira, ovrednoti in tudi časovno umesti svoje delo 15 let po njegovem nastanku. 2 Raziskava Nike Leskovšek (šifra raziskovalke 39188) je vključena v raziskovalni program »Gledališke in medumetnostne raziskave« (P6–0376), ki ga (so)financira Javna agencija za raziskovalno dejavnost Republike Slovenije iz državnega proračuna. 276 Makarovič, Ifigenija Zagoričnik in Brina Švigelj, 3 kar je približno desetina oziroma deset odstotkov. To kaže na izrazito prevlado moških dramatikov. 4 Lukanov komentar sugerira, da sta bila neenakovredno razmerje med spoloma in pomanjkljiva zastopanost dramatičark v javnosti tudi realno stanje tistega časa. Vprašanje je, ali res lahko govorimo o dejanskem stanju ali pa gre pri pomanjkljivi zastopanosti dramatičark v zgodovini slovenske dramatike prej za posledico nereflektiranih učinkov patriarhalne ideologije? V razpravi tako najprej pokažem statistično porazdeljenost in reprezentacijo spolov na področju slovenske dramatike, vendar podatke o odsotnosti ženskih avtoric (pa tudi o odsotnosti ženske perspektive pisanja in ženske reprezentacije v javnosti) umestim v družbeno-časovni kontinuum in kontekst obdobja 1966–1986, da bi pojasnila, kako je do tega prišlo. Odsotnost raziskovanja vzrokov za »dejansko stanje« namreč zakriva delovanje (patriarhalne) ideologije in omogoča njeno nadaljnjo reprodukcijo. Nadalje v prispevku dokazujem, da tovrstna neenakopravna zastopanost spolov ni nedolžna. Historično pomanjkanje zastopanosti ženskih avtoric in ženske pisave v polju slovenske dramatike pomembno vpliva na reprezentacijo žensk(osti), ki jo ustvarjajo in reproducirajo znotraj slovenske dramske pisave. Slednjo – zgodovinsko gledano – večinoma zastopajo moški dramatiki, ti pa v dramski pisavi (navadno) zastopajo tudi moško perspektivo in ustvarjajo moško dramsko pisavo. 5 V prispevku pokažem, kakšna je reprezentacija žensk(osti) v moški dramski pisavi tega obdobja na primeru besedil iz zbornika Generator – gre za slovenska eksperimentalna dramska besedila in načeloma krajše uprizoritvene tekste iz obdobja modernizma (1966–1986). Nato pokažem razlike med žensko in moško dramsko pisavo v besedilih, zbranih v isti publikaciji – zlasti torej opozorim na razliko v reprezentaciji žensk(osti) pri obeh pisavah: na način koncipiranja ženskih likov, (stereo)tipizacijo, oblikovanje podobe žensk(osti), kakšno miselnost, idejo in ideologijo, reproducira delo … V prispevku pokažem na potrebo po družbeni in časovni umeščenosti interpretacije tiste reprezentacije žensk(osti), ki se je, historično gledano, množično in nereflektirano reproducirala v slovenski dramatiki kot »dejansko« oz. »objektivno stanje«. Razprava temelji na idejni in tematsko-motivni analizi dramskih besedil, torej na znotrajliterarni metodi raziskovanja dramatike, prej njenem »close readingu«. Za konec opravim še primerjalno analizo z dramskimi besedili iz sodobnosti, 3 Ifigenija Zagoričnik je poznana tudi pod imenom Ifigenija Zagoričnik Simonović; Brina Švigelj pa tudi kot Brina Švigelj Mérat oz. Brina Svit, kar obenem priča o podvrženosti ženskih imen določenim dogovornim, a vendarle družbeno spodbujenim spremembam, ki jim moška imena tega časa v veliki večini niso podvržena. 4 Lektorja/-ico prosim, naj ne popravlja zanj/-o navidezne redundance pri izrazih »moški dramatik« in »ženska dramatičarka«, saj dejstvo izbire moškega spola kot gramatično dominantnega v slovenščini postavlja moški spol kot merodajen in univerzalen ter zabriše dejstvo izključenosti preostalih spolov iz govorne situacije. Poleg tega po Criado Perez (Nevidne) psihološko vpliva na izkušnjo dojemanja izključenosti žensk iz govorne situacije. 5 Ženskosti (pa tudi moškosti) oziroma spola ne dojemam kot biološke, pač pa kot fluidno performativno kategorijo (po Judith Butler: Težave s spolom: feminizem in subverzija identitete). Čeprav postane to zadnje v polnem pomenu in razvoju politik spola v dramskih besedilih povsem očitno šele v kasnejšem obdobju, pri Zakonu III. branje, pred tem (v Generatorju) je prej izjema. 277 zlasti z vidika reprezentacije žensk(osti), da bi utrdila differentio specifico besedil modernizma, ki se mi trenutno kažejo skozi odsotnost ženske perspektive in učinek vladavine patriarhalne ideologije. Manko ženskih dramatičark Odsotnost javno evidentiranih dramatičark, omenjena v primeru zbornika Generator (Lukan 27), v slovenski dramatiki iz obdobja 1966–1986 potrdi tudi analiza podatkov iz drugih virov, denimo evidentiranih tekstov, ki so bili prijavljeni za nagrado Slavka Gruma. Grumova nagrada (ustanovljena 1978 in prvič podeljena 1979) je najvišje priznanje v polju slovenske dramatike; podeljena je letno za najboljše dramsko besedilo. Analiza podatkov za prvih dvajset let podeljevanja nagrade (podatki so iz brošure, izdane ob 40-letnici Tedna slovenske drame – TSD) mi razkrije naslednje stanje: v prvem desetletju obstoja Grumove nagrade (1979–1988) prijave ne presežejo pet prijavljenih avtoric na posamezno leto. Situacija je nespremenjena oz. po številu avtoric v drugem desetletju (1989–1998) celo slabša; število prijavljenih dramatičark upada. Leta 1991 je tako prijavljena samo ena avtorica, leta 1992 nobena; leta 1993 je prvič izjemoma prijavljenih šest avtoric, nato ponovno sledi upad. Pri tem se imena prijavljenih avtoric večinoma ponavljajo: Svetlana Makarovič, Alenka Goljevšček, Polonca Kovač, Jana Kolarič, Zlata Volarič, Alja Tkačev, Brina Švigelj, Vera Remic Jager, Jelena Sitar, Ivanka Hergold, Jana Milčinski, Zora Tavčar, Bina Štampe Žmavc (po enkrat so prijavljene še Anka Kolenc, Mateja Mahnič, Marička Cilenšek, Regina Kralj …) (gl. Drnovšček, Poštrak). Situacija se začne nekoliko spreminjati šele v tretjem desetletju obstoja nagrade (1999–2008), točneje po letu 2001, ko je prijavljenih sedem avtoric, 6 nato leta 2005 število prijav avtoric zraste na 11 in leta 2007 na rekordnih 15. Leto 2007 štejem za prelomno v več smislih. Grumovo nagrado 1. aprila 2007 prvič v zgodovini TSD po 29 letih podeljevanja podelijo ženski avtorici, in sicer Dragici Potočnjak za besedilo Za naše mlade dame. Situacija se zdi še slabša pri nagradi za žlahtno komedijsko pero (torej za žanrsko določeno dramsko besedilo), ki jo podeljujejo na festivalu Dnevi komedije v Celju od leta 1998 (vendar ne vsako leto). Tu ženska avtorica prejme nagrado prvič (in doslej tudi edinič) šele leta 2018; nagrada gre Izi Strehar za Vsak glas šteje (»Nagrade festivala Dnevi komedije«). Pomanjkljiva zastopanost ženskih avtoric v raziskovanem obdobju se potrdi tako pri evidenci oz. številu prijavljenih besedil kot pri uspešnosti prodora v nagrajevalne mehanizme. Situacija se začne spreminjati šele v tretjem desetletju obstoja Grumove nagrade (1999–2008). 6 Upoštevala sem samostojna dela ženskih avtoric, navajam število prijavljenih avtoric. Število prijavljenih besedil (avtoric) je pogosto višje, saj so se avtorji (ne glede na spol) pogosto prijavljali z več različnimi besedili. 278 Zakaj (pri prijavah za Grumovo nagrado) ni ženskih dramatičark? Za bolj celostno sliko vzrokov za majhno število dramatičark, prijavljenih na natečaj za Grumovo nagrado, in za majhno število v javnosti uradno evidentiranih dramatičark v sedemdesetih, osemdesetih in devetdesetih letih je treba upoštevati dodatne dejavnike in umeščenost v časovni in družbeni kontekst. Na delu so kompleksnejši procesi, kot jih kaže zgolj statistika. Najprej je tu dejstvo, da je bila tri- do štiričlanska žirija, ki je ocenjevala prijavljena besedila, do leta 1995 sestavljena izključno iz moških članov (torej v vseh prvih 17 letih obstoja nagrade). Leta 1995 vstopi v tričlansko žirijo Ignacija Fridl kot prva in edina ženska, šele leta 1999 sta v petčlanski žiriji prvič dve žirantki: Marinka Poštrak in Tea Štoka. Drugo dejstvo je, da je marsikatera avtorica ustvarjala mladinsko literaturo, besedila ali pesmi, namenjene otrokom oz. mlajšemu občinstvu, po poklicu so bile tudi igralke, lutkarice, mladinske pisateljice ipd., ki so s prijavo iskale tudi potrditev, legitimacijo in profesionalizacijo določenih žanrov in tipov dramatike (nekaterih namenjenih tudi mlajši publiki). To je prvi pokazatelj, da je imela ženska pisava svoje teme in posebnosti, za katere v (moški) žiriji tistega časa ni bilo posluha. 7 Moška prevlada, celo monopol na področju slovenske dramatike (tako po številu na natečaje prijavljenih dramatikov kot po strokovnem obvladovanju polja), percepcija dramatika kot moškega poklica, pomanjkanje posluha za določene (ženske) teme in avtoricam ustvarjalkam nasploh nenaklonjen položaj v družbi (večinoma so bile žene in matere, ki jim je za ustvarjanje zmanjkovalo časa) so dejavniki, ki so avtorice odvračali od prijav ali celo samega ustvarjanja. 8 Pokazatelj tega je tudi upad števila prijavljenih dramatičark v drugem desetletju obstoja nagrade, kar kaže na določeno nezaupanje v institucionalne nagrajevalne mehanizme s strani avtoric. Na to, da spol ni igral nevtralne ali zanemarljive vloge pri prijavah in nagradah, kaže tudi nenaden porast anonimnih prijav oz. prijav pod šifro. Da ne gre za golo prikritje identitete, pač pa je ta odločitev motivirana po spolu, kaže podatek, da se leta 2004 na tečaj ni prijavila nobena avtorica, bilo pa je vsaj deset prijav z identiteto pod šifro (recimo: »Šifra Janezek«, »Šifra Lojze« ali pa kar anonimni avtor). 9 Kljub načeloma anonimnemu procesu izbora 10 je porast anonimnih oziroma dodatno šifriranih prijav 7 Trenutno je prijava na Grumovo nagrado omejena zgolj na besedila za odraslo občinstvo. 8 S historičnim pomanjkanjem (slovenskih) ženskih ustvarjalk na področju literature, sicer največ na področju romana oz. pripovedništva, in z razlogi zanj se je sicer precej ukvarjala Silvija Borovnik v Pišejo ženske drugače? (1995), na več mestih pa tudi Katja Mihurko Poniž, denimo Zapisano z njenim peresom: prelomi zgodnjih slovenskih književnic s paradigmo nacionalne literature (2014) in pa Od lastnega glasu do lastne sobe: literarne ustvarjalke od začetkov do modernizma (2001). 9 Edina uradno prijavljena avtorica tistega leta je sicer Martina Šiler, vendar z drugo verzijo svojega besedila Reykjavik, ki ga je prijavila že leto poprej. 10 Identiteta avtorjev je v tem obdobju podeljevanja Grumove nagrade žiriji načeloma nepoznana, saj se je ob prijavi besedila ime avtorja oddalo v ločeni kuverti, razen če ni šlo za že uprizorjeno ali javnosti znano besedilo, denimo v primeru samodejne uvrstitve nominirancev v ožjem izboru preteklega leta v tekmovanje naslednje leto. 279 opazen vsaj od leta 2001. Svojevrstno dodatno zadrego v zadevi spolne pristranskosti (angl. gender bias) pri nagrajevanju je povzročila Žanina Mirčevska leta 2009, ko se je na natečaj prijavila pod moškim psevdonimom Tomi Leskovec ter nato istega leta Grumovo nagrado tudi osvojila skupaj s Simono Semenič. Skupaj sta v tridesetih letih obstoja nagrade postali šele drugi ženski, za Potočnjakovo, ki sta prejeli Grumovo nagrado. Prevlada patriarhalnega diskurza v literaturi in literarni teoriji Na to, da ne gre za posebnost niti slovenske dramatike niti širše (slovenske literature in literarne zgodovine), kažejo sledeče analize fenomena ženske pisave. Silvija Borovnik v svoji študiji Pišejo ženske drugače?, ki se naslanja predvsem na nemško govorečo teorijo in prakso, pokaže, da gre za prevlado patriarhalnega diskurza na literarnem področju. Že Manfred Jürgensen na začetku osemdesetih let dvajsetega stoletja ugotavlja, da je »recepcija ženske literature vsaj v nemško govorečem prostoru še vedno zavezana patriarhalnemu literarnozgodovinskemu konceptu« (nav. po Borovnik 12). Sigrid Schmid Bortenschlager nato še konec osemdesetih opozarja, da je bila ženska literatura izključena iz (znanstvene) literarnozgodovinske obravnave, saj je veljala »za manjvredno, za trivialno« (nav. po Borovnik 14) – pripominjam, da bi na to področje spregledane in omalovaževane ter iz znanstvenega diskurza izključene ženske literature lahko v slovenski dramatiki, denimo, umestili tudi besedila, namenjena otrokom in mladostnikom. Renate Wiggershaus ugotavlja še pomanjkanje zastopanosti ženske literature v izborih in literarnozgodovinskih pregledih – z redko izjemo tistih del, kjer so protagonisti večidel moški, tako da se lahko žirija z njimi identificira (nav. po Borovnik 16). Borovnik navaja še pomanjkanje prevodov ženske literature v tuje jezike, kar vse pomaga k ustvarjanju in utrjevanju »splošnega vtisa, da pišejo kakovostno literaturo večinoma moški« (prav tam). Odsotnost žensk v odločevalnih mehanizmih – določanje moškega pogleda kot univerzalnega Da imata sistemska neenakost in podzastopanost ali celo odsotnost žensk odločilne posledice za življenja žensk širše, in to ne samo na področju dramatike – dodajam: to vpliva tudi na reprezentacijo žensk in ženskosti – pokaže britanska avtorica Caroline Criado Perez, ki se posveti primeru analize odsotnosti žensk v odločevalnih mehanizmih in delovni praksi. Po analogiji prikaza učinkovanja patriarhalne ideologije – kar je posredna tema tega prispevka – jih lahko postavljam v razmerje bodisi s prevlado patriarhalnega diskurza v literaturi (Borovnik 12–16) bodisi z odsotnostjo ženskih strokovnjakinj v nagrajevalnih in selektivnih mehanizmih, denimo pri Grumovi nagradi. 280 Criado Perez v svojem obsežnem raziskovalnem delu Nevidne: kako vrzeli v podatkih in raziskavah oblikujejo svet po moški meri na podlagi številnih mednarodnih statističnih podatkov iz vsakodnevnega življenja analizira, kako podzastopanost žensk v politikah moči povzroča (statistične in dejanske) vrzeli v podatkih. Ženske in njihova perspektiva so namreč navadno pomanjkljivo zastopane ali celo odsotne v posvetovalnih in odločevalnih mehanizmih, s tem pa njihov položaj ostaja spregledan, določen kot nebistven, obroben. Izključenost ženske pozicije iz odločevalnih mehanizmov in sistemov reprezentacij posledično ustvarja vtis, da je moška pozicija nevtralna, večinska, kar pomaga oblikovati in nadalje utrjevati svet po patriarhalnem merilu. Problem nastane torej, kadar sta moška perspektiva in pogled v uradnih podatkih predstavljena kot merodajna ter kot izhodišče za posploševanje in univerzalno izkušnjo. Vendar je pomembno priznati in opozarjati, da ne gre za univerzalno izkušnjo, saj je izkušnja drugih spolov iz tega izključena. 11 Na področju slovenske dramatike (vsaj med letoma 1966 in 1986) – kot je prikazano v prejšnjem poglavju – so dolgoletna izključenost ženskih predstavnic iz vrst strokovnjakov oz. odločevalnih organov pri podeljevanju Grumove nagrade, posledično pomanjkanje priznanja pomena določenih »ženskih tem« ter žanrov za razvoj slovenske dramatike pa tudi pomanjkanje podpore (nadaljnjemu) ustvarjanju ženskih avtoric in zmanjševanje njihove vidnosti v javnem prostoru prispevali k obstoju in širjenju patriarhalnega diskurza na področju dramatike. To pa pomaga utrjevati ne le prepričanje, da je kakovostna dramska pisava izključno v moški domeni (29 let brez ženske nagrajenke), pač pa omogoča tudi številčno prevlado moške dramske pisave. 12 Analiza prevlade in delovanja patriarhalne ideologije kot pomembno vzpostavlja zavedanje, da reprezentacija žensk in ženskosti, kakor se je množično reproducirala skozi večinsko moško dramsko pisavo v Sloveniji (v obdobju modernizma), ne predstavlja objektivne ali univerzalne izkušnje, saj ne vključuje izkušenj drugih spolov. Pomembno je priznavati in ozaveščati razlike med moško in žensko dramsko pisavo ter enostransko reprezentacijo žensk(osti). Poglejmo torej, kako sta reprezentirani ženska in ženskost, zlasti kot se kažeta skozi oblikovanje ženskih likov na konkretnih primerih moške pisave. Primeri moške dramske pisave na analizi besedil iz Generatorja V tem poglavju analiziram izključno tekste, ki so nastali v avtorstvu danes uveljavljenih moških dramatikov, pesnikov ali kolektivov v večinsko moškem sestavu iz zbornika Generator. 13 Analiza ženskih likov in ženskih vlog pri prvem, 11 Podoben problem politik spola predstavlja tudi uporaba moškega spola kot gramatično dominantnega. Criado Perez pokaže, da taka uporaba moškega spola ključno vpliva na našo percepcijo in dojemanje ter, denimo, na izključenost preostalih spolov iz jezikovne situacije, zato nikakor ne gre za nevtralno obliko rabe. 12 To so posredno (ironično) omogočale tudi ženske s prevzemanjem vlog njihovih žena in mater. 13 Po formalni in žanrski opredelitvi gre za hepeninge, poetizirane dramolete in serije navodil (oz. scores). 281 površinskem pregledu nekaterih naključno izbranih gledaliških tekstov mi razkrije naslednje reprezentacije žensk(osti). Primer iz prve izbrane igre. Prva podoba ženske, ki se pojavi v igri, je dama v vlogi umetniškega modela, ki pozira za akt, pri čemer »se zelo trudi, da bi posnemala znani Modiglianijev model« (Lukan, Generator 79). Ob tem je v navodilu igre eksplicitno pripisano: »Ta prizor naj v nobenem primeru ne moti ostalega dogajanja na odru« (prav tam). V taistem tekstu se med ženskimi liki pojavi še igralka, ki »ljudi, ki jim ni do športa, navdušuje za petje« (80), in pa balerina. Edini ženski liki, ki se pojavijo v tej dramski igri, so torej zasedeni v vlogah golega (slikarskega) modela, igralke, ki prepeva, in balerine. Naj opomnim, da so vsi ženski liki tudi nemi, torej niso verbalno reprezentirani (z izjemo prepevanja). V naslednjem gledališkem tekstu/dramoletu iz Generatorja ženski lik v celoti umanjka. V še naslednjem pa zasledimo tako žensko podobo: »Pojavi se gol ženski hrbet. Nanj se projicirajo gole ženske prsi. Oboje se združi v hrbet s prsmi. Hrbet miruje, dojki skačeta« (88). Podoba oziroma reprezentacija žensk, ki si jo lahko bralka/-ec izriše iz teh naključno izbranih dramskih del moške pisave iz Generatorja, je bodisi lik, ki je povečini nem, anonimen in zamenljiv, nima posebnih razločevalnih karakteristik, bodisi gre v drugo skrajnost in je reprezentacija ženske v popolnosti odsotna: ženski lik se v dramoletih sploh ne pojavi, saj liki in teme žensk(osti) niso v ospredju, avtorjev ne zanimajo, posledično pa ženski liki v teh igrah v celoti izostanejo. Ženski liki se v teh dramskih delih pojavljajo kot nezanimiva, manjkajoča, celo nepotrebna plat. V teh primerih moške pisave iz Generatorja gre poleg tega za sploščeno, senzualizirano, mestoma seksualizirano in objektivizirano podobo ženske, ki je najraje reducirana na vizualni učinek lepe zunanjosti, telesnosti, pogosto celo golote. Ženske v teh besedilih nimajo odločilnih ali aktivnih vlog, njihove vloge so raje omejene na podporno funkcijo hipnih impresij, ki naj se dogajajo nekje v ozadju za morebitno popestritev dogajanja, pri čemer pa naj raje ne motijo osrednjega dogajanja. Analiza nadaljnjih primerov reprezentacije žensk iz Generatorja tovrstno podobo in učinek le še potrjuje. Ženske se največkrat pojavljajo kot prostitutke ali (vulgarno) kar kurbe, zasedene so v vlogah seksualnega objekta, žrtve spolnega, verbalnega ali fizičnega nasilja, pogosta vloga, ki jo zasedajo, so še matere, mestoma (redkeje) nastopijo tudi kot žene pa tudi kot ljubice oziroma priležnice. Ženske se v drugih tekstih moških avtorjev iz Generatorja pojavijo še v naslednjih vlogah: Punca v vlogi žrtve (skorajšnjega) posilstva (Generator 31–6), podoben motiv se pojavi vsaj še enkrat (prav tam 241), lik »Ženska z golimi prsmi« (prav tam 52–60): »Vstopi ženska z golimi prsmi: Mleko, sveže mleko, pijte moje mleko, pijte ga, pijte samo sveže mleko, pijte samo moje mleko! Se sprehaja po sobi. Vstopi plešec. Sedeta na tla. Plešec jo poboža po prsih, nato pije njeno mleko« (59). Na nekem drugem mestu beremo: 282 »Saj vendar ne boste zanikali, da je ženska z razparanimi prsmi ali pa brez njih zanimivejša od ženske, ki je v vseh pogledih normalna« (63). Pojavi se tudi naslednji citat: »Invalid brez penisa: 'Vse kurbe pred puško! Ja, kar vse dajmo pred zid! Še prej pa tristooseminšestdeset dedcev čez njih. Naj pocrkajo prasice! In moja naj bo prva!'« (65), ali pa denimo: »MOŠKI GLAS I: Fuj pa ženska poezija! To je fakt« (258). Edina izjema, ki izstopa v pozitivnem smislu in dodobra prevetri spolna razmerja ter se že z vzdevkom oz. nadimkom poigrava s spolno identiteto, je »Andrej Rozman imenovana Roza« in njegovo/njeno besedilo »Odkar sem tajnica dvojno življenje živim (izpoved)« (prav tam 322). Določeni teksti pri igralskih vlogah upoštevajo vsaj načelno enakost med spoloma. 14 V preostalih dramskih delih iz Generatorja so podobe ženske oz. ženskih likov odsotne, s tem pa sploh umanjka reprezentacija žensk(osti) kot taka. Tam, kjer se pojavijo, je ženskih likov manj kot moških in imajo tudi manj teksta. Pri analizi so bili upoštevani vsi teksti izpod moškega peresa v zborniku, torej vseh 55 besedil (od skupno 58). Pravzaprav je zastopanost ženskih avtoric v zborniku še nižja, saj so moški avtorji povečini zastopani z več besedili. Torej lahko govorimo o petodstotni zastopanosti ženskih besedil v zborniku. Poudarjam, da so v moški pisavi ženski liki po večini nemi (tudi brezimni, anonimni). V teh dramoletih jim ni niti podeljena možnost govora, s čimer sta jim odvzeti lastna beseda in možnost artikulacije lastnega položaja in vloge. 15 Neenakopravna reprezentacija žensk – nemi liki Ne gre pozabiti podatka, da je tovrstna reprezentacija žensk in ženskosti znotraj t. i. moške pisave v tem časovnem obdobju (1968–1986), kot ravnokar analizirana v Generatorju, številčno prevladujoča. Neenakopravna zastopanost spolov in njene posledice se kažejo tudi na drugih področjih umetnosti in v javnosti nasploh. Podatke navaja denimo prispevek Maje Kač »Spominjanje žensk v javnem prostoru: 'Dokler o njih ne govorimo, jih ne spravljamo v zavest'«. Podatki, ki jih v svetovnem merilu navaja Criado Perez v svoji obsežni študiji Nevidne, niso bistveno drugačni. Podatkov konkretno za gledališče oziroma dramatiko avtorica sicer ne navaja. Vendar je iz številnih in raznolikih primerov, ki jih poda, moč sklepati, da so ženski liki v širših vsakodnevnih situacijah in tudi v umetniških medijih podzastopani, celo odsotni ali pa pogosto nemi, kar pomeni, da ne govorijo oziroma nimajo pravice do svojega glasu, in to celo, kadar je ženska v vlogi glavnega protagonista. Glede nemosti žensk in pomanjkljive (verbalne) zastopanosti žensk na področju 14 Sem bi lahko sodile, denimo, Limite Milana Jesiha, Pupilija Ferkeverk in Zaspanček Razkodranček Tomaža Kralja, Radijska igra za pet glasov Iztoka Osojnika ter Minutni dramski teksti Gledališča sester Scipion Nasice. 15 »Egist: Az bla na vrt? Vida: Ja. Egist: As vidla smrt? Vida: Ja Egist: No, po s pa lahko tih!« (Generator 316) 283 umetnosti, večinoma filma in televizije, Criado Perez ugotavlja naslednje. Z analizo spolne zastopanosti/reprezentacije likov v filmih, primernih za otroke (predvajanih med letoma 1990 in 2005), »je prišla do spoznanja, da je bilo ženskega spola samo 28 % likov, ki govorijo« (Criado Perez 28–29). 16 Nadalje analiza pokaže ne le, da imajo moški več vlog, imajo tudi dvakrat oziroma trikrat daljšo minutažo (kadar je v glavni vlogi moški lik, kar je večinoma) (prav tam). »Moškim vrh tega pripada večje število vrstic in v celoti govorijo več ko ženske; trikrat več govorijo v filmih, v katerih so protagonisti moški, ter skoraj dvakrat več v filmih z moškimi in ženskimi stranskimi vlogami« (prav tam). Podobnih podatkov, ki kažejo na neenakosti med spoloma ter potrjujejo večinsko zastopanost moških v filmih in kinematografih ter na televiziji (po prisotnosti, številčni prevladi, vidnosti in verbalni zastopanosti), je še več. Podobno (spolno) neuravnotežena situacija se kaže pri analizi spolne zastopanosti na kipih, bankovcih, celo v poročilih (radijskih in televizijskih ter časopisnih medijev) in učbenikih (prav tam). Zastopanost žensk je zgolj 24-odstotna: gre za ženske, ki jih poslušamo ali o njih beremo (radio, TV in časopis) (prav tam 30). To je podatek za svetovno raven. Podatek za Slovenijo bi znal biti še nižji. Primer iz Registra nepremične kulturne dediščine na Slovenskem po članku Maje Kač navaja podatek: od 233 kipov na Slovenskem jih je spominu žensk posvečeno le deset; 223, torej 96 odstotkov, pa moškim (Kač). Ženska pisava – razločevalne karakteristike Glede karakteristik ženske pisave – Borovnik jo sicer imenuje ženska literatura, pri čemer gre za literaturo izpod peresa ženskih avtoric – Silvija Borovnik ugotavlja, da je šele ženska pisava tista, ki pogosto izpričuje slabe pogoje dela in okoliščine, v katerih nastaja, razkrinkava zgolj navidezno enakopravnost med spoloma, načenja ženska vprašanja in je tako tesno povezana z družbenim položajem žensk (24-5). Borovnik v svoji razpravi Pišejo ženske drugače? tako ugotavlja in utrdi zavest o tematski razliki med moško in žensko pisavo: »Tematski razpon pa je gotovo tisto področje, kjer je o 'moškem' in 'ženskem' v literaturi še najlažje govoriti« (227). Pri tem se mi zdi pomembna ugotovitev Borovnik o tematski razširjenosti zadev političnega in usode naroda pri moški pisavi, medtem ko se pri ženski pisavi kaže njena povezanost s feminističnim gibanjem, bojem za emancipacijo žensk ter z osebnim oz. zasebnim, ki je politično (prav tam). Borovnik ugotavlja še, da tako ni nenavadno, da se ženska pisava oblikuje sprva kot izkustvena literatura, z veliko mero avtobiografskega in izpovednega, pri čemer pogosto (iz osebne, avtentične izkušnje s prvoosebno izpovedjo) protestira proti družbeno reproducirani patriarhalni podobi ženske ter tako vzpostavlja ženske kot subjekte (224-5). Borovnik še dodaja, da se ženska pisava pogosto zateka v prijeme humornega, absurdnega in 16 Delo Nevidne sicer temelji na medkulturni primerjalni analizi in številnih mednarodnih statističnih podatkih, ki obsegajo analize različnih vsakodnevnih življenjskih situacij. Prvotno objavljena v letu 2019, se opira na najsodobnejše (statistične) podatke in študije (slovenski prevod je izšel leta 2022 pri založbi UMco). 284 groteske ter ironije (243). Iz vsega tega je mogoče sklepati, da šele z nastopom ženske pisave pride do ozaveščanja problematike podreprezentiranosti žensk, poudarjanja specifičnosti njihove robne (ustvarjalne) pozicije ter ideološkega ustvarjanja nemosti ženske pozicije v javnosti. Navadno zaradi preprostega razloga, ker avtorjev večinsko moške pisave te teme niso zanimale, niso bile del njihove (osebne) izkušnje in niso čutili potrebe po njihovi legitimaciji. Zaradi podreprezentiranosti ženske dramske pisave izostane iz dramatike cela plejada ženskih tem, pogosto tudi vzpostavitev ženskih likov kot polnokrvnih subjektov. Razliko med moško in žensko pisave je zaznati že v maloštevilnih primerih ženske pisave iz zbornika Generator. Poglejmo primere. Primeri reprezentacije žensk(osti) v ženski dramski pisavi iz zbornika Generator V nasprotju z moško pisavo v zborniku Generator pri vseh ženskih avtoricah pridejo do besede in govora ženski liki z vsebino. Pri obeh avtoricah, Brini Švigelj in Ifigeniji Zagoričnik, zanimivo, iz klasičnega evropskega dramskega repertoarja Ofelija oz. antična kraljica Klitajmestra. Motivi, ki se pojavljajo v ženski pisavi iz Generatorja, so si med seboj začuda podobni: 17 čarovništvo, grmade, lov na čarovnice, sojenja in čarovniški procesi, ženske so postavljene v vlogo žrtev, žrtvovanja, pogosta so zapiranja in zamejevanje svobode, spolne in fizične zlorabe, ki so pri dramski obdelavi zamaskirane v prispodobe, črpajo iz fantastične, pravljične, ljudske motivike ali uporabljajo mitološke like. Pri Ifigeniji Zagoričnik v igri stepping outside she is free se v središču večstoletnega lova na čarovnice znajde Klitajmestra. Odlomek se zaključi s prasketanjem grmade, ki čaka Klitajmestro v družbi z ostalimi ženskami (ksenijo, ksantipo, njeno materjo in materjo božjo). Podobno se v igri Svetlane Makarovič Starci: igra v osmih slikah (Generator 128) pojavi motiv čarovništva, čarovniškega procesa in lik čarovnice Oranžne, ki dela oblake, veter in sončnice – pomemben je motiv (čarovničine osebne) svobode. Prisotne so pravljična in fantastična motivika in variacija motivov in likov ter spolne zamenjave, denimo čarovnice iz Janka in Metke. Zlobna starca sta tista, ki mlade žrtve zapirata v kletke in se napajata z njihovimi sanjami in mladostjo – pojavi se tudi motiv femicida: od žrtve ostane le še zoglenelo, razbito in zmrcvarjeno truplo, pri čemer ponovno poudarjam brezimnost žrtve. 18 »Pa še včeraj sem bila Marjetica, danes pa nimam več imena, ali ni čudno, v tem mrazu« (prav tam 143). Pri avtoricah je zaznati določeno mero osebne izpovednosti in avtobiografskosti, vsebinsko in besedno poigravanje z znano motiviko iz klasičnega dramskega repertoarja in antične grške mitologije ali klasične tragedije (Klitajmestra, Ofelija) 17 Začuda zato, ker ne gre za programsko usklajena, pač pa za individualizirana in naknadno skupaj nabrana besedila. 18 V igri Makarovičeve mrgoli vlog, ki veljajo za stereotipe nacionalnega psihološkega karakterja, denimo posesivne patološke matere, na drugi strani pa izobčenih (ostarelih) čarovnic brez otrok. 285 ter predelavo na oseben avtorski način. Pri Makarovičevi je, denimo, opazen njen prepoznavni stil iz pesniškega in baladnega ustvarjanja ter iz predelav ljudske motivike (deklic, sirot/desetnic), prevlada temačne atmosfere, krutih prispodob, določenih iteracij (»v tem mrazu«) ipd. Ifigenija Zagoričnik uporabi lik kraljice Klitajmestre, pri čemer avtoričina vpeljava žrtvovanja – čarovniški proces s sežigom na grmadi – tudi zaradi imena Ifigenije 19 kot Klitajmestrine hčere prikliče raje osebnoizpovedni učinek in avtobiografskost prekvašenja različnih motivov iz antične grške tragedije in mitologije, denimo kombinacijo izvornega (Agamemnonovega) žrtvovanja Ifigenije (po motivu iz Evripidove Ifigenije v Avlidi, prev. K. Gantar) ter Orestov matricid Klitajmestre (v Ajshilovi Oresteji) kot odziv na njeno maščevanje Agamemnonu. Avtorski poudarek je na ženskih likih in žrtvovani vlogi (plemenite) ženske, kraljice in Ifigenijine matere. Podobno je z (intimno osebno) reinterpretacijo klasične motivike pri Brini Švigelj, ki očitno govori prej o izseljenskem motivu Lepe Vide, vendar pa prav raba imena (Ofelija) priča o bolj tragični razrešitvi usode mladega dekleta, ki je odšlo neznano kam (besedilo insinuira, da morda z vlakom, s taksijem) in izginilo v temi razočaranja prve (in zadnje) ljubezenske noči. Jezik Ofelije (Švigelj) je poetičen, poln prispodob, tankočutno senzibilen za nianse in spremembe atmosfer, priča o globini notranjega občutenja in bogastvu čutnih vtisov ter čustvenih razpoloženj, kar ga razlikuje od sicer stvarnega jezika in dogajanja, včasih pa tudi od absurdističnosti in konceptualne zasnovanosti večjega dela moške pisave iz Generatorja. Analiza teh besedil kaže, da se je skozi žensko pisavo reproducirala reprezentacija žensk(osti), ki je različna od tiste, ki jo najdemo v moški pisavi. Slednja pa vlogo ženske po večini reducira na nemi lik, pri čemer je moška pisava prevladujoča in s tem določujoča za družbeno podobo žensk. 20 Ženska pisava se s tem (literarnim) dejstvom, prek moške pisave razširjene reprezentacije ženske kot nemega lika, očitno poigrava, ga izpostavlja, ozavešča, reflektira in preinterpretira. Tako je ključen način avtoričine umetniške obdelave dramskega sižeja Ofelije, ki nemosti ženskega lika z njegovo postavitvijo v osrednjo vlogo ne jemlje kot samoumevne niti je ne reducira na obstranskost in nepomembnost, marveč to nemost samo hote poudarja. Ofelija je, čeprav neprestana tema pogovora ostalih likov, ki v dogajanju zavzema centralno vlogo, s tako spretnim dramskim manevrom izpostavljena kot odsotna ter nema. 21 V 19 Dramolet podpisuje Ifigenija (Zagoričnik), ime pa v antični grški tragediji oziroma mitologiji označuje hči Klitajmestre in Agamemnona (možje in sinovi so tukaj reducirani na stransko vlogo, na omembo kot funkcija potencialnega izdajstva), ki je bila žrtvovana bogovom s strani lastnega očeta z namenom, da se je omogočil vojni pohod na Trojo. Avtoričina igra z imeni nakazuje na osebno preinterpretacijo mita. 20 Spomnimo, da je ena najbolj znanih slovenskih (političnih) dram Antigona Dominika Smoleta (1960) sicer naslovljena po ženskem liku, a ta ostaja nem, pravzaprav odsoten, saj se v drami ne pojavi. 21 Očitni sta tudi razdeljenost in spolna polariziranost v dramoletu Švigelj na moško (mladi fant, oblečen v paža) in žensko perspektivo, Prva in Druga (po vsem videzu Ofelijini spletični, njeni /osebni in intimni/ zaupnici, tolažnici, sem pa sodi tudi vloga zbora, ljudstva). 286 igri je precej ponavljanj, premolkov, tišin, vzdihov (»(kratek presledek)« 330-1, 333), neizgovorjenega, jezik je mestoma pretrgan, precej je indicev, namigov, insinuacij brez dokončnega odgovora, kam je po ljubezenski noči izginilo mlado dekle. Pomenljiva je sprememba (patriarhalnega) diskurza v ženskega, v smislu priznavanja, afirmacije bolečine, stiske mladega dekleta, konca neke mlade poti zaradi odstopanja od družbene norme in spodobnosti ženskega spola: »Preveč samostojna, so najbrž govorili« (prav tam 328); »Ljudje govorijo, še veš, o njunih večerih na obali« (331); »Obleka je bila prekratka« (332). V pisavi Ofelije Švigelj se v določeni meri napovedujejo že karakteristike, ki jih lahko (brez indicev neposrednega vpliva) najdemo, denimo, v sodobnejši dramski ženski pisavi Simone Semenič. 22 Nastopijo praznine, premolki, medprostori, nemost, s čimer se kažeta upor in prelom z moško pisavo. Patriarhalni diskurz se naenkrat izkaže za nezadostnega, vsiljen s perspektive nekega drugega pogleda. Temu še ni ponujena prava alternativa, saj v tem času (1966–86) nova (ženska) pisava še ni množično zasedla svojega prostora. O tej lahko govorimo v sodobnejših dramskih primerih. Ženski Nemi lik Kot prispodobo reprezentacije žensk(osti) (oz. njene odsotnosti) tako uporabljam nemi lik, ker posega neposredno v srž tematike politik spola in hegemoničnih razmerij znotraj spolov na področju uprizoritvenih umetnosti oz. dramatike ter končno eksplicitno tematizira točno tisto pozicijo nemosti, ki se je uveljavila kot reprezentacija žensk(osti) skozi zgodovino slovenske dramatike. Kot primer sodobne ženske pisave, ki je sposobna kritično misliti in artikulirati nemo in verbalno odsotno reprezentacijo žensk (poleg že omenjene Ofelije Švigelj), uporabim primer dramske pisave Simone Hamer. Nemi lik Simone Hamer je napisan oz. uprizorjen kot del akcije preglej: Zakon! (2010) oz. Zakon III. branje (2011), 23 kjer se nemi lik oz. njegova nemost pojavi v eksplicitno artikulirani obliki. Nemi lik je (eksperimentalni) gledališki tekst, po dolžini prej dramolet, saj se v knjižni objavi nahaja na dveh straneh. Formalno ima torej podobnosti z modernističnimi dramskimi eksperimenti iz Generatorja. 24 V besedilu Nemi lik obstaja diskrepanca med njegovim verbalnim, besednim delom in 22 Raztrganost pisave, premolkov, jezika, opuščanje (slovničnih) pravil in normativov opozarja na problematiziranje obstoječih patriarhalnih vrednot in ideoloških narativov ter diskurzov, v katere so ženske potisnjene. 23 Zakon III. branje je bila performativna akcija takratne skupine oz. dramskega laboratorija PreGlej (kasneje Preglej), ki je bila jasno politično usmerjena in eksplicitno družbeno angažirana, pri tem pa spolno nikakor ne nevtralna. Naslov Zakon se nanaša na Družinski zakonik, III. branje pa na njegovo obravnavo v državnem zboru, ki je potekala leta 2010. 24 Uprizoritveni tekst tako po formi kot vsebini spominja na delo visokega modernizma, na metagledališki tekst Samuela Becketta Catastrophe (1982), ki prav tako sestoji iz navodil, ki jih uprizarjajo režiser, njegova asistentka ter objekt, ki je nem. Besedilo je posvečeno češkoslovaškemu dramatiku (in kasnejšemu predsedniku), Václavu Havlu; napisano je bilo v času Havlovega priprtja zaradi disidentstva ter je tako eno redkih eksplicitno političnih Beckettovih del. 287 vizualnim. 25 Govorjeno besedilo predstavljajo navodila (ta lahko uprizori glas iz offa). Pri čemer je evidenten nek manko, saj se vsebina besedila/navodila nanaša na lik, ki v besedilu ni govorno zastopan, na nemi lik. Nemi lik je na govorni ravni odsoten, nem, gre za odsotnost njegove verbalne reprezentacije. Kot tak nemi lik v dramskem besedilu ne more obstajati. Obstaja lahko le zunaj teksta, skrit v didaskalijah oz. scenskih navodilih kot performativna sled. Njegov modus obstoja je v prezenci in redukciji na golo telesnost. To je v Nemem liku dvojno poudarjeno, vsebinsko in uprizoritveno. Nemi lik ni spolno nevtralen lik, ni zgolj jezikovna funkcija niti nevtralni označevalec. Kot poudari avtorica, ima nemi lik spolovilo in tudi prsi. Nemi lik je ženski lik, ki pa je podvržen desubjektivaciji, objektivaciji in redukciji na svoj spol. Navodila glasu iz offa oz. režiser mučne situacije ga dobesedno silijo v javno razgaljenje njegove intime, njegovega spola. Če bi uporabljala patriarhalni diskurz, bi lahko navedla, da gre pri redukciji nemega lika na njegov spol, na njegovo telesnost in na vizualno, zunanjo, površinsko dimenzijo za simbolno umetniško kastracijo. Dodaten pomen dobi tekst z uprizoritvijo, saj je nemi lik v akciji preglej: Zakon! uprizorila kar avtorica Simona Hamer sama (12. 3. 2010 v Cankarjevem domu), s čimer je pozicionirala svojo vlogo ženske dramatičarke znotraj simbolnih spolnih in dramatičnih razmerij sodobne dramatike. Tako uspe Hamer z zvito uporabo nemega lika v sodobni ženski dramski pisavi kritično ozavestiti položaj ženske oziroma dramatičarke znotraj patriarhalnega diskurza ter opozoriti na njeno redukcijo na nemost. Nemi liki so pri Simoni Hamer formalno in stilistično – s kurzivo – ločeni od glavnega teksta, nahajajo se torej zgolj v didaskalijah in v teoriji drame pomenijo robno pozicijo in redukcijo na stranski tekst. Ta je lahko uprizorjen, lahko pa tudi ne. S tem ko je nemim likom odvzeta pravica do govora in do glavnega teksta, pa so v lastni nemoči obsojeni na milost in odvisnost od velikega drugega, pripovedovalca in avtorja oziroma režiserja, da jim podeli vidnost (in slišnost) ali jim jo odvzame. 26 Pet let po Zakonu III. branje in Nemem liku (2010) je Hamer sintagmo nemega lika še dodatno razvila in vsebinsko razširila v drami Nemi liki (2015), v kateri se nemi liki nanašajo na vse družbeno deprivilegirane, ne le na ženske, ampak na vse brezimne marginalizirane skupine in robne eksistence ter izražajo vloge številnih zamenljivih in z vidika družbe pogrešljivih anonimnežev. 27 S tem Hamer svojo kritiko patriarhata in oblastniških ter vrednostnih sistemov razširi na kritiko turbokapitalističnega potrošniškega sistema. 28 25 Dramolet je formalno členjen na štiri dele, ki so ločeni po vertikali in horizontali. Prvi del predstavlja opis (dramske) situacije nemega lika. Drugi del predstavlja glas iz offa, ki postavlja navodila nememu liku (glede akcije). Tretji del predstavlja navodilo nam, bralcem oz. gledalcem, kako ravnati v odnosu do uprizoritve oz. besedila: »PA KAJ TI NI JASNO? / NE, NE BERI – GLEJ!!!« (gre za vizualno simulacijo kričanja na gledalca/bralca). Zadnji, četrti del predstavlja opomba pod črto v drobnem tisku: »To je nemi lik. / Nič drugega ni / razen tega, kar vidite. / …« (Zakon III. branje 34). 26 Simona Hamer je koncept nemih likov razvijala v svojem projektu do leta 2015, dvoletni spremljevalni del svoje umetniške raziskave je zaključila s (praktično) okroglo mizo na Borštnikovem srečanju leta 2014. Ta je potekala pod naslovom »Nemi lik(i) v dramatiki, na odru in v realnosti«. 27 Od migrantov in številnih brezimnih beguncev do podplačanih delavk z Bližnjega vzhoda, žrtev verbalnega nadlegovanja, fizičnega in spolnega nasilja, žensk žrtev vojne, žensk, brezimnih čistilk in tajnic, strežnic, plesalk v nočnih klubih ... 28 Pri Nemih likih Simone Hamer gre še vedno za dramo, v kateri ves čas govorijo samo moški, najstniki in njihovi očetje, 288 Pa reprezentacija žensk(osti) v dramski pisavi danes? Sprememba na bolje? Situacija glede enakovrednejše spolne zastopanosti na področju slovenske dramatike se začenja spreminjati šele po letu 2000: porast števila anonimnih prijav na razpis za Grumovo nagrado (2001), ženske imajo prvič večinski delež v žiriji (2002), prva podelitev Grumove nagrade ženski avtorici (2007). Od takrat (2007) je podeljevanje nagrade vsaj približno bolj uravnoteženo po spolu, čeprav še vedno prevladujejo moški: nagrada je bila osemkrat podeljena moškemu avtorju in petkrat ženskim avtoricam, dvakrat pa več različnim avtorjem. Skupno je bila nagrada v zadnjih 16 letih (2007–2022) osemkrat podeljena ženski avtorici in desetkrat avtorju. Nagrado še vedno pogosteje prejmejo moški. Kljub temu se je situacija glede prisotnosti in spolne zastopanosti dramatičark do danes radikalno spremenila. Za potrditev navajam še ugotovitev Maje Šorli, ki je primerjala delovanje gledališkega kolektiva Pupilije Ferkeverk in predhodnih pesniških skupin, t. i. Pupilčkov (aktivni v šestdesetih letih) s sodobnejšimi udeleženci Pregleja, t. i. Preglejčki (delujejo okrog prelomnega leta 2007). Takole pravi: »Ustvarjalci – pesniki skupin 441, 442 in gibanja 443 – so bili vsi moškega spola, nekakšno spolno uravnoteženost so dosegli šele s Pupilijo. Sopotnice (kot jih imenuje Svetina) niso pisale lastnih pesmi. In v tem je temeljna razlika med Preglejčki in Pupilčki. V PGLabu so prevladovale ženske, v izvedbi Devet lahkih komadov je bilo število izvajalk in izvajalcev po spolu uravnoteženo« (Šorli 74). 29 Denimo v Zakonu III. branje v avtorstvu skupine Preglej (uprizorjen 2010, objavljen 2011), v katerem je objavljen tudi tekst Nemi lik, ki ga primerjalno analiziram z zbornikom Generator, je besedil vsega skupaj sedem, od tega so večino (pet) tekstov napisale ženske. 30 Razmerje med spoloma se pri Preglejčkih v četrt stoletja in več prevesi v 5/7 oziroma 71 odstotkov v prid avtoricam oziroma dramatičarkam. Zaključek V prispevku se posvetim problematiki neenakovrednega razmerja v zastopanosti spolov v slovenski dramatiki, zlasti med letoma 1966 in 1986, tj. izraziti številčni prevladi moških dramatikov in odsotnosti zastopanosti žensk, kar se navadno obrazloži kot posledica dejanskega stanja manjšega števila ženskih dramatičark, vojaki, stranke nočnih klubov, poslovneži. Reprodukcijo patriarhalne reprezentacije žensk v šovbiznisu, entertainmentu in kapitalistični potrošniški družbi podpirajo citati iz besedil slavnih pop zvezdnic (Beyonce, Rihanna, Rita Ora, Nicky Minaj), ki v pretirano seksualiziranih besedilih prepevajo o ustrežljivosti, submisivnosti, ženske(ga telesa) in njeni objektifikaciji. 29 »V PGLabu velikokrat pri svojih obravnavah besedil trčimo ob teme enakopravnosti, enakih možnosti ter drugačnosti predvsem v odnosu do spolne politike. Šestdeseta leta so bila sicer leta spolne svobode, ne pa tudi spolne enakosti in spoštovanja. V skupinah 441, 442 in 443 ni bilo ženskih pesnic. Danes na splošno na tem področju še ni bistvenega napredka, zato si Preglejčki prizadevamo gojiti spoštovanje in enake možnosti obeh spolov« (Šorli 85). 30 Od teh sta dve imeni psevdonima, pri čemer je v razmerju med avtorjem in psevdonimom ohranjen spolni enačaj. 289 manj pa se upošteva ali poskuša razumevati vzroke za nastalo situacijo. V prispevku se lotim prav tega. Ob dominaciji polja dramatike s strani moških strokovnih avtoritet in ob pomanjkljivi zastopanosti dramatičark v nagrajevalnih mehanizmih, ob nepriznavanju pomena ženskih tem ali specifike ženskega ustvarjanja ter ob odsotnosti njenega spodbujanja se mi stanje neenakovredne reprezentiranosti med spoloma prej kot dejansko stanje kaže kot učinek delovanja patriarhalne ideologije. V preostanku prispevka se posvetim ugotavljanju pomena, ki ga ima situacija prevlade moške dramske pisave za reprezentacijo žensk(osti) v polju slovenske dramatike in njene odsotnosti pa tudi za samo pomanjkanje ozaveščenosti glede (odsotnosti) ženske perspektive. Praktične posledice, ki jih lahko povzroči enostransko z večinsko moško dramsko pisavo določena reprodukcija reprezentacije žensk(osti), sem v prispevku prikazala na primerih analize moške pisave iz Generatorja, za katere se izkaže, da nekritično reproducirajo podobo anonimnih, nemih in na vizualno ali seksualno dimenzijo sploščenih ženskih likov. V primeru enostranske in monolitne, lahko celo enodimenzionalne ali stereotipne reprezentacije žensk(osti) v moški dramski pisavi (vsaj od tukaj obravnavanih dramskih primerov iz Generatorja; za ugotavljanje dejanskega stanja v zgodovini celotne slovenske dramatike bi bil potreben večji vzorec dramskih besedil) poudarjam potrebo po ozaveščenosti glede sistemskih slepih peg pri interpretacijah, ki nastanejo brez zavedanja odsotnosti ženske perspektive. V tem obdobju (1966–86) večinska, moška dramska pisava ni niti merodajna niti univerzalna izkušnja za reprezentacijo žensk(osti), čeprav se kot taka morda prikazuje. Ženska perspektiva oziroma perspektiva drugih spolov je namreč iz nje izključena. Še zlasti je to pomembno, ker to stanje patriarhalne prevlade traja najmanj tri do štiri desetletja med letoma 1966 in 2006. Z neravnovesjem v zastopanosti spolov, s historičnim pomanjkanjem zastopanosti ženske pisave in s prevlado moške pisave se alternativna, raznolika in uravnotežena reprezentacija žensk(osti) onemogoča in siromaši; umanjkata cela paleta kritične obdelave določenih (ženskih) tem in raznolikost portretiranja ženskih likov – reprezentacij žensk(osti). Pojavi se nevarnost prevlade in reprodukcije zgolj zožene, pasivne, objektivizirane ter moškemu pogledu podrejene reprezentacije žensk(osti), ki je na eni strani celo seksualizirana, na drugi pa navadno pozicionirana znotraj patriarhalnega ali/in krščanskega sistema vrednot. Gre za reprezentacijo žensk(osti), ki je predvsem nema. Nemost oz. nemi lik se v prispevku tako izkaže kot ustrezna prispodoba tako za poimenovanje položaja (odsotnih) ženskih avtoric, slovenskih dramatičark in za njihovo neustrezno zastopanost, torej za realni, zunajfikcijski element, kot tudi za (znotrajliterarno oz. znotrajfikcijsko) upodobitev oz. reprezentacijo žensk(osti) dramskih oseb znotraj slovenske dramatike. Ker dramatičarke in reprezentacije žensk(osti) v slovenski dramatiki ostajajo neme, pogosto umanjkata tudi glas in artikulacija te nemosti in odsotnosti same. Nasprotno je nemi lik kot kritično orodje za prikaz patriarhalne prevlade uporabljen šele v ženski dramski pisavi (primera Ofelija Brine Švigelj in Nemi lik Simone Hamer). 290 Literatura Borovnik, Silvija. Pišejo ženske drugače? O Slovenkah kot pisateljicah in literarnih likih. Mihelač, 1995. Butler, Judith. Težave s spolom: feminizem in subverzija identitete. ŠKUC, 2001. Criado Perez, Caroline. Nevidne: kako vrzeli v podatkih in raziskavah oblikujejo svet po moški meri. UMco, 2022. Drnovšček, Mirjan, in Marinka Poštrak, ur. 40 let Tedna slovenske drame 1971–2010. Prešernovo gledališče, 2010. Hamer, Simona. Nemi liki. https://sigledal.org/w/images/9/9a/NemiLiki_final.pdf. Dostop 26. sept. 2022. —. »Nemi lik.« Zakon III. branje/The Act: Third Reading. KD Integrali, 2011. Kač, Maja. »Spominjanje žensk v javnem prostoru: 'Dokler o njih ne govorimo, jih ne spravljamo v zavest'.« Multimedijski center/MMC RTV Slovenija, https://www. rtvslo.si/kultura/dediscina/spominjanje-zensk-v-javnem-prostoru-dokler-o-njih- ne-govorimo-jih-ne-spravljamo-v-zavest/660434. Dostop 3. apr. 2023. Lukan, Blaž, ur. Generator:: za proizvodnjo poljubnega števila dramskih kompleksov: slovenski eksperimentalni dramski in uprizoritveni teksti iz obdobja modernizma (1966–1986). SLOGI, AGRFT , 2001. Mihurko Poniž, Katja. Zapisano z njenim peresom: prelomi zgodnjih slovenskih književnic s paradigmo nacionalne literature. Založba Univerze v Novi Gorici, 2014. —. Od lastnega glasu do lastne sobe: literarne ustvarjalke od začetkov do modernizma. Beletrina, 2001. »Nagrade festivala Dnevi komedije.« sigledal.org, https://sigledal.org/geslo/ Nagrade_festivala_Dnevi_komedije. Dostop 29. dec. 2022. Nietzsche, Friedrich. »Poskus samokritike.« Rojstvo tragedije iz duha glasbe, Založba Karantanija, 1995. Open.si. Spletna stran (naslovna stran), http://www.open.si/. Dostop 27. sept. 2022. »Podatki VDT RS o femicidu v Sloveniji.« Državno tožilstvo Republike Slovenije, https:// www.dt-rs.si/158/podatki-vdt-rs-o-femicidu-v-sloveniji. Dostop 3. okt. 2022. Preglej na glas: festival dramske pisave. Produkcija: Gledališče Glej, Cankarjev dom, TSD. Ljubljana: Cankarjev dom, 2010. Letak. Hrani avtorica. Šorli, Maja. »Dva primera ready-made besedila v slovenskem gledališču.« Drama, tekst, pisava, ur. Petra Pogorevc, Tomaž Toporišič, Knjižnica MGL, 2008. Zakon III. branje / The Act: Third Reading. KD Integrali, 2011. 291 Zakon III. branje / The Act: Third Reading. Elektronska verzija. https://veza.sigledal. org/media/uploads/Dokumenti/preglej_zakon_iii.branje.pdf. Dostop 27. sept. 2022. 292 UDK 821.163.6.09-2”1966/1986” DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2023-1/292-311 The paper begins by analysing the ideas, themes and motifs of the theatre texts from the anthology The Generator:: for Manufacturing Any Number of Drama Complexes (Slovenian Experimental Dramatic and Performative Texts from the Modernist Period (1966–1986)). It aims to shed light on the anthology’s selected texts through the female perspective, or rather, its absence. It deals with the consequences that the absence of awareness about the lack of a female perspective in Slovenian drama can have on the representation of women and woman(liness). The paper explores such representations in Slovenian (exper- imental) drama and raises awareness about the possible effects of patriarchal ideology and its consequences by analysing the plays’ ideas, themes and motifs. In doing so, it pays special attention to the difference between men’s and (rare) women’s playwriting. The texts from The Generator are taken merely as a case study to indicate the presence of particular symptoms in Slovenian (experimental) drama within the anthology’s given period. The paper briefly highlights the differences in the representation of woman(liness) from a broader developmental perspective, from a temporal distance, in the form of a comparative analysis of contemporary women’s playwriting, specifically, Simona Hamer’s 2010 play Nemi lik (The Silent Character). Keywords: Slovenian Drama, modernism, experiment, Women’s Writing, Female Playwrights, representation of women, womanliness Nika Leskovšek holds a PhD in performing arts studies from the University of Ljubljana, Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (UL AGRFT). She has been active as a researcher, theatre critic and dramaturg, as well as a selector and jury member of several Slovenian theatre festivals. She has been appointed an assistant researcher at the UL AGRFT for dramaturgy and performing arts studies. nika.leskovsek@agrft.uni-lj.si 293 Silent Characters: Women Playwrights, Women’s Writing and the Representation of Woman(liness) in the Slovenian Drama Experiment (1966–1986) Nika Leskovšek Academy of Theatre, Film, Radio and Television, University of Ljubljana Preface and an Attempt at Self–Criticism: 1 The Absence of Female Playwrights in the History of Slovenian Drama (1966–1986) The paper’s starting point 2 was the anthology The Generator:: for Manufacturing Any Number of Drama Complexes. The following words from the anthology’s in- troduction by the editor Blaž Lukan prompted me to write a thesis on the topic of the representation of women or womanliness – which in Slovenian drama (from this period) ironically takes place in the virtual absence of representation of the female perspective: In the plays and performance texts in the anthology, we can observe thematic and lin- guistic imagination, a real dramatic-experimental outburst, similar to what, after the 1960s and 1970s, can only be identified in Slovenian drama again after 2000 – at least it would appear so – with the emergence of many distinctive post-dramatic names of the now middle and younger generation of writers, more precisely, women writers (e.g., Simona Semenič, Simona Hamer, Iza Strehar, Varja Hrvatin). 1 I developed the “Preface or An Attempt at Self-Criticism” in response to the comments at the discussion of my paper “The Act: Third Reading” at the Amfiteater journal symposium Theatre Experiment in Slovenia (1966–1986) and Its Resonance. The anthology The Generator was also the starting point for the present conference to reflect on experimental and Slovenian drama. The version of the discussion published here has been reworked and elaborated into an independent scholarly and argumentatively supported form. The title “ An Attempt at Self-Criticism” has its origins in Nietzsche’s introduction to The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1995), in which Nietzsche (self-)critically comments on, evaluates and also temporarily positions his own work 15 years after its creation. 2 This research paper by Nika Leskovšek (39188) has been a part of the programme “Theatre and Interart Studies” (P6- 0376), (co-)funded by the Slovenian Research Agency. 294 I would especially like to draw attention to the phenomenon of women writers, which is a novelty in Slovenian drama, as they have been in the minority for decades; only three wom- en are included in this book, and there were not many more in the wider selection. (27) Of the thirty authors or artistic collectives representing the period 1966–1986, only three women are included in The Generator: Svetlana Makarovič, Ifigenija Zagoričnik and Brina Švigelj. 3 Representing only 10 per cent, this number indicates a significant predominance of male playwrights. 4 Lukan’s comment suggests that the unequal gen- der ratio and under-representation of female playwrights in the public sphere reflect the reality of the time. The question is whether this was indeed the actual situation, or is the under-representation of female playwrights in the history of Slovenian drama somewhat a consequence of the unreflected effects of patriarchal ideology? In the paper, I first review the statistical distribution and representation of gender in Slovenian drama. However, I situate the data on the absence of women authors (as well as the absence of a female perspective in writing and female representation in public) into the socio-temporal continuum and context of the 1966–1986 period to explain how this came about. The absence of research into the causes behind the “reality” obfuscates the functioning of (patriarchal) ideology and enables its further reproduction. Furthermore, I argue that this unequal gender representation is not in- nocent. The historical lack of representation of women authors and women’s writing in Slovenian drama implies significant consequences for the representation of wom- an(liness) as is produced and reproduced within Slovenian playwriting. Historically, it has been overwhelmingly represented by male playwrights, who (usually) also rep- resent a male perspective in their playwriting and produce men’s writing. 5 In this paper, I show the representation of woman(liness) in men’s playwriting of this period, using texts from The Generator as examples. These encompass Slovenian experimental dramatic texts and shorter theatre texts from the modernist period, 1966–1986. Later, I show the differences between female and male dramatic writing in the texts published in the anthology. I mainly draw attention to the difference in the 3 Ifigenija Zagoričnik, a.k.a, Ifigenija Zagoričnik Simonović; Brina Švigelj, a.k.a., Brina Švigelj Mérat or Brina Svit, which at the same time testifies to the fact that women’s names are subject to certain conventional, yet socially influenced changes, to which men’s names of the time were overwhelmingly not subject. 4 In examining the disparity in the representation of woman(liness) within women’s writing on the one hand and men’s writing on the other, I ask the proofreader (of the Slovenian [and English] version[s] of the text) not to correct the apparent redundancy of using “male playwright” and “female playwright”, since the sole use of the word “playwright”, along with the fact that the masculine gender is grammatically dominant in the Slovenian language, obfuscates the exclusion of other genders from the speech situation. Moreover, according to Caroline Criado Perez, using only “playwright” would have a psychological impact in a way that the women experience perceived exclusion from the speech situation. 5 I do not consider femininity (as well as masculinity) or gender as biological, but as a fluid performative category (according to Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990). Although the latter only becomes entirely obvious in the full meaning and development of gender politics in dramatic texts in the later period, in the The Act: Third Reading, before that (in The Generator) it is more of an exception. 295 representation of woman(liness) in the two writings: how female characters are con- structed, the (stereo-)typification, the formation of the image of woman(liness), what kind of mentality, ideas and ideology the works reproduce ... In the paper, I indicate the need for social and temporal contextualisation of the interpretation of this kind of unreflected representation of woman(liness), which has been historically reproduced in Slovenian drama as “actual” or “objective” on a massive scale. The essay is based on a conceptual, thematic and motivic analysis of dramatic texts, i.e., on the method of drama analysis or, rather, its close reading. Finally, I embark on a comparative analysis of contemporary dramatic texts, especially from the point of view of the representa- tion of woman(liness), to consolidate the differentia specifica of the modernist texts, which I currently detect through the absence of the female perspective and the effect of the domination of patriarchal ideology. The Lack of Female Playwrights The absence of publicly recorded female playwrights, already mentioned in The Genera- tor (Lukan 27), is confirmed for the case of Slovenian drama from 1966–1986 by analys- ing data from other sources. For example, an analysis of the registered texts submitted for the Slavko Grum Award. Founded in 1978 and awarded annually since 1979 for the best dramatic text, the Slavko Grum Award is the most important in Slovenian drama. An analysis of the data for the first 20 years of the award (taken from the brochure pub- lished on the 40 th anniversary of the Week of Slovenian Drama) reveals the following situation: in the first decade of the award’s existence (1979–1988), the number of en- tries did not exceed five female authors per year. The situation remained the same – or worse – regarding the number of female authors in the second decade (1989–1998), as fewer female playwrights submitted texts for the award. In 1991, there was only one female playwright; in 1992, there were none; in 1993, for the first time, there were, ex - ceptionally, six female playwrights registered, and then the number dropped again. The names of registered authors throughout the years mostly repeat: Svetlana Makarovič, Alenka Goljevšček, Polonca Kovač, Jana Kolarič, Zlata Volarič, Alja Tkačev, Brina Švigelj, Vera Remic Jager, Jelena Sitar, Ivanka Hergold, Jana Milčinski, Zora Tavčar, Bina Štampe Žmavc (with Anka Kolenc, Mateja Mahnič, Marička Cilenšek, Regina Kralj … registered with only one entry each) (Drnovšček and Poštrak). The situation started to change only in the third decade of the prize’s existence (1999–2008), more precisely after 2001, when the number of entries was seven. 6 Then, in 2005, it grew to 11, and in 2007 to a record 15 entries. I consider 2007 to be 6 I have considered works by individual female authors, and the number listed is that of authors who submitted. The number of submitted texts (by female authors) is often higher, as authors (regardless of their gender) often submitted several different texts in the same year. 296 a watershed year in several senses. On 1 April 2007, for the first time in the history of the Slovenian Drama Week, after 29 years of awarding the Slavko Grum Award, it was awarded to a female author, namely Dragica Potočnjak for her text Za naše mlade dame (For Our Young Ladies). The situation appears even worse if we look at the Gracious Comedy Quill Award, i.e., the award for a genre-specific theatre text, given at the Days of Comedy Festival in Celje since 1998 (but not every year). Here, the first (and so far only) female author received the award in 2018: Iza Strehar for the comedy Vsak glas šteje (Every Vote Counts) (“Nagrade festivala”). The under-representation of female authors for the an- alysed period is confirmed by the number of entries and the success of female authors in the award mechanisms. The situation begins to change only in the third decade of the Slavko Grum Award’s existence (1999–2008). Why Are There No Female Playwrights (Submitting Texts for the Slavko Grum Award)? To better understand the reasons for the low number of female playwrights submit- ting texts for the Slavko Grum Award competition and the low number of female play- wrights officially registered in the public domain during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, we must consider additional factors and situate them into the temporal and social context. There are more complex processes at work here than can be inferred from the statistics alone. First, the three-to-four-member jury that evaluated the submitted texts consisted exclusively of male members until 1995 (i.e., for the first 17 years of the award). In 1995, Ignacija Fridl joined the three-member jury as the first and only woman, and only in 1999 did the then five-member jury for the first time include two female jurors, Marinka Poštrak and Tea Štoka. Another fact is that many of the female authors were mostly writing youth literature, texts or poems intended for children or younger audiences; they tended to be actresses, puppeteers and youth writers, who, by applying, were also seeking validation, legitimation and professionalisation of spe- cific genres and types of drama (some of them aimed at younger audiences as well.) Thus, the first indication that women’s writing had its own themes and specificities, which the (male) jury did not appreciate at the time. 7 The male dominance, or even monopoly, in Slovenian drama, both in the number of playwrights submitting for competitions and in the professional control of the field (the perception of playwriting as a male profession; the lack of attention to specific (female) topics), as well as the generally unfavourable social conditions for female playwrights (who were primarily wives and mothers, who did not have the time to 7 Currently, the Slavko Grum Award is limited to texts for adult audiences. 297 create), can all be considered factors that discouraged female playwrights from sub- mitting their works or even from creating them. 8 The decline in the number of female playwrights applying in the award’s second decade also indicates a certain distrust of institutional award mechanisms on the part of female playwrights. The sudden increase in anonymous or coded entries demonstrates that gender has not played a neutral or negligible role in submissions and awards. In 2004, no female authors applied for the competition. However, there were at least ten applications with a coded identity (e.g., “Code Janezek”, “Code Lojze”, or simply an anonymous author), which shows that this is not a case of merely concealing one’s identity, but rather a gender-motivated decision (the coded names were Slovenian male names). 9 Despite the generally anonymous selection process, 10 since at least 2001, anonymous or additionally coded entries have increased. A peculiar additional complication in the matter of gender bias in bestowing the awards was triggered by Žanina Mirčevska in 2009 when she entered the competition under the male pseudonym Tomi Leskovec and then went on to win the Slavko Grum Award together with Simona Semenič that same year. Together, they became the second and third female authors after Potočnjak to win the Slavko Grum Award in the award’s first 30 years. The Dominance of Patriarchal Discourse in Literature and Literary Theory The following analyses of the phenomenon of women’s writing show that this is not a peculiarity of Slovenian drama or, more broadly, of Slovenian literature and literary his- tory. Silvija Borovnik, in her study Do Women Write Differently, which draws mainly on German-language theory and practice, shows that patriarchal discourse is predominant in the literary field. In the early 1980s, Manfred Jürgensen noted that “the reception of women’s literature, at least in the German-speaking world, is still bound by the patriar - chal literary-historical concept” (qtd. in Borovnik 12). In comparison, in the late 1980s, Sigrid Schmid Bortenschlager pointed out that women’s literature was excluded from (scientific) consideration by literary history, as it was considered “inferior, trivial” (qtd. in 8 The historical lack of (Slovenian) women artists in the field of literature, mainly in the field of writing novels or narratives, and the reasons for it have been dealt with extensively by Silvija Borovnik Pišejo ženske drugače? (Do Women Write Differently?, 1995); and in several publications by Katja Mihurko Poniž, for example, Zapisano z njenim peresom: prelomi zgodnjih slovenskih književnic s paradigmo nacionalne literature (Written with Her Pen: Breaking the Paradigm of a National Literature by Early Slovenian Women Writers, 2014) and Od lastnega glasu do lastne sobe: literarne ustvarjalke od začetkov do modernizma (From One’s Own Voice to One’s Own Room: Women Literary Creators from the Beginnings to Modernism, 2001). 9 The only official female entrant that year was Martina Šiler, but she applied with a redacted version of her play Reykjavik, which she had already submitted the year before. 10 In this period, the identity of the authors was, in principle, unknown to the jury awarding the Grum Award, as the author’s name was submitted in a separate envelope when the text was submitted. Unless it was a text that had already been staged or was known to the public, for example, in the case of the automatic transfer of the previous year’s shortlisted nominees for the following year’s prize, or text that had already been staged. 298 Borovnik 14). In Slovenian drama, texts for children and adolescents could also be listed in this category of overlooked and denigrated women’s literature, excluded from scientific discourse. Renate Wiggershaus also notes the lack of representation of women’s litera- ture in anthologies and reviews of literary history – with the rare exception of works by female authors with predominantly male protagonists so that the (male) jury can identify with them (qtd. in Borovnik 16). Borovnik also cites the lack of translations of women’s literature into foreign languages. These situations all help to create and reinforce the “gen- eral impression that quality literature is written predominantly by men” (Borovnik 16). The Absence of Women in Decision-Making Mechanisms: Defining the Male Perspective as Universal British author Caroline Criado Perez aptly demonstrates how systemic inequality and the under-representation or even absence of women in all fields, not just in drama have decisive consequences for women’s lives in general, which also affect the rep- resentation of women and womanliness. Criado Perez takes the example of analys- ing the absence of women in decision-making mechanisms and working practices. By analogy with the demonstration of the functioning of patriarchal ideology – the indirect topic of this paper – I relate this to either the dominance of patriarchal dis- course in literature (Borovnik 12–16) or the absence of female experts in award and selection mechanisms, for example, in the Slavko Grum Award. In her comprehensive research work Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Criado Perez analyses how the under-representation of women in power politics causes (statistical and real) data gaps based on a wide range of inter- national statistics from everyday life. Women and their perspectives are usually un- der-represented or absent from deliberative and decision-making mechanisms. Thus, their position remains overlooked, defined as irrelevant, and marginal. The exclusion of the female position from decision-making mechanisms and systems of representa- tion consequently creates the impression that the male position is neutral and major- ity, which helps to shape and further entrench the world along patriarchal lines. The problem arises when the male perspective and view are presented in official data as the relevant one and as a starting point for generalisations and universal experience. However, it is essential to recognise that the male perspective is not a universal expe- rience, as the experience of other genders is excluded. 11 As shown in the previous chapter, in Slovenian drama – at least from 1966 to 1986 – the long-standing exclusion of female representatives from the ranks of experts or deci- 11 The use of the masculine gender as the grammatically dominant gender represents a similar problem in gender politics. Criado Perez shows that the use of the masculine gender has a crucial impact on our perception and experience and, for example, on the exclusion of other genders from the linguistic situation and is thus by no means a neutral form of use. 299 sion-making bodies in the awarding of the Slavko Grum Award, the consequent lack of recognition of the importance of specific “female topics” and genres for the development of Slovenian drama, the lack of support for (further) creativity of female authors and the diminishing of their visibility in the public sphere have contributed to the persistence and spread of a patriarchal discourse in the field of drama. These factors help to reinforce the belief that quality playwriting is exclusively in the male domain (29 years without a female award-winner) and enable the numerical dominance of male playwriting. 12 In ana- lysing patriarchal ideology in the context of Slovenian drama during the modernist period it becomes apparent that the predominantly male playwriting does not encompass an objective or universal experience, as it disregards the experiences of other genders. What is essential here is to recognise and become aware of the differences between men’s and women’s dramatic writing and the one-sided representation of womanliness. Therefore, using concrete examples, let us look at how women and womanliness are represented, particularly how they are manifested through the female characters in men’s playwriting. Examples of Men’s Dramatic Writing in the Analysis of Texts from The Generator In this section, I exclusively analyse texts 13 written by the now well-established male playwrights, poets or predominantly male collectives in The Generator anthology. In a superficial examination of some randomly selected theatre texts, the analysis of female characters and female roles reveals the following representations of woman(liness). An example from the first selected play: the first image of a woman appearing in the play is a lady in the role of a naked model, posing for a nude, “trying very hard to imitate the famous Modigliani model” (Lukan 79). The instructions for the play explicitly state that “this scene should in no way interfere with the rest of the action on stage” (79). Other female characters in the text include an actress who “makes people, who are not into sport, sing” (80) and a ballerina. Therefore, the only female characters in this play are cast as a nude model (for painting), an actress who sings and a ballerina. Note that all the female characters are also silent, i.e., they are not verbally represented (except for singing). Female characters are completely absent in the next theatre text from The Generator. In the very next one, we see the following female image: “ A naked woman’s back appears. Naked woman’s breasts are projected onto it. The two merge to form a back with breasts. The back is still, the breasts are bobbing up and down” (88). The image or representation of women that the reader can draw from these randomly selected plays of male writing from The Generator is either one of the female char- 12 Ironically, this was indirectly made possible by women taking on the roles of wives and mothers. 13 Formally and genre-wise, they are defined as happenings, poeticised playlets and series of instructions (or scores). 300 acters being mostly silent, anonymous and interchangeable, lacking any particular distinguishing characteristics, or, at the other extreme, one without any female char- acter at all, because the characters and topics of women/womanliness are not in the foreground, are not of interest to the (male) authors, and consequently, the female characters in these plays are absent. Female characters appear in these plays as an uninteresting, missing, and unnecessary aspect. Moreover, in these examples of men’s writing from The Generator, the image of women appears as one-dimensional, sensu- alised, sometimes sexualised and objectified, preferably reduced to the visual effect of a beautiful exterior, physicality, and often even nudity. In these texts, women do not play decisive or active roles. Instead, their roles are limited to the supporting function of momentary impressions, which should take place somewhere in the background to possibly liven up the main action but not distract from it. The analysis of further examples of the representation of women in The Generator only confirms this image and effect. Women appear mostly as prostitutes or (vulgar- ly) whores, they are cast as sexual objects and victims of sexual, verbal or physical violence. Mothers are another role they frequently occupy, and sometimes (less fre- quently), they also appear as wives and mistresses or concubines. Women also ap- pear in other texts written by male authors in the following roles: A girl in the role of a victim of (imminent) rape (Lukan 31–6) with a similar motif appearing at least once more (241). The character “Woman with bare breasts” (52–60) is described: “ A woman with bare breasts enters: Milk, fresh milk, drink my milk, drink it, drink only fresh milk, drink only my milk! She wanders around the room. Enter the bald man. They sit on the floor. The bald man strokes her breasts, then drinks her milk” (59), and in another segment, it says: “But you cannot deny that a woman with or without her breasts torn open is more interesting than a woman who is normal in every way” (63). There is also the following quote: “ A disabled man without a penis: ‘ All whores should be shot! Yes, let’s put them all in front of the wall! And before that, three hundred and sixty-eight hunks should pass over them. Let the bitches drop dead! And let mine be first!” (65) or, for example, “MALE VOICE I: Ugh, women’s poetry! That’s a fact” (258). The only exception that stands out in a positive sense and introduces some fresh air to gender relations, playing with gender identity with his/her female nickname or surname is Andrej Rozman imenovana Roza (Andrej Rozman named Roza) and his/ her text Odkar sem tajnica dvojno življenje živim (izpoved) (Since I became a female secretary I’ve been living a double life (a confession)) (322). 14 Specific texts respect gender equality, at least in principle, in the distribution of acting roles. 15 14 The (male) author is actually using female pronouns in the text, which is more obvious in the Slovenian original. 15 These texts include, for example, Milan Jesih’s Limite (Limits), Tomaž Kralj’s Pupilija Ferkeverk in Zaspanček Razkodranček (Pupilija Ferkeverk and Sleepy Curlyhead), Iztok Osojnik’s Radijska igra za pet glasov (Radio Play for Five Voices), and Gledališče sester Scipiona Nasice (Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre): Minutni dramski teksti ( Minute Drama Texts). 301 In all other plays from The Generator, images of women or female characters are ab- sent, thus missing the representation of women/womanliness. Where they do appear, there are fewer female characters than male ones, and they also have fewer lines. The analysis considers all the texts by male authors in the anthology, i.e., 55 out of 58. The representation of women authors in the collection is even lower than the initial 10 per cent, as there are typically several texts representing male authors, compared to one text per each female author. We can therefore say that 5 per cent of the texts in the anthology represent women authors. I would like to point out also that in men’s writing, the female characters are mostly silent (as well as nameless, anonymous). In these playlets, they are not even allowed to speak, thus depriving them of their own voice and the possibility of articulating their own position and role. 16 Unequal Representation of Women: Silent (Silenced, Non- speaking, Voiceless) Characters As analysed in The Generator, we cannot overlook that this kind of representation of women and womanliness is numerically predominant within the so-called men’s writing in the period 1968–1986. The unequal representation of genders and its con- sequences are also visible in other areas of the arts and the public in general. Maja Kač’s article “Spominjanje žensk v javnem prostoru: ‘Dokler o njih ne govorimo, jih ne spravljamo v zavest’” (“Remembering Women in the Public Space: ‘Unless we talk about them, we do not become aware of them’”) provides some data for Slovenia. The data at the global scale that Criado Perez cites in her comprehensive study Invisible Women do not differ significantly. While she does not quote specific figures for theatre or drama, it can be inferred from the many diverse examples she gives that female characters are under-represented, even absent, or often silent, in broader everyday situations as well as in artistic media. That is to say, they do not speak or have no right to a voice, even when a woman is the main protagonist. With regard to women’s silence and the lack of (verbal) representation of women in the arts, mainly film and television, Criado Perez notes the following: “ An analysis of G-rated (suitable for children) films released between 1990 and 2005 found that only 28% of speaking roles went to female characters” (20). 17 Further analysis shows that men have more roles and spend twice as much time on screen – this rises to nearly three times as much when, as most films do, the film has a male lead (Criado Perez 20). Moreover: “Men also get more lines, speaking twice as much as women overall; three times as much in films with male leads; and almost twice as much in 16 “Egist: You’ve been to the garden? Vida: Yep. Egist: You’ve seen death? Vida: Yep. Egist: Well, then you can shut up!” (316). 17 The book Invisible Women is based on cross-cultural comparative analysis and a wide range of international statistical date including analyses of different everyday life situations. Originally published in 2019, it draws on the most up-to-date (statistical) data and studies (Slovenian translation in 2022 by UMco publishing). 302 films with male and female co-leads” (20). There is much more data like this, which shows gender inequalities and confirms the majority representation of men in films and on television (in terms of presence, numerical predominance, visibility and ver- bal representation). A similarly unbalanced situation (in terms of gender) is evident when analysing gender representation on statues, banknotes, and even in the news (radio and TV and newspaper media) and textbooks (20–21). Women’s share in rep- resentation is a mere 24%: that is, of the women we listen to or read about (radio, TV and newspaper) (21). This is a figure measured globally. In Slovenia, this percentage might be even lower. An example from the Register of Immovable Cultural Heritage in Slovenia, according to the article by Maja Kač, quotes the following data: out of 233 statues in Slovenia, only ten are dedicated to the memory of women; 223, or 96%, are dedicated to men. Women’s Writing: Distinctive Characteristics As for the distinctive characteristics of women’s writing – Borovnik designates it as women’s literature, meaning literature written by women authors – Silvija Borovnik notes that it is only in women’s writing that the poor conditions of work and the cir- cumstances in which it is produced are more often exposed; it exposes gender equal- ity as just apparent, it raises “the woman question”, and it is thus closely linked to the social position of women (24–25). Thus, in her discussion Do Women Write Differ- ently?, Borovnik establishes and reinforces the awareness of the thematic difference between men’s and women’s writing: “The thematic range is certainly the area where it is still easiest to talk about the ‘male’ and the ‘female’ in literature” (227). In my opinion, an important observation by Borovnik here is to highlight the topics of politi- cal matters and national destiny in men’s writing. In contrast, women’s writing shows its connection to the feminist movement, the struggle for women’s emancipation, and the personal, or private, as political (Borovnik 227). Borovnik further notes that it is thus not unusual for women’s writing to take form initially as experiential literature, with a large portion of autobiographical and confessional material, often protesting (from personal, authentic experience through first-person confession) against the so- cially reproduced patriarchal image of women, and thus establishing women as sub- jects (224–225). Borovnik adds that women’s writing often resorts to the devices of the humorous, the absurd and the grotesque, as well as irony (243). From all this, it can be concluded that it is only with the emergence of women’s writing that the awareness about the problems of women’s under-representation, the emphasis on the specificity of their marginal (creative) position, and the ideological creation of the silence of women’s position in public come to the fore. Because most male writers were not interested in these topics, they were usually not part of their (personal) ex- 303 perience, and they did not feel the need to legitimise them. The under-representation of women’s dramatic writing consequently leaves out of the drama a whole plethora of female topics, often including the establishment of female characters as full-blood- ed subjects. The difference between men’s and women’s writing can be detected al- ready in the few examples of men’s writing in The Generator anthology. Let us look at some examples. Examples of the Representation of Woman(liness) in Women’s Dramatic Writing from The Generator Anthology In contrast to the men’s writing in The Generator anthology, all the female authors have female characters with content who are given a voice and the opportunity to speak. In two authors, Brina Švigelj and Ifigenija Zagoričnik, the characters interest- ingly come from the classical European dramatic repertoire, namely Ophelia and the ancient queen Clytemnestra. The motifs arising in women’s writing in The Generator are strikingly similar: 18 witchcraft, burning at the stake, witch hunts and witch trials, and women are placed in the role of victims. Sacrifice, imprisonment and the limita- tion of freedom are frequent topics, as well as sexual and physical abuse, disguised as metaphors in the dramatic treatment, drawing on fantastic, fairy-tale, and folk motifs or using mythological characters. In Ifigenija Zagoričnik’s play stepping outside she is free, Clytemnestra finds herself in the focus of a centuries-long witch hunt. The passage concludes with the burning of the stake that awaits Clytemnestra, accompanied by other women (xenia, xanthippe, her mother and the mother of God). Similarly, in Svetlana Makarovič’s play Starci: Igra v osmih slikah (Old People: A Play in Eight Pictures) (Lukan 128), the motifs of witchcraft, the witch trials and the character of the witch named Orange, who makes clouds and wind and sunflowers, are present. Significant is the motif of the (witch’s personal) freedom. Fairy tale and fantasy motifs and variations of motifs and char- acters are present, as well as gender swaps, for example, the witch from Hansel and Gretel. Here it is a couple of evil older men who cage the younger victims and feed on their dreams and youth. The motif of femicide also appears: all that remains of the victim is a charred, broken and mangled corpse, which again emphasises the victim’s anonymity. 19 “But yesterday I was Marjetica, and today I have no name anymore, isn’t it strange, in this cold” (143). 18 Strikingly, as they are not thematically coordinated, but rather individual texts that have only been selected to appear together post festum. 19 Makarovič’s play abounds with characters that are considered stereotypes of the Slovenian national psychological character, such as the possessive pathological mother on the one hand and outcast (elderly) childless witches on the other. 304 There are some elements of personal confession and autobiography in the authors’ work, playing with familiar motifs from the classical dramatic repertoire and ancient Greek mythology or classical tragedy (Clytemnestra, Ophelia) in terms of content and words and reworking them in a personal-authorial way. In Makarovič’s work, for ex- ample, one can notice the distinctive style of her poetry and ballads, as well as her reinterpretations of folk motifs (maidens, orphans), the predominance of dark atmo- sphere, cruel imagery, specific iterations (“in this cold”), etc. Ifigenija Zagoričnik uses the character of Queen Clytemnestra. However, the author’s introduction of sacrifice – a witch trial with burning at the stake – instead evokes a confessional-personal effect and autobiographical derivation of various motifs from ancient Greek tragedy and mythology (e.g., the appearance of Clytemnestra’s daugh- ter Iphigenia), 20 combining the original sacrifice of Iphigenia by Agamemnon (based on a motif from Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, translated to Slovenian by K. Gantar) and Orestes’ matricide of Clytemnestra (in Aeschylus’ Oresteia) as a reaction to her revenge on Agamemnon. The author emphasises the female characters and the sacri- ficial role of the (noble) woman, the queen and Iphigenia’s mother. Similarly, Brina Švigelj (intimately and personally) reinterprets a classical motif, which appears to be more about the emigration motif of Beautiful Vida. However, it is the use of the name (Ophelia) that testifies to a more tragic resolution of the fate of the young girl who has left for parts unknown (perhaps by train or by taxi, as the text implies) and disappeared in the darkness of the disappointing first (and last) night of love. Švigelj’s language in Ofelija (Ophelia) is poetic, full of metaphors, and subtly sensitive to nuance and mood changes, testifying to the depth of inner feeling and richness of sensory impressions and emotional moods, which distinguishes it from the otherwise realistic language and action, and sometimes also the absurdist and conceptually conceived nature of much of the men’s writing in The Generator. An analysis of these texts shows that women’s writing reproduces a different repre- sentation of womanliness than men’s writing. Men’s writing reduces the role of wom- en to silent (non-speaking, voiceless, even silenced) characters; it is dominant and thus determines the social image of women. 21 Women’s writing plays with the (liter- ary) tendency of men’s writing to represent women as silent characters by highlight- ing, raising awareness of, reflecting on and reinterpreting it. In this regard, Švigelj’s artistic treatment of the plot in Ophelia is crucial. Positioning the silent female char- acter into a central role does not take the silent female character for granted, nor does 20 The playlet is signed by Ifigenija (Zagoričnik), a name that in ancient Greek tragedy or mythology designates the daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon (in the play, husbands and sons are reduced to a supporting role, mentioned in their function of potential betrayal), who was sacrificed to the gods by her own father in order to make the military campaign against Troy possible. The author’s playing with names suggests a personal reinterpretation of the myth. 21 Let us recall that in one of the most famous Slovenian (political) plays, Dominik Smole’s Antigona (Antigone, 1960), the titular character remains silent, in fact even absent, as she does not appear in the play at all. 305 it reduce it to an irrelevant side character but willingly emphasises the silence itself. Although a constant topic of conversation by other characters and central to the ac- tion, Ophelia is exposed as absent and silent by a skilful dramatic manoeuvre. 22 There is a great deal of repetition, pauses, silences, sighs (“(short break)” 330–331, 333), un- spoken thoughts, the language is at times disrupted, there are many innuendos, hints, insinuations without a definite answer as to where the young girl has disappeared to after a night of love. What is significant is the change of (patriarchal) discourse into a feminine/feminist one, in the sense of acknowledging and affirming the pain, the anguish of a young girl, the end of a young path due to deviating from the social norm and what is considered appropriate for the female gender: “Too independent, they must have said” (328); “People talk, you know, about their evenings on the shore” (331); “Her dress was too short” (332). Švigelj’s writing in Ophelia already anticipates, to a certain extent, the characteristics that can be found (with no indication of direct influence), for example, in the more contemporary dramatic women’s writing of Simona Semenič. 23 There are gaps, paus- es, interstices, and silences, which indicate a rebellion against and a break with men’s writing. The patriarchal discourse suddenly proves to be insufficient, imposed from the perspective of a different view. A proper alternative to this was not yet offered since, at the time (1966–86), the new (women’s) writing had not yet won its place en masse. We can only speak of that in more contemporary dramatic examples. The Female Silent (Non-speaking, Voiceless, Silenced) Character I use the silent character as a metaphor for the representation of woman(liness) (or its absence), as this goes directly to the heart of the theme of gender politics and hegemonic gender relations in performing arts or drama. Moreover, it explicitly the- matises the very position of silence that became established as the representation of woman(liness) throughout the history of Slovenian drama. I use the example of Simo- na Hamer’s dramatic writing as an example of contemporary women’s writing that can critically reflect on and articulate the silent and verbally absent representation of women (besides the aforementioned Ophelia by Švigelj). Simona Hamer’s The Silent Character was written or, rather, performed as part of the 2010 action preglej: Zakon! (preglej The Act!) and 2011’s The Act: Third Reading, 24 where the silent character or 22 In Švigelj’s playlet, we can also see a clear division and gender polarisation between the male (the young boy dressed as a page) and the female perspective, the First One and the Second One (by all appearances Ophelia’s chambermaids, her (personal and intimate) confidants, comforters, which also includes the role of the chorus, the people). 23 The fragmentation of writing, pauses, language, the abandonment of (grammatical) rules and norms points to the problematisation of existing patriarchal values and ideological narratives and discourses into which women are forced. 24 The Act: Third Reading was a performative action of the then group or drama laboratory PreGlej (later Preglej), which was clearly politically oriented and explicitly socially engaged, while by no means gender-neutral. The title of The Act refers to the family legislation act, while Third Reading refers to the National Assembly reading the bill in 2010. 306 rather her silence, appears in an explicitly articulated form. The Silent Character is an (experimental) theatrical text, more akin to a playlet in length, as it only takes up two pages in its original publication. Thus, formally, it bears similarities with the modern- ist drama experiments of The Generator. 25 In The Silent Character, there is a discrepancy between its verbal, spoken part and its visual part. 26 The spoken text is represented by instructions (that can be staged by a voice from the off). There is an evident lack here, as the content of the text/instruc- tions refers to a character that is not verbally represented in the text, the silent char- acter. The silent character is absent at the speech level, she is silent, and the play is about the absence of her verbal re-presentation. As such, the silent character cannot exist in the dramatic text. It can only exist outside the text, hidden in the didascalies or stage directions as a performative trace. Her mode of existence is in her presence and her reduction to bare corporeality. In The Silent Character, this is doubly emphasised, both in terms of content and per- formance. The silent character is not a gender-neutral character, nor is it merely a lin- guistic function or a neutral signifier. As the author points out: the silent character has genitals and breasts as well. The silent character is a female character, albeit subject to de-subjectification, objectification and reduction to gender. The instructions of the voice from the off, i.e., the director of the torturous situation, literally force her to expose herself publicly, her intimacy, and her gender. If I were to use the patriarchal discourse, I could claim that the reduction of the silent character to her gender, to her corporeality and to the visual, external, superficial dimension functions as a symbolic artistic castra- tion. The text acquired additional meaning through its performance, as in The Act: Third Reading, the silent character was performed by the author Simona Hamer herself (12 March 2010 at Cankarjev dom), thus positioning her role of a female playwright within the symbolic sexual and dramatic relations of contemporary drama. In this way, through her cunning use of the silent character in contemporary women’s playwriting, Hamer manages to critically reflect on the position of the female playwright within the patriar- chal discourse and to draw attention to her reduction to silence. In Simona Hamer’s work, silent characters are formally and stylistically separated from the main text – by italics. They can therefore be found only in stage directions which in drama theory represent the marginal position and reduction to secondary 25 In both form and content, her performance text is reminiscent of a work of high modernism, Samuel Beckett’s meta- theatre text Catastrophe (1982), which also consists of instructions performed by the director, his assistant and the object, which is mute. The text is dedicated to the Czechoslovak playwright (and later president) Václav Havel. Beckett wrote it at the time of Havel’s imprisonment for dissent, and it is thus one of his few explicitly political works. 26 The playlet is formally divided into four parts, separated vertically and horizontally. The first part is a description of the (dramatic) situation of the silent character. The second part is a voice from the off, giving instructions to the silent character (regarding the action). The third part is an instruction to us, the readers or viewers, on how to act in relation to the performance or the text: “WHAT PART DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? / NO, DON’T READ – LOOK!!!” (this is a visual simulation of shouting at the spectator/reader). The fourth and final part is a footnote in small print: “This is a silent character. / There is nothing else / except what you see. / …” (The Act: Third Reading 34). 307 text that may or may not be staged. By depriving the silent characters of the right to speak and of the main text, they are condemned in their own impotence to be at the mercy of and dependent on the big other, the narrator and the author or, rather, direc- tor, to give them visibility (and audibility) or to deprive them of it. 27 Five years after The Act: Third Reading and The Silent Character (2010), Hamer further developed and expanded the concept of the silent character in her play Nemi liki (Si- lent Characters, 2015), in which silent characters refer to all socially deprived groups, not only women, but all nameless marginalised groups and existences, expressing the roles of the many interchangeable and, from the point of view of society, expendable anonymous people. 28 Hamer thus extends her critique of patriarchy and systems of power and value to the critique of the turbo-capitalist consumerist system. 29 What about Representation of Women and Womanliness in Playwriting Today? A Change for the Better? In Slovenian drama, gender representation only started to move towards equality af- ter 2000: In 2001, the number of anonymous submissions for the Slavko Grum Award increased (2001). For the first time in 2002, women were in the majority on the jury. In 2007, the award was given to a female author for the first time. Since 2007, the Slavko Grum Award has become more gender-balanced in general, although still male-domi- nated: the award has been thus given eight times to male authors, five times to female authors, and twice to several authors. Overall, in the last 16 years (2007–2022), the award has been given eight times to female authors and ten times to male authors. Men still tend to be awarded the prize in a higher proportion. However, the situation regarding the presence and gender representation of female playwrights has changed radically. To confirm this, I would also like to quote Maja Šorli’s observation, who compared the activities of the theatre collective Pupilija Ferkeverk and their predecessors, the so-called Pupilčki (Pupilceks) poetry groups (active in the 1960s) to the more contemporary participants of PreGlej (the so-called PreGlejčki were active around the breaking year 2007). As she puts it: 27 Simona Hamer developed the concept of silent characters in her project lasting until 2015, and concluded the two-year accompanying part of her artistic research with a (practical) round table at the 2014 Maribor Theatre Festival entitled Silent Character(s) in Dramatic Literature, on Stage and in Reality. 28 From migrants, the countless anonymous refugees and underpaid workers from the Middle East, victims of verbal harassment, physical and sexual violence, female victims of war, women, nameless cleaners and secretaries, maids, nightclub dancers, etc. 29 Simona Hamer’s Silent Characters is still a play in which only men speak all the time, be it teenagers or their fathers, soldiers, nightclub customers and businessmen. The reproduction of the patriarchal representation of women in showbiz, entertainment and capitalist consumerist society is supported by quotations from the lyrics of famous pop stars (Beyonce, Rihanna, Rita Ora, Nicky Minaj), who sing about helpfulness, submissiveness, the female body and its objectification in over-sexualised lyrics. 308 The artists – the poets of the groups 441, 442 and the 443 movement – were all male, and it was only with Pupilija that a kind of gender balance was reached. The female co-travellers (as Ivo Svetina calls them) did not write their own poetry. Moreover, this is the fundamental difference between the Preglejčki and the Pupilčki. The PGLab was dominated by women, while in the performance of Devet lahkih komadov (Nine Easy Pieces), the number of performers was balanced by gender. 30 (Šorli 74) For example, in The Act: Third Reading by the Preglej group (staged in 2010, published in 2011), which also contains the text The Silent Character, which I am analysing in comparison to The Generator anthology, there are seven texts in total, the majority of which, specifically five texts, are written by women and two by men. 31 The gender ratio in the Preglejčki group shifted to 5/7, or 71 per cent, in favour of female authors or rather playwrights during the course of over a quarter of a century. Conclusion In this paper, I focus on the problem of the unequal representation of gender in the area of Slovenian drama, especially in the period 1966–1986, i.e., the explicit domi- nance of male playwrights and the absence of female representation, which is usually interpreted as the consequence of the reality of there being less female playwrights, while less attention is paid to and fewer attempts are made to understand the causes of this situation. In the paper, I address this very issue. With the dominance in the field of drama by male professional authorities and the under-representation of female playwrights in the award mechanisms, the lack of recognition of the importance of female topics or the specificity of women’s work, and the absence of its promotion, the situation of unequal representation between the genders appears to be the effect of the functioning of patriarchal ideology, rather than representing reality. In the rest of this paper, I focus on the significance of this dominant situation of male playwriting for the representation of woman(liness) in Slovenian drama and its ab- sence, as well as for the lack of awareness about the (absence of) female perspective. I illustrate the practical consequences caused by the dominant male playwriting uni- laterally determining the reproduction of the representation of woman(liness)) by using examples from the analysis of men’s writing from The Generator, which turns out to uncritically reproduce the image of anonymous and silent female characters reduced to the visual or sexual dimension. In the case of the one-sided and monolithic, 30 “In the PGLab, in considering our texts, we often come across the topics of equality, equal opportunities and difference, especially in relation to gender politics. The 1960s were the years of sexual liberation, but not of sexual equality and respect. There were no women poets in the 441, 442 and 443 groups. Today, in general, there is still no significant progress in this area, which is why the Preglejčki endeavour to foster respect and equal opportunities for both sexes” (Šorli 85). 31 Two of them are pseudonyms, however, there is gender equivalence in the relationship between the author and their pseudonym. 309 even one-dimensional or stereotypical representation of woman(liness) in male play- writing (at least in the examples of plays from The Generator discussed here; a larger sample of plays would be needed to assess the situation in the history of Slovenian drama in its entirety), I emphasise the need for awareness of systemic blind spots in interpretations that emerge without any awareness of the absence of a female per- spective. Despite being in the majority during this period, male playwriting is neither the normative nor the universal experience in the representation of woman(liness), although it may be presented as such. The female and any other gender perspective are, in fact, excluded from it. This is especially important because this state of patriar- chal domination persists throughout at least three to four decades of Slovenian drama 1966–2006. The imbalance in gender representation, the historical lack of representation of wom- en’s writing and the dominance of men’s writing render an alternative, diverse and balanced representation of woman(liness) impossible and impoverished; the whole range of critical treatment of specific (female) topics and diversity in the portrayals of female characters (representations of women) is missing. Thus arises the danger of domination and reproduction of a narrow, passive, objectified and male-centred representation of woman(liness), which on the one hand, is sexualised and, on the other hand, is usually positioned within a patriarchal and/or Christian system of val- ues. It is a representation of woman(liness) that is, first and foremost, silent. Silence, or rather, the silent character, thus turns out to be an appropriate metaphor both for naming the position of (absent) female authors, Slovenian female playwrights and their inadequate representation, i.e., for the real, extra-fictional element, as well as for the (intra-literary, or intra-fictional) representation of female characters within Slovenian drama. Since female playwrights and representations of woman(liness) in Slovenian drama remain silent, the voice and articulation of this silence and absence are also often missing. On the contrary, it is only in female playwriting that the silent character is used as a critical tool for exposing patriarchal domination (in the cases of Brina Švigelj’s Ophelia and Simona Hamer’s The Silent Character). 310 Literature Borovnik, Silvija. Pišejo ženske drugače? O Slovenkah kot pisateljicah in literarnih likih. Mihelač, 1995. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble.: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2006. 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