Sports Play Read Free Page B

through sports events, something that at some stage gets out of control. [In Sports Play ] I associate the metaphors of sports with those of war. The unrest in the former Yugoslavia after all started with a football match that then became charged in nationalist ways and ended in violence. This was the game on the 13 May 1990 between the Croation club Dinamo Zagreb and the Serbian side Red Star Belgrade in Maksimir Stadium.
    SS: It is no coincidence that the culture that first gave us law and democracy also gave us theatre. Theatre seems to excavate the contradictions between justice and law. It strikes me that all plays are born out of a need for justice in the face of the law. That same culture also gave us Sport. What, for you, is the cultural role of Sport?
    EJ: Well, it could be the other way round, possibly it can only be determined by a photo finish. The oldest surviving tragedy, The Persians by Aeschylus, beats Attic democracy by a fraction. The emergence of the latter is dated between the Persian wars and the Peleponnesian wars. Yes, dear Simon, we, the dramatists got there first! It’s interesting that the treatment of historical events by art precedes the civilisation of people through democracy. And after all, “the Persians” are so great because they give back humanity to the opponents, or rather they don’t deny it to them (and not only in order to stress their own martial achievements in victory). At the time [I wrote Ein Sportstück ], I did not realise that football, for example, can also play an incredible political role (and a peacemaking role – as much as football can cause war, it can also cause peace; football is a kind of Geiger counter of civilisation, or rather a moment of acceleration, a catalyst), in a good way as well as a bad. We don’t even need to start talking about the psychoanalytical component. I see sports as everything: transfer, counter transfer, yes, also catharsis, as in Greek tragedy. When I wrote the play I still underestimated this.
    SS: The play, as much as it is a consideration of sport seems also to be a consideration of the relationship between individual authenticity and social or political or moral compromise. It plays out against the axes of sex and the family to excavate these themes. These are themes I recognise from your novels. Are you aware of thematic fascinations? Do you consciously return to interrogate the same ideas again and again? What would you say those themes are?
    EJ: I think that most authors are obsessed by an idea that they keep modifying and varying. With me that’s certainly the case. I am a sort of justice fanatic and I always have to give a voice to those who get a raw deal. In Sports Play , for example, that also includes the mothers who in a way are dispossesed of their children who they lose to the sports fields, although this is often best for both parties. Or, to put it differently: When I see that the boat is overloaded on one side, I have to run to theother side. And sex is of course not a private affair either but always mirrors dominance and servitude. Almost compulsively, so to speak, I always have to include the social implications of things in my writing.
    SS: Is the process involved in writing a play different to the process involved in writing novels?
    EJ: In spite of the fact that my plays often look like prose, as they consist of long blocks of monologues, they are actually not prose. My plays are texts written to be spoken, while prose narrates. Plays are designed for collective reception, prose for individual reception. So you can’t simply say that my plays are a kind of prose since they don’t narrate anything. They talk. They speak. Although recently I’ve noticed that the differences are blurring. My prose is increasingly becoming “speaking”.
    SS: Do you plan your plays or do you depend on instinct or intuition born out of the moment of writing?
    EJ: No, I don’t plan. That