Nena Navalha Slovski (Nenad Aleksovski) is participating in the International Literary Creation Competition, 7th Edition, from Nova Oeiras, Portugal. We thank him for his participation and wish him success.

TOTAL  IONESCOSTHESIA

…so, here I am, all stretched out on this bloody uncomfortable ‘designer brand’ aluminium chair that was, undoubtedly, designed by some frustrated sadist. Seriously, I was asking myself what kind of a sick prick invents an existential torture device, and then markets it as trandy minimalist furniture? Why buy this? — „Ah, yes, its structural hostility really brings the room together.” Hey, it’s a pipe! A cold aluminium tube engineered specifically to fracture your spine.

— Sofia, throw bagaço at me, please – I said decisively to the cute girl behind the bar.

— Nena, how the hell can you drink that stuff?…It’s pure poison. — she said with her cute cheeky voice full with teasingly pretending disdain.

…I offered her a misterious smile and took a polite sip…oh yes, I can drink this, I just adore this full-throttle liquid explosion distillated of raw Portuguese grapes and pure hostility…as it hit my tongue, the sheer power of that Bairrada-born explosion didn’t just burn; it began to waltz, to dance, and flirt outrageously with my stubborn Macedonian blood and soul. Oh yes, calling bagaço a mere ‘beverage’ is an absolute insult.

— Poison? This awesome transparent little liquid thing? Oh, no, no…absolutely not! — I said, while feeling the bagaço stripping the lining from my throat with the clinical efficiency of an industrial thinner. — My dear Sofia, the bagaço has that unique kind of a savage beauty that sends a very nasty and brutal shockwaves straigth to your liver and your emotions, but bypasses your brain and your happiness — leaving you perfectly clear-headed. Cheers to that!

— Whatever — Sofia shot back: — Anyway, it’s you who will die drinking that, Nena. Not me. Cheers!…by the way,  I saw that review in Cultura Da Semana on the counter. They call you ‘the visionary’, they said that you ‘broke the established aesthetics of staging  Ionesco’!…Congratulations, Nena…now people know about you…pitty that bagaço will soon kill you.

— Ah, you little mermaid, just shut up — I said to her with a playful, teasing wink, and leaned back, waiting for the rest of the existential misfits from our Teatar Nervozni to finally show up.

…it was a really surreal situation! The theatre critics from Cultura Da Semana praised our performance as the ultimate, visceral embodiment of Ionesco’s anti-play aesthetics. They claimed that we, the little independent Teatar Nervozni, had single-handedly, with grandiose precision, ripped to absolute shreds the dull, tiresome fabric of contemporary staging of Ionesco’s plays!…Bloody hell! — and the beautiful irony of it all? This entire situation is happening because I am an idiot who did not label his extension cords and cables. So what? I am indeed an idiot who never labels cables. Why should I? There is no need! They are our cables, for God’s sake! We know them by heart, we know them by our very bones! Why do I need a little piece of tape telling me what I already know?

            But, that is nothing compared to what Tais and her industrial swing rotary floor cleaning machine did — Tais is the theatre’s sixty-two-year-old cleaning lady with profound pragmatism, ruthless with her cleaning machine, and she has a bus to catch. Specifically, the one at 7:14 PM to Almada, which waits for no person…and then came yesterday — the afternoon of our premiere. I had painstakingly curated, arranged, and verified every single strand of our backstage wiring. It was a piece of standard, cool, flawlessly functional audio engineering. But fate is a cruel playwright! The cables were stretched across the stage, and directly in the path of Tais and her motorized monster – the industrial swing rotary floor cleaning machine. With the clock ticking mercilessly toward 7:14 PM, she had absolutely no time for trivial concepts like ‘artistic intent’ or ‘human consideration’. With cold, systematic brutality, she unplugged the main dimmer rack. She ripped out the audio snake. She severed the audio console and the stage practicals. She vacuumed the floor linoleum until it mocked me with a mirror shine, and then — in an act of pure, chaotic and unintentional malice — she plugged them all back in! Randomly! Just like that, jamming each helpless cable in the closest available plug she saw — she somehow managed to plug a DMX lighting data cable into an analog audio interface. The fog machine’s power supply was somehow routed through the master volume fader. The stage right strobe light was plugged into the audio channel meant for the accordion!

            I did not notice all that until the curtain went up. By then, it was way too late. When our lead actor André turned on the microphone for the accordion, he was violently bathed in a seizure-inducing strobe light. When Rita turned to say the lines about Popesco Rosenfeld, the fog machine blasted a thick, opaque cloud directly into her face, and at the people in the first raw of the audience. Oh, the climax of the play—a poignant moment of silence— instead of clinically precise spot-light change, we experienced a brutally powerful disonnant augmented chord from the accordion played through tthe subwoofer fixed at the botom of the stage!…and yes, I sat in the booth, numb as cement, with my head in my hands, waiting to be fired!…but, instead — the curtain fell to a standing ovation! Unbelievable! Bloody hell, we heard ‘Bravo!’, ‘Caraças!’, ‘Ótimo!’, hands clapping endlessly…and then, Senhor Alexandre Do Souto, the main guy from the Board for Funding Arts from the Ministry of Culture, calmly and politely asked me to be in his office first thing in the morning!…that’s it, that’s the very moment when one actually start to think of immigrating out of this beautiful country!

…so, this day started with my visit to the Office of the Arts Fund Comission — I promised myself that I will be honest, and sincerely explain what the heck happened to the performance last night…and just before I opened my mouth, Senhor Do Souto hit his desk, and loudly said:

— Nena, maluco, weirdo, bravo for you and Teatar Nervozni!…What a performance that was! Keep the play exactly as it was last night. Powerful, unexpected twists, very intellectual and stylish! Do not touch a single thing. It is new perception of Ionesco, new absurd, real post-aesthetics!..you made a revolution, Nena!…You have next two months weekends in Baixo Alto Teatro, and after we will give you the Espaço Lisboarte!

…I still did not manage to open my mouth properly and try to say something, Senhor Do Souto was unstopable:

— Now, what we want is that Teatar Nervozni produce a new performance, with the same energy, same aesthetics, same sharp artistically brave approach…The Arts Council will fund you with a sum of fifty thousand euros! Talk with the others from your group, and let me know tomorrow what you guys think about this!

— Senhor Do Souto, thank you in my name, and in the name of Teatar Nervozni for your kind words! We are really happy and honoured that you and the Council enjoyed our work. I will immediatelly contact the guys, we will meet and discuss, and certainly I will call you tomorrow.

…I closed my eyes…I drank an imaginary little glass of bagaço, and I made an intimate toast: „To Tais! May she never miss any bus in her life!”

…and here I am, few hours later, stretched in this designer malice — cracking my bones and charmingly shouting:

— Sofia, shoot me with another bagaço, please!

…and there they are, finally coming, enterring one after another, the wonderful bastards from our Teatar Nervozni…I cannot wait to tell them the news.