Opening the Drawer and Pulling out the Knife

Ivana Růžičková

OPENING THE DRAWER AND PULLING OUT THE KNIFE (OTEVÍRÁM ZÁSUVKU A VYNDAVÁM NŮŽ)

1 woman, 1 man

This play, inspired by a text by Sarah Cane, is divided into two parts. In the first part, stylised poetically and linguistically for puppets, a puppet-woman appears in an inner monologue related to the sleeping puppet-man also onstage. In this part of the play the puppet-woman herself speaks most of the man's lines, which are supposed to evoke important moments of their relationship. The puppet-woman plays them over, parodies them, treats them with irony. The first part takes place in the early morning, after a night spent together. Separate motifs are associatively layered and piled up. In the second naturalistically conceived part, the man meets the woman in the evening. The characters play essentially the same situation on which the puppet-woman reflected. Through being dismembered into the lines of the characters, the texts of the inner monologue gain rapaciousness and rawness. The second part could be understood as the evening before the night spent together. Two barren lovers meet, tossing between love and hate, tenderness and brutality, mutual exhaustion and the need to be with each other, in a vicious circle of longing and its discharge. By inverting the time, the two parts of the play illuminate each other and at the same time throw light on the one-sided interpretation of the relationship between a man and a woman.