Warning for sensitive souls: attakk fahxi, moqziez u personali fuq il-persuna tas-Segretarju Parlamentari Ghall-Kultura

Published: April 12, 2013 at 1:09am

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Jose Herrera had a meeting today with a German theatre researcher called Hans-Thies Lehmann, the deviser of the concept of ‘postdramatic theatre’ (our Jose must have been absolutely riveted).

I, on the other hand, was riveted by Herrera’s quite spectacular nose hairs (click on this image and you will see what I mean) and by the fact that nobody – not even Veronique Dalli – has bothered to buy him one of those nose-hair clippers you used to find in Christmas crackers.

Don’t good barbers see to these things any more, or does he douse them with MiracleGro in between visits?

Perhaps he plans to turn them into an unusually located moustache.

About his visitor, and postdramatic theatre:

The notion of “postdramatic theatre” was established by German theatre researcher Hans-Thies Lehmann in his 1999 book with the same title, summarizing a number of tendencies and stylistic traits occurring in avant-garde theatre since the end of the 1960s. The theatre which Lehmann calls postdramatic is not primarily focused on the drama in itself, but evolves a performative aesthetic in which the text of the drama is put in a special relation to the material situation of the performance and the stage. Thus postdramatic theatre is more striving to produce an effect amongst the spectators than to remain true to the text.

In its most radical varieties, postdramatic theatre knows no “plot” at all, but concentrates fully on the interaction between text and audience.

I fell asleep just reading about it. Jose Herrera must feel like such a chump. While Manuel Mallia gets to play Big Policeman with the prisons, he’s sitting there listening to tedious drivel in which he has zero interest.

And then when he remembers all that time he wasted having meetings with judges about their salaries, secure in the knowledge that he was the next Justice Minister…

Oh well. Things could be worse. He could be Jason Micallef.




10 Comments Comment

  1. La Redoute says:

    Veronique Dalli’s busy rubber-stamping government planning permits.

  2. Harry Purdie says:

    Love it, Daphne. Was going to put my head down, but had to comment.

    ‘Postdramatic theatre’. Isn’t that when you wait through a whole scene, holding it, in order to not disturb others, before you rush to pee?

  3. Gahan says:

    The German theatre director didn’t bring a suit with him to Malta because he wasn’t expecting to meet the ‘minister’.

    A form of post-dramatic theatre:

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121214/local/pl-franco-debono-xarabank.449597

  4. Min Jaf says:

    Herrera probably figures that, once he cannot roof the “roofless theatre” majtezwel put on plays with no plot. The PL supporters forming the audience could not tell the difference, in any case.

    Might even evolve into plays with no actors – the ultimate budget-friendly performance, where people in the audience sit around and watch and criticise one another. Not unlike the great days of the old Teatro Reale, in fact, but without the class.

  5. Maria Xriha says:

    Did Joseph place him there to watch him struggle between resignation and forging on?

    Would the Herreras be better friends of the President’s than the JM inner circle? I wonder what Consuelo really thinks about what has happened. I wonder how well dissatisfaction is settling, and what it will become.

  6. mattie says:

    Jekk dan jifhem fil-kultura, jien nifhem fl-Olympics.

  7. Wilson says:

    I am intrigued by how Herrera is actually handling all this. I really wonder what sort of foothold in this subject could he possibly have. Maybe the nose hairs increase his sensory perception with cognitive intimacy.

  8. TinaB says:

    “Attakk fahxi fuq is-suf ta’ mnieher Jose Herrera mis-sahhara tal-Wardija.”

  9. Darkwolf says:

    Appointing someone such as Jose Herrera as cultural minister?
    Perhaps this is an indirect way of Muscat basically saying “FUCK YOU” to anyone expecting anything of him before forcing them to resign.

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