Tamara Matevc    

I’ve Had Enough!

Year of writing: 2011
When was it that you were last standing powerless in front of a door, your very own version of The Door? Be it for an administrative bureaucratic idiotically absurd reason of not having put the right card on the counter or perhaps haven’t aligned it with the right edge? A cruel, bloody, shocking, provocative, blatantly brutal, tender, poetic and vulnerable play.
Total cast size: 3 (1–3 f, 2 m)
grotesque, absurd, poetic drama
wheels of bureaucracy, class and cultural criticism of the society, guilt, interpersonal relations

A heavily pregnant Oldie (47) turns up in a waiting room of an admission office at the maternity ward when her contractions start on Christmas Eve. She is waiting in front of the door marked “DO NOT KNOCK” holding a ticket with the number 46 despite the empty waiting room. Door or rather The Door won’t let her through, rules are rules and rules have to be respected, also she hasn’t put her health insurance card on the counter not to mention “ … who does she think she is getting pregnant at her age!” Oldie’s contractions grow stronger, but The Door suspects that she is probably only faking going into labour. Once the child is born, The Door keeps exerting further and further pressure on Oldie until she brutally rejects her own child. Later, however, she manages to pull a neatly wrapped present from underneath the tacky Christmas tree in the corner. The present is an axe which Oldie uses to hack The Door into pieces. The child and its mother can finally bond, confide their fears and expectations to each other and connect.

Every one of us has found themselves powerless, standing in front of a door, “The Door”, at the mercy of the cogs of bureaucracy that run the modern world and determine its value system. Every one of us found themselves silently sobbing in distress whilst others, drunk with their temporary position of power, pointed their fingers at them with indulgence over what they did wrong or at a wrong moment in time …

STARULJA: You need a name. I have to give you a name. But – how should I call you if I don’t know who you are?

CHILD: Star.

STARULJA: Star, Star … like a star?

CHILD: Star, Star.

STARULJA: I am left with Ulja then. Would you like calling your mother Ulja?

CHILD: No.

STARULJA: I wouldn’t like it either. You have to pick out new letters.

CHILD: Beehive.

STARULJA: Hm. – Ulj?

CHILD: Hive.

STARULJA: Ulj.

CHILD: Yes.

STARA: Good, Ulj. I am giving you three letters from my name and I bless you: be always full of honey. She sings. Lalala … ralahnananah … nanah … nanani …

Anja Bunderla

I’ve had enough!

Language of translation: English

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