Matjaž Briški    

The Cross

Year of writing: 2004
To be crucified is a heavy cross to bear . – This reflection on the suffering that man experiences and causes to his fellow man is shaped through contemplation of swapping the positions of man and Christ.
Total cast size: 6 (1 f, 5 m)

+ a crowd and a voice off (recorded, age and gender indistinguishable)

grown-ups

drama, grotesque, absurd, poetically philosophic play, one-act play in eight scenes
historical personalities, suicide, family, violence

At a crossing, where the road splits right and left, there is a cross. It is revealed in the moonlight only once the two carpenter apprentices whose voices have been heard from the darkness, manage to put it up. But when the two men leave the scene to fetch the paint for the statue of The Crucified, Christ changes places with the thirty-three-year old man who has, before His eyes, strangled his controlling mother and took his own life.

Matjaž Briški, the writer of The Cross, a poetic and philosophical play, interlaced his work with traces from playwrights who are now considered classics, such as Strniša and Beckett. The characters of the two apprentices allude to the typical pair of clowns from absurdist plays. Absurdity itself gives this play distinctive shape as it asks the very basic questions of human existence and thus exceeds the realm of merely reacting to the present times.

IZE: The road’s forked like a snake’s tongue; it’s a strange place, all right.

COKI: A god-forsaken hell pit.

IZE: Where the devil is, so is God; not necessarily the other way round, though. They both peel their eggs.

COKI: I’m more afraid of God. The devil doesn’t make you feel guilty. Look how this Saviour keeps looking our way.

IZE: This poor devil would have the same fate today.

COKI: You’re a criminal in His sight, but when the devil’s with you you’re clean, even if you do stink to high heaven.

IZE: You mean the purer you are the more you stink.

COKI: No-one can tell if you’ve got a bad conscience.

IZE: You can’t see anything here. The devil could breathe right in your kisser.

COKI: There’s no devil where there’s a cross, is there!

IZE: Don’t call up the devil! With the devil there’s always a cross to bear!

COKI: Well, at least we’ve got it up… the cross I mean! We’ll paint it in the morning first thing, so the boss won’t bawl us out again.

IZE: Bloody eggs, they’ve given me gas, and how.

COKI: Yep, you’re a bad egg when you’re egg-bound all right. Wow! He farts and laughs.

IZE: We should probably be pushing off now.

COKI: The worst is behind us! He points at the Saviour on the cross.

IZE: You mean that devil is. They burst out laughing and fart away in the dark; the moon disappears behind the clouds.

Translations

Lesley Ann Wade

The cross: in eight scenes

Language of translation: English
Matjaž Briški: Križ: v osmih prizorih = Cross: in eight scenes. Kranj: Prešernovo gledališče 2006
COBISS record

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Awards, nominations, shortlists and recommendations

Slavko Grum Award for Best Play

The Cross is a cruel play, set in the impoverished present, but abstract enough to give a wider impression beyond this moment and current situation in our society. Namely, it is about the relationship between the sacred and the secular, the godly and the banal. The events of Good Friday that have significantly informed history up until today, i.e., for almost two millennia, take a similar turn in the play as the first-time round. As though all this is just a variation and a farce where the crowd is not distracted from their actions, not even by god himself, present as a living Christ. In its tone and questions that it addresses, The Cross reminds us of a dark, Strniša-like grotesque. This is a bitter and funny play that evokes some classic scenes from theatre of the absurd, except it is written in short, agile, rhyming lines, packed full of puns and plays on words, nonsenses and twists. Even though the language often seems self-devouring, turned inward, it does not reach a plethora of associations nor does it hinder dramatic action, quite the opposite, it enhances and drives it. Despite all its allusions to tradition, The Cross is distinctly separated from it and does not feel anachronistic. This play is a new, mature and articulated, original contemplation on the fundamental and the transcendental, and as such a vital contribution to Slovenian contemporary playwriting.

2005

Play's productions

Directed by: Samo M. Strelec

Križ

SNG Nova Gorica, 2014

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