Boris Pintar and Jana Pavlič: Castration machines – theatre and art in the nineties

The essence of quality, curiosity, peculiarity, in short, of excellence of Castration Machines lies within the syntagm of the nineties. The book deals with artistic creativity, for the most part precisely with the theatre in the last decade of the 20th century, namely the performances of the theatre people that have provided the basic innovative characteristics with their interpretations and concepts at home and in the world. It is a book of testimonies about a decade that has made a very remarkable switch from modernism to postmodernism in art, but at the same time also comprises the search for new ways out of it, and – which is especially remarkable and precious – the switch also contains self-reflection, for the authors are not merely thinkers, theatrologists, but were also active co-participants throughout. Following from this self-reflection is not only a rich, so to speak, generational note, which can be of special interest for the readers, but also unique documentation material. Along with this documentarity, it must be emphasized that the writers were very evident, plastic, precise with the data and descriptions, and clear-sighted makers of an inventory of a long series of almost all the key Slovenian and also several foreign performances in the nineties (from Western Europe to Scandinavia, to America and Japan).

As focused on its period and for this period specific artistic interpretation of life, society, the world conditions, this book is the only one so far to provide an insight into the creation of the more and more important generation of younger Slovenian theatre people. And also, what could be most vivid for the general readership, it installs the Slovenian contemporary theatre production into the contemporary world theatre creative contexts with a documentational and interpretational self-evidence, which can calmly, justifiably and provably be understood also as a cosmopolitan self-esteem. This plural thus emphasizes another excellence of Castration Machines: the authors describe, analyse and substantiate creative plurality in Slovenian theatre production of the nineties as something that is understood