The issue of corporeality is one of the dominant motifs in contemporary women’s playwriting in the countries formed after the collapse of Yugoslavia. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries women’s bodies function as a specific open register in their works, where real-life content is included. The body is also an instrument which detects the meanings of social actions and interactions. According to the authors – mainly from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro – the body becomes a constantly-transforming palimpsestic, multi-layered body-text which delivers information about the logic of control. The body-centric perspective here is connected with the problematization of the characters’ reactions to some mechanisms of normalization, classification, and increasing productivity of the bodies in their population. The changes in the configuration of control modes and everyday practices in some areas of women’s life activity are presented. The female authors, e.g.: Milena Bogavac, Maja Pelević (Serbia), Lada Kaštelan, Ivana Sajko (Croatia), Jasna Šamić, Elma Tataragić (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Nataša Nelević (Montenegro), Simona Semenič (Slovenia) illustrate some rituals and transgressions concerning procreation, female visual representations and the body losing its fitness and becoming isolated. In their artistic descriptions the authors confirm the relationship between the cultural and psychological inscription of the female body and female difference in language and text. Article received: December 13, 2018; Article accepted: January 23, 2019; Pulbished online: April 15, 2019; Original scholarly paperHow to cite this article: Abrasowicz, Gabriela. "Discourse on Corporeality and the Logic of Control in the Works of Contemporary post-Yugoslav Women Playwrights." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 18 (2019): 51–64. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i18.296

The aim of this article is to present selected aspects of medicalization and politicization of the female body as a theme in contemporary Croatian drama and theatre. Our analysis presents artistic proposals discussing women's reproductive functions and dysfunctions (such as pathology of pregnancy, the destructive power of the pregnancy metaphor, physiology and philosophy of pregnancy, infertility and in vitro) illustrated by four plays written by women playwrights from Croatia. The exemplification is an abridged overview of the most representative textual-theatrical strategies in the socially and politically engaged "ginedramas" (ginodrame). Three acclaimed writers and directors, Lada Kaštelan (Before Sleep, original: Prije sna, 2005), Ivana Sajko (Woman Bomb, original: Žena-bomba, 2003; Landscape with the Fall, original: Krajolik s padom, 2011) and Magdalena Lupi Alvir (Barren, original: Jalova, 2011), deal with the fundamental questions of woman's existence, combining elements of art and medicine. Some matrophoras, i.e., metaphors of motherhood and mother-child relations which demystify and reinterpret female physiology, are analysed in the text.

Šleski univerzitet u Katovicama Institut za nauku o književnosti email: abrasowicz gabriela@gmail com

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the necessity to change the process of theatre production and facilitated the development of certain solutions enabling the presentation of its effects, such as the use of new technologies and a revamp of the “intimate show” strategy. That led to the discovery of model of theatre so far unknown on such a scale and generated a different mode of reception. It turned out that restriction became a great inspiration for many theatre artists, as evidenced by artistic projects (staged texts, installations, cruising performances, performative walks) from Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro. The selected examples confirm that in a certain regional dispersion in 2020 and 2021 similar contents have emerged and comparable concepts have come to fruition. The material includes an overview of dramatic plays and their transfer to the stage (also virtual or in “non-theatrical” spaces), and thus a description of decisions concerning the choice of subject matter, poetics and production strategy.

Since the turn of the millennium, Serbian drama has been increasingly valued and recognized in the post-Yugoslav region and in Europe. In recent years, the process of globalization has become progressively stronger, with an improved infrastructure for promotion that has made possible the crossing of material and symbolic boundaries. This in turn has led to transformations in artistic expression, as well as increasing opportunities for mobility, co-productions, and translations. The status of the drama has been somewhat problematic because of its situation between literature and theatre. Its heterogeneous nature has required the development of an appropriate method of presentation. The performative/stage reading has emerged as a compelling answer.