Júlia Rázusová’s Production Ota as a Voice of Action: Elements of Epic Theatre and Lehrstücke in Contemporary Theatre

Abstract

: The study focuses on Júlia Rázusová’s staging of Michal Ditte’s postdramatic text Ota (Jozef Gregor Tajovský Theatre, 2025). Taking this form of political theatre as its case study, it examines how the past is transposed into an active, instructive appeal to contemporary audiences. At its centre are the stories of two women journalists, each shaped by the socio-political conditions of her time. The first is Ota Plávková, a radio editor persecuted by the totalitarian regime during Normalisation, who seems at first to belong to the past. The second is Laura, an investigative journalist who faces pressure from oligarchic structures intertwined with political power and thereby comes to embody the democratic present. The author examines how the creative team works with historical, documentary, and biographical material, and how its staging strategies generate meanings that extend beyond the original historical context. The analysis draws on Bertolt Brecht’s concept of “historicisation” ( Historisierung) , as further elaborated by Hans-Thies Lehmann, as well as on the concept of the “erosion of the self-evident,” which calls for the renewed performative testing of social values and, consequently, for action. The study also considers devices characteristic of epic theatre and the Lehrstücke tradition — including the Verfremdungseffekt , dialectical thinking, and Einverständnis — that establish a critical distance between stage and audience and thereby sharpen political consciousness.