Sports Play

de Elfriede Jelinek, Penny Black

Sports Play (written in 1998, original title: Ein Sportstuck) is a post-dramatic text that explores the marketing and sale of the human body and of emotions in sport. Jelinek questions contemporary society's obsession with fitness and body image and rejects the romanticized notion of sport as portrayed in today's media. She considers sport as a mass phenomenon and as a medium for chauvinism and fanaticism--sport as war. At the same time this is one of Jelinek's most personal plays in which she styles herself as "Elfie Electra" and mixes anger with self-irony. Blurring the boundaries between a theatre event and a sports event, this performance turns Jelinek's linguistic gymnastics into an Olympic feat for the actors and audiences alike.