Ideology vs. history: "The night after the last one"

Abstract

Maróti’s play and its reception in Finland show that experiencing a “historical” play as being historical and a story relating real events can be disrupted in many ways. Spectators are looking for explanations based on their own reality, and disrupting the storyline forces them to search for meanings in the forms of disruption. Reflecting the performance against the spectator’s own social context is connected to the values and norms of that particular context. This case study shows how the form and structure of the play and of the performance are entangled with their contents. The reception of the Finnish production of 1976 in the historical continuum was, from today’s viewpoint, conveyed in the spirit of its own time; metaphorical reading was vague, ideology was highlighted and overly historicized, and political meanings that were ill-fitted for the spirit of the time were avoided. The author is of the article is examining the Finnish National Theatre production several decades afterwards, in other words, from a point in time which from the perspective of the original production would have been the future. The way the author relates to Bruno and Einstein is the same as in the 1970s, but since over the years his views of Hungary and 1970s Finland have changed due to the time perspective and later events, he assumes that if the play were produced now, the historicity (instead of ideology) would be easily highlighted, but on a metaphorical level – as critique of Socialist Hungary, which would suit today’s attitudes very well. The question of ideology or current politics vs. History has not disappeared. Surveying the contexts makes us see that avoiding politics often becomes a political gesture, but we also see the many levels of the pasts and the present in our historical constructions and reception and how inclined we are towards easy interpretations which may hide implicit and difficult but timely problems.