A Picnic on the Battlefield

WRITTEN BY FERNANDO ARRABAL

Troupe  norvégienne  R Y K T E

Fernando Arrabal’s   Picnic on the Battlefield begins with Zapo, a soldier from a nameless country, as he comes face to face with his greatest horror: an unannounced visit from his parents; they’ve arrived on the battlefield to cheer up their despondent son with a picnic. As the bombs continue to fall around them, and as the family accidentally captures an enemy soldier named Zepo, Zapo continuously  struggles to balance his job as a soldier and entertaining his overbearing folks. Decades later, two former war medics share a hotel room built on the vary same battlefield. In the middle of the night, they are visited by a beautiful young woman, except they can’t decide if she is real or a dream. And if the former medics are dreaming, who is dreaming whom.  Fernando Arrabal (was born in 1932, and grew up within the Spanish Civil War. Arrabal commands an impressive body of work, having published over 100 plays, 14 novels, and directed seven full-length films. A distinct  aesthetic has kept Arrabal in the same literary conversations as Marcel Duchamp, Eugène Ionesco, Dario Fo, and Jean Baudrillard. The Dictionary of Literatures in the French Language called Arrabal “artistic heir of [Franz] Kafka’s lucidity and [Alfred] Jarry’s humor; in his violence, Arrabal is related to [Marquis de] Sade and [Antonin] Artaud…deeply political and merrily playful, both revolutionary and bohemian.

Picnic on the Battlefield ,  es una  obra representativa del teatro de Fernando Arrabal, el dramaturgo  más representado actualmente en el mundo. Esta  obra aparece  en Noruega en edición crítica que  ha llevado a cabo el Departamento de Español de la Universidad : Un amplio y revelador estudio sobre las raíces y estéticas que informan este teatro excepcional .