Words as Diagnosis: The Plays of Konstantin Iliev

Extract

The playwright Konstantin Iliev (b. 1937) states: ‘The theatre, in its origins, is an art form recreating human relationships and, certainly, the most human means of communication is language. The colour red, for example, influences both the bull and the spectator in a specific manner but the word “blood” leaves the animal indifferent.’ Indeed language in each of Iliev's plays has a special function, both constructive and opening up the richness of human characters into their multiple parts. Iliev's plays are exploring the tangle of human relations, almost with a scientific method of analysis, man's ‘disease’ and his life, man and his surrounding world.