The play Hard Gun, Dead World is the second part of the diptych At the End of the Chain, published in 2012 by the polish publishinghouse Splot. While in the first play Mateusz Pakuła was inspired by the great European literary tradition (Shakespeare, Müller, Koltès), he constructed the second one on the basis of a novel “so bad it's brilliant” by amateur writer Marcin Obuchowski – The One Who Resisted Satan.
The play is divided into two acts. The first is a literal travesty and playful interaction with the aforementioned novel (reportedly printed in fifteen copies for the author's family and friends). The main character of this first part of the play is Manni, already known from At the End of the Chain. This time, however, he introduces himself as forty-four-year-old Hans Klops. To his friends, he's Bili Klops or Bili Denim. Sometimes Hans Denim. But as he declares himself: “all in all, you can call me whatever you want.” Hans Klops is a decent citizen. He doesn't like to curse, goes to church and has a wonderful family. A beloved, beautiful wife with the original name Sean Penn, and three children: the youngest Mary Jane and a pair of older twins Brenda and Brandon. However, a black cloud hangs over his life one day. It all starts with a nightmare (in which he can't catch his breath) and a sense of unease that doesn't leave him afterwards. As it turns out the feeling is justified, because Hans Klops like the biblical Job is put to the real test of life. Overnight he loses everything he loved, and out of nowhere his world is overrun by demons and red snakes.
Inspired by the phenomenon of “bad painting”, which has been present in the visual arts since the 1970s, Mateusz Pakuła practices a kind of “bad writing”, i.e. conscious bad writing. Out of the admiration of the writer's frailty and awkwardness... thrilling literature is created. The second act of the play is a metaliterary interpretation of this project. It is a meeting conducted by (performing songs in the first part) Wild Singer with the Author himself (introduced by her as Mateusz Pakuła), who talks about the backstory and assumptions of his text. However, his prescriptive narrative is interrupted by the appearance of the Second Author, who does not recall any meeting with him and his agreement to rewrite his book. Their discussion very quickly turns into a literary argument raising questions about the ethics of the procedure performed. However, the conflicting situation is interrupted by the assertion of the fact that they are in fact controlled by the real Matthew Pakula, and they are only his “rag mascots.”
Hard Gun, Dead World is a play on the borderline of literary foolishness and artistic manifesto, dressed in the form of “a littlemonodrama” and a little concert. In it Mateusz Pakuła plays with language and metaliterary constructions. He effectively confuses the tropes to such an extent that, in the end, it is already difficult to tell what is the truth and what is artistic fabrication. Who to trust. And whether Marcin Obuchowski really exists.