Slovenian Theatre News, which we distribute to partners abroad, brings the best that contemporary Slovenian theatre has to offer. As publishers of the web portal Kritika, where we publish theatre reviews of most theatre productions in Slovenia, we twice a season translate into English the reviews of ten best performances, as selected by the authors and editor-in-chief Zala Dobovšek.
While the editorial selection of the ten critical essays is, of course, carefully chosen, it is still subjective and shaped according to editorial principles that seem relevant and stand out in terms of content and style in one way or another. The selection aims at a diversity of contributions in terms of content, location of performances, themes and issues. It brings together reflections by different authors, whose writings record a broader spectrum of performance formats – puppet and animation forms, contemporary dance, performance and drama.
The central feature of the reviews – and of the performances they discuss – is engagement in a broader sense. Regardless of the form or location of the performances, the present critiques document some of the key signs of critical observation of the world, focusing in particular on questions about the current position of the human being in today’s world, who must deal with others and with one’s surrounding communities as much as with oneself. The selected critiques and performances thus open up important but also vulnerable perspectives on discrimination based on national identities, class inequalities, the value of ethical education for the youngest, a critical illumination of the “nostalgic” past, the unbearable pressure of the new capitalism, reproductive rights and responsibility towards the ecological situation.
Zala Dobovšek, PhD Dramaturg and Editor-in-chief of the web portal Kritika
Read >> Slovenian Theatre News, April 2025 Edition
Ana Jerman Obreza
Vulnerability of Desire
Tena Štivičić: 64. Slovene National Theatre Nova Gorica, 18 September 2024, repetition 3 October 2024.
»The play precisely pinpoints the spirit of control so typical of our times and extracts from this a range of conflicting imperatives: having a child / not having a child; how and when to have a child / why not to have a child at all – regardless of one’s social creed, it is always imperative to be successful.«
Eva’s month only has 28 days, be it February or May. The culmination of her month is on the 14th, whether there is a full moon or not. The 12th and 13th and the 15th and 16th are by no means insignificant and certainly should be considered. On other days and nights, Eva can (provisionally) relax. On the first day of every month she anyway receives an unequivocal result about her monthly (lack of) success in working on her personal project: conceiving a child.
The microcosm of the Croatian playwright Tena Štivičić's play 64 (translated by Dijana Matković) lays bare to us the longing of the couple of Eva and Danijel. The urban drama, as labelled at the SNT Nova Gorica, where they produced the text’s Slovenian première, presents us with the dilemmas of a contemporary couple who have just managed to somehow overcome their material insecurity. Now, as they approach forty, they have to confront the unexpected difficulties in their attempts to conceive. The plights of infertility and medically-assisted fertilisation represent two phenomena that are becoming increasingly prominent in our society, even though we have only recently begun discussing them more openly. Last year, for example, the Delo newspaper’s Kresnik Award for the best new Slovenian novel was awarded to Anja Mugerle for her novel Pričakovanja (Expectations), which deals with the same topic. Now, the creative team of the performance 64, led by director Nina Šorak and playwright Milan Ramšak Marković, also tackles this subject.
The clear and smooth sequence of scenes follows how the relationship between Eva and Danijel evolves and how their characters mature, which brings forth new moments of crisis and transformation – and ultimately, new decisions. The sequence is interrupted by – or rather, bound together through – (short) monologues, which individual characters come to tell on a microphone at the front of the stage, separated from the rest of the action. Although the monologues in their intent sometimes address other characters (e.g., Bela’s monologue on being single emerges from the tension she feels towards Eva), they always move away from the onstage reality and communicate directly with the audience, from which they are not separated by any fictitious wall. The stage is made up of a functionally conceived, effective set design (Urša Vidic) with only a few walls, doors and basic furniture elements, which allows for a whole range of action spaces (the rooms of the couple’s apartment, the clinic, the neighbour’s door or bedroom, the apartments of Eva’s mother and Danijel’s father). The consistency with the narrative changes of location and the directorial accents are well supported through lighting design (Marko Vrkljan).
The directorial-dramaturgical structure is very compact, allowing the actors to feel safe and able to encounter vulnerability. Loneliness and the raising of walls against each other, the urge for community and the need for isolation – and the longing, longing! – are contradictory human emotions that we all share. Nika Rozman portrays Eva as an upright and strong woman who has decided to passionately answer the call of parenthood. Jure Kopušar’s Danijel follows her and tries to support her with loving tenderness as best as he can. Both Rozman’s and Kopušar’s performances are excellent; their characters are drawn out to perfection in all the fierceness and vulnerability of emotion. The chemistry between the two actors is obvious and scintillating at first. Although their light fades in the service of the story, the bond between the actors (and their characters) remains close, and they are both very responsive to the surges of emotions that crash onto the shores of the trenches they build up. Urška Taufer’s Bela is a full-blooded character with plenty of soul, revealing not only her energetic and cynical side but also her hidden wounds and vulnerability. The couple’s social circle is completed by several other characters: Blaž Valič’s somewhat caricatured Doctor, who oscillates between being sympathetic and bizarre but also serves up a heap of scientific data; Eve’s unstoppable mother played by Helena Peršuh, who is being slowed down by her carcinoma; while Danijel’s macho and cynical father and the unconvincing neighbour Aleks, who for some reason Eva is interested in, is played by Gorazd Jakomini.
The performance’s liveliness can be attributed to the firmly established and executed relationship between seriousness and playfulness. From the very first scene, the relentless flow of numbers and statistics concerning fertility and infertility and the probability and facts about (artificial) insemination radiates into the audience from the movable glass doors that serve as a chart for such notes. The threat of statistics hangs in the air, slowly reducing the space of hope, but Eva and Danijel (and their closest allies) defuse them through their optimism and wit. The costume design (Tina Pavlović) in predominant shades of beige and grey, the sound design (Jure Mavrič) and the original score (Laren Zdravič Polič) contribute to the play’s seriousness. The music occasionally also adds a bit of humour – with the Doctor’s singing and the use and derivations of the pop song “What’s up” by 4 Non-Blondes, the potency of which, however, quickly runs out and then starts to feel a bit forced.
64 opens up a whole range of issues, such as the question of “natural necessity” that drives Eva to the brink of cheating on her partner, the need for avoiding control that misleads Daniel into the space of what appears to be freedom in virtual reality, and the question of choosing your career over your private life, as Bela does. The play precisely pinpoints the spirit of control so typical of our times and extracts from this a range of conflicting imperatives: having a child / not having a child; how and when to have a child / why not to have a child at all – regardless of one’s social creed, it is always imperative to be successful.
The anxiety and uncertainty are made more bearable by the warmth with which the text is both written and staged. Eva will survive as well as Danijel and Bela – all of them will survive the painful moments of bewilderment and discomfort of their late thirties, whether their longings are fulfilled or not. They all partake in their share of wounds which inscribe the experience of their existence into their very souls and bodies – Eve with her “64”, or nowadays 20 or so hormone injections, Danijel with his two broken arms, Bela with her perimenopause. We are left hoping till the very end that the wounds will heal while the scarred people become stronger, heartier and wiser. The ending of the play is cut off literally in the middle of a sentence, as both the light and the speaker’s thoughts are turned off, which is so sudden that we are left with the bare fact that many wounds take much more time to heal and the process is more complicated than we would like.
CONTACT @PRODUCER (SNT Nova Gorica): info@sng-ng.si
Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti
People Who Make Up Space and Time
Devised project: 1973. Slovene National Theatre Nova Gorica and GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica, 2 February 2025 (première 1 February 2025).
»Within this visually impressive and evocative framework unfolds a broad mapping of stories, stories which, in the manner of stage expression and the use of space, costumes and props subvert the formal family drama label by not primarily foregrounding the conflicts between characters and the construction of situations but instead creating a kind of melancholic dramaturgy of ebb and flow through fragmentary glimpses of the lives of individual family members.«
The second part of the Dodecalogy 1972–1983 by director and dramaturg Tomi Janežič (assistant directors Tjaša Črnigoj and Mojca Madon), unfolds in front of the audience as a family saga, which, despite all its side-tracks, flashbacks and flashforwards, centres on the fateful day of 11 September 1973, when a mere “stroll” across the border divided a family for the next nine years, thus fundamentally reshaping the family dynamics. A dynamic that throughout three generations of women – the cornerstone of the central family – has been crucially shaped by war, poverty and precarious life at the border. 1973 is a postcard sent by the family to our space and time, a love letter to the titular year that, despite all the misfortunes, illnesses, deaths and, perhaps most fateful of all, silences, searches for light and hope, even if they be only possible in the family’s own cosmology.
The performance space of this family genre hybrid is built as a spatial collage, in which traces of the upcoming productions of the Dodecalogy can can already be discerned (the audience will recognise the vault and the staircase as architectural elements from the lower hall of the Mladinsko Theatre). In contemporary Slovenian theatre, one can rarely encounter such a construction which transforms the small stage of SNT Nova Gorica almost beyond recognition, which reveals an awareness of the unexplored spatial potentials of theatre stages and the possibilities of breath-taking transformations on condition of sufficient production support. Branko Hojnik (assistant stage designer Katarina Prislan and Lara Reichmann) designs the space of the play as a cross between the old bourgeois openness and volume and, say, the much more modest front door and authentic interior design, which associatively positions us in the time of the action. This is complemented by an unconventional use of theatre lighting, which does not rely on highlighting individual scenes with light changes but operates mostly with light switches and interior lighting. The costume design by Marina Sremac (assistant Slavica Janošević) pays similar attention to detail and contextual accuracy, with some particularly inventive elements, such as the multiplying of costume changes of the unborn daughter Patrizia as a visual expression of her elusive identity. Within this visually impressive and evocative framework unfolds a broad mapping of stories, stories which, in the manner of stage expression and the use of space, costumes and props subvert the formal family drama label by not primarily foregrounding the conflicts between characters and the construction of situations but instead creating a kind of melancholic dramaturgy of ebb and flow through fragmentary glimpses of the lives of individual family members.
The fully-fledged nature of the production is the result of the collective input of the exceptionally attuned cast of the SNT Nova Gorica together with two guest actresses, who create a highly coherent stage expression with clearly distributed dramaturgical functions, which, however, are based not so much on in-depth psychologisation but on the construction of the characters as transient stage personae, elusive in their establishing and flowing back into the positions of acting their lines (language consultant Anja Pišot). The narratives open up a multiplicity of diverse topics, a cross-section of the entire 20th century, enhanced by group formations, be it choreographies or living sculptures, which endeavour to further dynamise the narratives as events. In 1973, the characters in the foreground are those of Nona Ana, her daughter Marjuta and granddaughter Helena, who form the core of this matriarchy throughout the recurring familial patterns. The older two women both raised their daughter as single mothers, while Helena’s marriage was crucially marked by the conscription of her husband, Matija, into the military. The titular year, in a way, marks the passing of the torch to the next generation – to her son Žiga and his sister Anuša, to Žiga’s pregnant wife Arna and her sister (and his later wife) Tamara, whose lives will once again be crucially marked by the border. The densely interwoven web of encounters and fates of this heteronormative family unit builds up a cosmology of its own, with a slightly too uniform atmospheric veil throughout. In fact, despite creating an underlying tension concerning the central day of the action, the mythologisation of the family unit appears too tightly closed, thus failing to establish more concrete connections to the wider sociopolitical context or (above all) the current space and time. Despite this, several stunning character creations emerge in the limited, intimate world focused on the imprints that history makes on individuals. In the dynamics of the whole dramaturgy, the comically underlined performance by Marjuta Slamič stands out in the role of a woman who spent a large part of her life in Alexandria, for which she is paying a high price. However, it is her financial resources that enable the family to survive. Her two conflicts with Helena Peršuh are acting masterpieces in which both actresses demonstrate an eruptive playfulness and creative joy, both in more comical as well as in more dramatic positions. Tamara Augustin, playing a hippie who tried LSD for the first time on that fateful day in 1973, is similarly eruptive and introduces a more metaphysical perception of the world into the production, from which the less realistic elements of staging emerge, particularly highlighting the original music score by Samo Kutin as an omnipresent and suggestive component of the performance’s atmosphere. A more subtle role is the carefully constructed stage portrayal of the deaf Anuša, precisely delineated by Anuša Kodelja, who creates one of the most evocative scenes of the whole performance, not only by revealing the very process of the exploration and creation of her character, during which she met with a woman who at the time suffered a similar fate to her character but also by making us realise how rarely we actually encounter such marked bodies and life experiences on stage, in the scene of the deaf girl feeling her father’s chest as he hums her a lullaby, instead of listening to the fairy tale. Regardless of the collective character of the narration, the performance is built up from these kinds of fragments, in which each of the performers is given the time and space to convey their own story. In the meandering between the comical and the sad, Ana Facchini excels as the narrator of synchronous swimming, as well as does Arna Hadžialjević in the highly effective portrayal of the dynamics of her relationship with Žiga Udir, who forms the “masculine”, emotionally slightly more restrained line of experience together with Matija Rupel, and Patrizia Jurinčič Finžgar, whose character is the one into which the whole family grows. Besides the actresses, we must also point out the extremely sensitive performance of the prompter Maja Dvoršek, with her very deliberate position in space demonstrating a careful consideration of the overall visual composition, who follows the performance with just the right amount of suggestive monitoring, again and again redirecting the viewer’s wandering gaze back to the action.
The action of 1973 is complemented by a video insert featuring Carlo Zoratti (video by Stefano Giacomuzzi, sound recording by Renato Rinaldi), who, in a witty and playful manner similar to that in 1972, continues his visits to the locations mentioned in the performances and contextual unpacking of fun facts related to the titular year. His and the prompter’s presence, as well as the highly effective addressing of theatrical topicality in the final part of the production, when Patrizia and Helena address the eponymity of performers and the stage personae they portray, emerge as the links that transform this transgenerational documentary fiction into a contemporary theatrical conglomerate of diverse principles and strategies, and as a breakthrough in the reconceptualisation of our understanding of family drama. The overall question that emerges through the foreshadowing of even more fateful days in the year 1982, when audiences will once again visit this Dodecalogy family from Nova Gorica, is whether or not the cruel course of history can be interrupted or at least redirected.
CONTACT @PRODUCER (SNT Nova Gorica): info@sng-ng.si
Evelin Bizjak
Transcending the Boundaries of Art for Sustainable Community Action
Doroteja Nadrah: Assembly Centre. Cultural and Artistic Association Free Non-Institutional Theatre, 24 October 2024.
»Assembly Centre is not merely a work of art. It is also an activist, social initiative that questions the realisation of meeting places and safe shelters in times of increasingly devastating heat waves.«
By depicting the negative impact of humans on the environment (the destruction of ecosystems, climate change, pollution), many socially engaged ecological performances feature a provocative approach that encourages the spectators to confront their own indifference to such issues. The problems of sustainability and environmental change are complex and multilayered, rooted in the mechanisms of economic interests, political constraints, social practices and values. Thus, despite the desire to activate audiences, an information-centred approach often evokes feelings of insecurity and results in re-passivisation. In the project Assembly Centre, Doroteja Nadrah and Tosja Berce Flaker take a different approach, taking as the starting point of their artistic exploration the questions that many performances finish with (Where do we go from here? How to move forward?). One of the project’s most important features is that, through the form of participatory ecological performance, it reveals one of theatre’s fundamental components: its elemental communal potential. Thus, the notion of environmental responsibility is experientially realised as a responsibility towards one another. Assembly Centre is not merely a work of art. It is also an activist, social initiative that questions the realisation of meeting places and safe shelters in times of increasingly devastating heat waves. This way, it not only raises awareness but also shows the audience, through the experience of a specific form of engagement, a possible way of co-creating collective actions. It transforms the artistic event into a platform for exchanging ideas and concrete solutions. It serves as a space for testing sustainable practices, thus realising their potential for long-term impact.
In a meeting room of the M Hotel in Ljubljana, after warmly welcoming us, the performer uses community sensitisation methods to guide us on the path of becoming experientially aware of the reality that we have been faciing in Slovenia during several recent summers. The starting point of the performance is the social and economic hardship related to increasingly devastating summer heat waves, during which energy consumption often sharply increases as people rely more on air-conditioners and fans for cooling. This presents a challenge to the energy grid, the environment and household budgets. In turn, the increased consumption of fossil fuel energy contributes to rising greenhouse gas emissions and further exacerbates climate change, which will cause even more heat waves in the future. The process of community building and interactive performative integration, which, besides the implementation of the project, have the additional goal of using the audio materials produced during the event for a subsequent realisation of an ecological docu-fiction radio play produced by Radio Slovenia, is carried out softly and step-by-step, so that participants can get comfortable both with the actors and the presence of technology, in the form of recording devices set up in the space.
Participants form a circle, and through games involving both verbal and physical communication we get acquainted with one other; we form a community and facilitate interpersonal contact. The performative interventions, based on a social pedagogical approach, stimulate group dynamics, reduce social anxiety and enhance concentration, but above all, create a safe and inclusive environment in which the spectators gradually shed the rigid boundaries that limit them to the role of static observers. These principles reinforce trust in the performer’s guidance, create a relaxed atmosphere and connect audience members, thus establishing the collective dynamic crucial for further participation in the co-creation of the performative event. We gradually gather around a stereo microphone and, through a game of free associations related to the wider field of ecology, build the first acoustic-associative corpus, which, also in formal terms, builds on the effect of vocal plurality. The next step features a group of selected participants that, with the assistance of the entire collective, creates a scene which uses our imagination to enhance the actual space of the hotel with the experience of an overheated hotel during the peak of a heatwave.
The performer takes them on a journey into active imagination by using the technique of play so that they connect with their emotional, physical and experiential memories of heat through the principles of guided imagery. This results in an intense and lively dialogue between the receptionist and the guests, in which the actors, with frequent irritable exclamations and demands, co-create tense interpersonal relationships and demonstrate how high temperatures affect the psycho-physical well-being of individuals. This approach bypasses the principle of externalised experience prevalent in theatre, allowing the audience to delve into the feelings of discomfort, tension or even exhaustion often associated with heat on a personal level and reflect on them through their own emotional and physical responses.
By next going to a bus station, where a local public bus is waiting for us, the interplay of the real and fictional environments already hinted at in the hotel is further enhanced by the new dimensions of participation in the real space, which has the effect of immersive or site-specific theatre. The audience now takes up multilayered roles on the permeable border between spectators, actors and real passengers in public transport. After entering the overheated bus, with the technical team recording us from the back seats, we take on the roles of sweating passengers, articulating our inner stream of thoughts and co-creating the experience of taking a ride on a crowded bus. Complaints and attempts to persuade the bus driver to open the doors, turn up the air-conditioning or open the windows fly past regular passengers’ ears. The physical discomfort caused by the heat and cramped conditions helps create an authentic interaction between the passengers and the driver. When Nadrah walks around the bus with a microphone in her hand, inviting everyone to share their impressions of the experience, the externalised statements intertwine with introspective, confessional monologues that help the crowd become more individualised and reveal their inner worlds, usually invisible and left to each person’s intimacy. By positioning the artistic act inside a real space, new levels of experiential and collective exploration are opened; participants are invited to reflect on everyday situations and social problems and the possibilities of more authentic interpersonal relationships based on a different experience of community in public spaces. Fiction appears as a mirror of reality, where situations that seem mundane or pass unnoticed in the everyday context take on a new meaning or become symbols of more significant problems. The participatory approach dissolves interpersonal alienation and stimulates people to reflect on it by offering an alternative model of a more empathic coexistence.
The bus takes us to the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius, a potential assembly point that could accommodate vulnerable groups (the elderly, the ill, young children or low-income earners) during a heat wave, offering insulation and shelter from the unbearable scorching sun with its thick, cool marble walls. The artist-activist initiative thus follows the lead of some European cities which are already implementing public cooling centres as part of their plans for adapting to climate change. Our movement through space triggers the specific acoustics of the church, turning the building into a protagonist: as we are cooling off from the imaginary heat, we share our experiences over the microphone while sitting on the floor and touching it with our bodies; our echoing footsteps and the squeaking of water bottles under the participants’ hands become important co-creators of the event. To the priest who is speaking about climate change from the altar, Doroteja Nadrah challenges assumptions about the ideological dogma of the church by posing questions about social responsibility and corporate exploitation of natural resources. When everyone starts talking about the examples of cooperation and shares their insights into solving the environmental crisis, the ideological bias of the church crumbles and it comes alive as a moral and ethical centre encouraging communal responsibility. As it transforms into a space for self-reflection and the exploration of one’s own beliefs, as well as for the participatory co-creation of community initiatives, it becomes a symbolic space for confronting our own dogmatic positions.
Assembly Centre effectively dismantles the automatic mechanisms that drive us to reproduce unreflected behaviour. The organisation of the event itself is quite striking since the sheer number of participating organisations, individuals, locations and other stakeholders embodies the very prospect of collaboration that it advocates for at the level of artistic experience. In doing so, it demonstrates that community cohesion – as a practical and symbolic value – is not only possible but necessary.
CONTACT @PRODUCER (Cultural and Artistic Association Free Non-Institutional Theatre): zbirnomesto.rezervacije@gmail.com
Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti
Loops in Performing the Pain of Others
Boško and Admira. Mladinsko Theatre, 5 February 2025 (première 31 January 2025).
»The performance finds its expression more in the on-stage processing of documentary and research materials and attempts at a reconstruction, rather than through dramatisation, situationality and aestheticisation.«
The starting point of the devised project Boško and Admira is a war photograph of the titular couple lying on the Vrbanja Bridge, wrapped in each other’s arms, dead. As we can surmise from the projections we see on the screen, the photograph, which has inscribed the pair into history as the Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo, has engendered a whole series of artistic treatments. Musicians, writers and film- and theatre-makers have found inspiration for their works of art in this sensationalist image. The Mladinsko Theatre stage adaptation of the lovers’ story focuses on a wider reflection on the responsibility of the artistic treatments of such content, war journalism and photography. As a result, the performance finds its expression more in the on-stage processing of documentary and research materials and its attempts at reconstruction rather than through dramatisation, situationality and aestheticisation. The performance of Boško and Admira considers its protagonists not as a fatal Shakespearean love story but as an opportunity to reflect on the (co-)responsibility for the sensationalisation of war. In doing so, through an ingeniously constructed dramaturgy of loops, it reveals the theatrical medium’s peculiar failed attempts to deal with this kind of content.
The dramaturgy by Niko Žnidaršič divides the production roughly into two parts. In part one, the artists try to approach the original photograph. They reconstruct the events that led to its creation, present the protagonists’ backstory, and introduce lesser-known agents, concluding each new attempt (loop) by reconstructing the photograph. This part, culminating in a darkroom scene in which the original photograph gets developed in front of the audience, opens up a multiplicity of diverse formal approaches. Director Živa Bizovičar skilfully interweaves these approaches into a unique performative language by using the form of a lecture with the aid of visual props, such as maps, the reading of documentary materials (letters) with more dramatic principles in which the performers characterise the agents of the action. These attempts at empathising seem less effective, but it is precisely through their failure to convey the story as convincingly as, say, by merely reading archival facts, that we can discern the crux of the problem of the theatrical treatment of such content. On the one hand, the director builds up the complexity of the subject matter responsibly and with appropriate distance, while on the other hand, its sensationalist presentation, which in the production we can see, for example, in the opening podcast, is highlighted through parody, irony and, occasionally, cynicism. As the staging opens up thematically in the second part, it incorporates broader theoretical considerations (Susan Sontag, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Walter Benjamin) and the story of Boško and Admira and other pairs of young lovers killed in wars into the discussion. Through documentary principles, it also starts to layer more visual and poetical strategies. The result is a relatively harmonious cacophony aimed more at the overall effect of horror at the multitude of such stories than at individual facts. The restraint in staging the first part of the production, formed by attempts rather than theses, is most welcome. In contrast, the second part seems to lack some stronger opinions about the artistic treatment of such content by the creators themselves. Similarly, the density of the text that continues in the second part of the production does not allow for a thorough exploitation of the truly impressive on-stage visual images. This part gives a distinct autonomy to the set and video design by Dorian Šilec Petek and the lighting design by Andrej Hajdinjak. The acting space through most of the production appears very functional (with photographic canvases, tables, chairs and studio lights), primarily as a thoroughly planned-out associative framework with imaginative inventions (red threads as laser snipers). In the second part, as the auditorium is slowly transformed into a tomb, the acting space begins to express the content with as much presence, if not more so, as the spoken words. We are left with the concluding bird’s-eye view of the half-buried couple of embracing corpses as a haunting stage image, underlined by the anxious and atmospheric original music by Gašper Lovrec, which, with its carefully conceived ambiental and appropriately abstracted sounds of war, complements the (at times overly dense) musical score.
The cast, consisting of Primož Bezjak, Nataša Keser, Boris Kos, Stane Tomazin and guest Kaja Petrovič, proves to be highly flexible in shifting through different layers of speech and languages. Nina Čehovin’s costume design, built around the expressiveness of clothing, features leather jackets that highlight character transitions. The actors skillfully introduce just the right amount of humour to the production, which they immediately divert into more serious tones. Their attempts at inhabiting the protagonists’ lives are made with a similar sensibility, maintaining a subtle distance at all times, an accentuated awareness of performing, such as at the beginning of the performance, when Tomazin and Petrovič wake up as young lovers or later when Keser and Bezjak enact a film fantasy of the continued life of Boško and Admira (in a highly effective stage implementation of film language, right down to using the arch of the hall door as a film frame). Their transformations into different roles, sometimes lending them only their voices (for example, as the parents, whom we otherwise only see in the video footage as silent), and at other times also their bodies, underline the creative team’s decision not to indulge in fantastic illusionism nor add to the treasure trove of mythologisation of the selected content. In light of the concreteness that constitutes an excellent platform for this theatrical exploration, the placement of Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of Paul Klee’s monoprint Angelus Novus, which, with its symbolism, for a moment leads the performance into the overly abstract haven of poetism, remains somewhat too general, albeit appropriate in the context.
Despite this tendency, Boško and Admira, in its fragmentation, remains a relatively convincing and coherent piece of theatre that, in light of global events, raises fundamental questions about (documentary) theatre-making. In the end, it is perhaps also worth pointing out that it is possible to feel a similar generational pulse of the creators as witnessed in the production Living Conditions directed by Bor Ravbar. Bizovičar and Ravbar are members of the youngest generation of directors who, with their respective teams, have embarked on documentary projects at the Mladinsko Theatre. In such projects, they are searching for ways to reintroduce theatricality back into such formats, thus opening up the performative landscape with new performative hybrids.
CONTACT @PRODUCER (Mladinsko Theatre): info@mladinsko-gl.si
Evelin Bizjak
Euthanasia as a Moral Issue
Ferdinand von Schirach: God. Slovenian National Theatre Drama Ljubljana, 17 January 2025.
»At the end of the performance, the audience is invited to vote and take part in the discussion on ethics, which is a participatory approach typical of forum theatre or the Theatre of the Oppressed.«
Most people want to shape their lives according to personal criteria and to be free from external and internal compulsions. The exercise of personal freedom also encompasses the final stage of life, as confirmed in many European countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, etc.), which have already made it possible for interested individuals to end their lives with dignity by legalising the right to euthanasia. In Slovenia, the issue of physician-assisted euthanasia is still the subject of intense debate and is not yet legally regulated. The sanctity of human life is protected as a fundamental constitutional category, representing an inviolable value. In his play God, the Berlin lawyer and writer Ferdinand von Schirach, already known to Slovenian audiences for his acclaimed play Terror, focuses on an ethical dilemma within an interactive simulation of a public trial. This time, he addresses the question of whether it is possible to legally enforce the right to assisted suicide. In the play, we follow an elderly but otherwise healthy man, Mr Gärtner, who, following the death of his wife, firmly decides that he no longer wants to live. Upon his plea for physician-assisted suicide, an ethics committee is convened, consisting of medical, legal and theological experts, the chairwoman of the ethics council, and Mr Gärtner’s legal assistant. Based on a discussion confronting the various concerns about the potential abuse and ethical issues related to the legalisation of assisted euthanasia, the staging, directed by Peter Petkovšek, dramaturgy by Eva Kraševec, explores the tension between the right to decide about one’s own life and the ethical dilemmas arising when this right clashes with society’s legal and moral norms.
Set designer Sara Slivnik designs a realistic meeting room on the Small Stage of SNT Drama where the ethics committee convenes. In addition to a row of folding chairs arranged in a circle in the centre of the stage, she also recreates the image of a public forum on ethical issues in the arrangement of the audience into two opposite stands. This configuration does not exclude the spectators from the fictional environment. Instead, it positions them in the fiction of the action itself, as the performers address them as representatives of the interested public. Even if the circular arrangement of the performers suggests that ethical dilemmas do not have definite solutions, the division of the audience into two rows on opposite sides emphasises the polarisation and division in perspective. The set-up, where the actors at any given moment show their backs to one part of the audience, reinforces the sense of multiple perspectives and illustrates the idea that truth always depends on one’s point of view.
The discussion, which keeps the forum approach to a minimum, thus allowing us to focus on the dialogues and argumentation, gradually reveals the multilayered nature of ethical dilemmas through the precise, rational language and logical structure of the arguments. The representatives of the opposing views – the advocate of personal freedom, lawyer Biegler (Maša Derganc) on the one hand, and the member of the ethics council Keller (Pia Zemljič) on the other – both refer to the research, statistics and case studies of contemporary and historical European practices in dialogue with other guests, thus sharpening their antagonism and reinforcing their positions in a way that presents the spectators with the arguments to question their own positions. In the discussion, Ms Keller highlights the ethical risks implied in the legalisation of physician-assisted suicide that could lead to a wider acceptance of death as a straightforward solution to suffering. In dialogue with the legal, medical and theological experts, she explores how legalisation might entice the depersonalisation and normalisation of assisted suicide, reducing the sensitivity to individual suffering while, on the other hand, increasing social insensitivity to “superfluous” social groups. In contrast, Ms Biegler argues in favour of the individual right to free choice. Her arguments are based on respect for personal autonomy and the right to dignity. She refers to European practices and legal mechanisms that already allow for such decisions and emphasises that careful consideration and regulated legislation can prevent abuses. Later, in a heated exchange with the character of a Catholic bishop (Saša Tabaković) – who fails to adequately present the fundamental Christian positions – the discussion deviates from ethical debates, which tend to respectfully illuminate complex positions and recognise the limits of individual arguments. By questioning Catholic ethics, the focus of the debate shifts to more entrenched positions and polarised oppositions.
The director dynamises the play’s otherwise static dramaturgy – based on the successive presentation of speakers and the predictable matrix of consecutive confrontations of opinions and interrogations carried out by the two characters representing the opposing sides of ideological perspectives – by highlighting the role of Mr Gärtner (Ivo Ban). Dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, the character slowly wanders through the scene, performing everyday tasks, such as making coffee, arranging his bonsai plants, shaving or eating at stations arranged on the sides of the stage. His actions are marked by a subdued melancholy that emphasises the intimate and existential gravity of his desire, which stems from a profound sense of loneliness following the death of his wife, to whom he was married for more than forty years. Through mise-en-scène interventions that emphasise the stark contrast between the cerebrality of the experts and the sensuality of the protagonist, Mr Gärtner becomes a character living in a parallel reality, even though he appears within the same space as the experts. His presence is reinforced by video projections on the walls – close-up images of his body parts, skin and wrinkles, which, in their large-scale dimensions, visually reveal his human transience. As his character moves across the stage as an almost imperceptible presence in the mental horizon of the debating intellectuals, the division between the cold standpoints of experts living in the world of ideas and beliefs and the sensuality and commitment of the common man is further reinforced. The director thus deepens the gulf between the theoretical and the experiential, the public and the intimate, that is, private and individual, consideration of moral questions.
These perspectives – the rational-analytical and the sensual-existential one – collide on the stage as two diverging stage aesthetics in different genres. The camera that Mr Gärtner carries around with him, using it to film himself and others, builds a more sensual and referential stage perception in contrast to the factual reality of the experts (video design by Urban Zorko). The projections in the form of experimental video documentation turn into abstract images that reinforce the subjectivity and relativity of perception, creating a distance between objective reality and his personal experience of the world. A meaningful synthesis of abstraction occurs when the image of the performance space captured by the camera is synthesised on the screen into the image of a corridor or a tunnel, a kind of passageway to the afterlife, which becomes a metaphor for life, leading towards inevitable transience.
The integration of the camera, despite some conceptually unclear images, widens the interpretative range of the performance. Conversely, some of Gärtner’s actions and lines seem to be quite formal, included only to make sense of his otherwise not-so-strongly-founded presence on the stage. Temporal freezes, which cut into the action, breaking the coherence of the performance, which is otherwise precisely structured through the density of the interplay of convincing opposing points of view that undermine and overturn the spectator’s beliefs, also seem somewhat superfluous. The cast of the ethical council (Maja Sever, Barbara Žefran, Maša Derganc, Pia Zemljič, Veronika Drolc, Primož Vrhovec and Saša Tabaković) handles the data-rich fabric of the dialogue with precision. At the same time, their interpretations remain somewhat formal, lacking a more pronounced diversity of character and emotional profiling.
At the end of the performance, the audience is invited to vote and take part in the discussion on ethics, which is a participatory approach typical of forum theatre or the Theatre of the Oppressed. As in the case of other European productions, where the decision about Gärtner’s case has almost always moved in the direction of supporting the legalisation of assisted suicide, the audience is faced with a difficult moral choice. In this way, the performance reaches beyond a passive theatrical experience. It becomes a space for the collective exploration of values, responsibility and moral dilemmas that directly affect the individual and society.
CONTACT @PRODUCER (SNT Drama Ljubljana): info@drama.si, pr@drama.si
Samo Oleami
Dancing Structure
Mateja Bučar: In Perfect Order. DUM – Association of Artists, Cukrarna Gallery, 13 and 14 November 2024.
»Atmospheric music triggers movement. It quickly becomes clear to us that the performance is designed as a sequence of images created through structured improvisation, in which each of the dancers explores the given parameters in their own way.«
As more than fifty members of the audience sit down on benches and chairs set up along the long side wall of the Cukrarna Gallery entrance hall, thus establishing a kind of auditorium, a line of thirteen dancers marches in from the left. They make their way around the ticket counter in the right-hand corner and form a long line diagonally across the entire length of the hall, facing us. Depending on the respective positions of spectators, some dancers are closer to us, some further away, and this also determines whose movements we can observe more closely. Each dancer is wearing a unicolour outfit of a shirt and trousers – either black, white, blue, grey or red. Each one also wears a fluffy bolero, i.e., a pair of sleeves connected by fabric. Four of them wear a white bolero, four of them red ones, four wear different shades of blue, and one dancer is all in black. The colours of the boleros are distributed in a way so that the dancers in adjacent positions are wearing boleros in different colours.
Atmospheric music triggers movement. It quickly becomes clear to us that the performance is designed as a sequence of images created through structured improvisation, in which each of the dancers explores the given parameters in their own way. The first image features individual moving bodies which explore vertical lines: by standing still, stretching towards the sky, playing with gravity by collapsing to the ground, or rotating on their axis. In the second image, they spread their arms and since the dancers are relatively close to each other, this initiates interactions between the dancing bodies. This artistic strategy could be read as tautological, as our attention is directed towards looking at precisely what we are looking at. The diverse colours of the clothing and boleros do not bear any symbolic meanings, they are different so that we can notice each individual dancer and how different they are from all the other dancers. The fluffy bolero sleeves highlight the arm gestures. Due to the proximity to one another, the performers mostly remain upright in vertical proximity, with most of the movements deriving from their arms and legs. However, due to the confined space, it is the arms that are principally exposed – stretching upwards, falling towards the ground or reaching out into the spaces of other dancers. The title of the choreography by Mateja Bučar that we are watching – In Perfect Order – is also tautological. The dancers keep the line in which they are standing orderly, which means that they are in perfect order.
All this suggests proximity to conceptualism and minimalism, the two labels that could aptly be used to describe Mateja Bučar’s oeuvre. Over the last two decades, the choreographer has mainly been exploring the relationship between the dancing body and space. Be it as the relationship of bodies to geometric video projections (Point-Less, 2012; On-the-Line, 2017) or as the performance of choreographies in public space, in which Bučar often juxtaposes the code of everyday movement to precise choreography (Green Light, 2011; Parking/Packing, 2012; Green Table, 2015; the Dancers without answers series). In Bučar’s signature choreographies, one can discern her ballet background, as the bodies are mostly aligned while emitting abstract movements of the arms and legs. This constellation is reminiscent of the American choreographer Merce Cunningham, who became famous after World War II by transitioning from modernist to avant-garde dance. Cunningham also considered the basic posture to be upright, while somewhat independent arm movements emerged from it. His key innovation, however, was the perception of the dancing space as architectural, i.e., the dancers no longer focused on the audience but instead on the relationships between each other; thus, “front” no longer meant “facing the audience”, instead “the front” was wherever a dancer happened to be facing.
However, In Perfect Order is not just an abstract performance. During half an hour, the initial exploration of weight and dropping to the floor evolves further and further into interactions between neighbouring dancers until, in the final third, they even begin to exchange their positions. Combined with increasingly dramatic music and colourful lighting towards the end of the piece, this accentuates the stage presence of the performers, which, in the case of some of the dancers, borders on theatrical-dance expression. The emotional charge of the première was further highlighted by the distinctly frontal positioning of the dancers, who occasionally established relationships with the seated audience facing them, and the tension that the pressure of a première exerts. What is crucial here is that all the dancers come from different dance backgrounds and, consequently, demonstrate a different stage presence – a factor that the performance could hardly avoid, as it is very difficult to find thirteen dancers with the same or similar physical background on the Slovenian independent scene. A discussion with the performers and the choreographer Mateja Bučar revealed that the large cast posed a significant production challenge and that, despite months of rehearsals, there were only two rehearsals with the entire cast before the première. Thus, the tension between the abstract and expressive aesthetics noticeable at the première was because the performance had not yet been fully tuned. The appropriate middle ground between over- or under-expression or, rather, between internal focus on the movement itself and the opening up of the presence to the outside and the adjacent dancers was most successfully reached by Nataša Živković, Bojana Robinson and Jerneja Fekonja.
Armed with this information, I decided to attend the performance again the following day. This time, there are no chairs for the audience. There is also only a quarter of the audience compared to the day before. Although most of the spectators line up statically next to the wall, I want to check the information given by the authors – namely, that the performance is intended for an audience moving around the space. So, I try to see the choreography from different viewpoints and different proximities. A side view reveals the choreography as a moving sculpture set in a huge hall created by the hollowed-out building of the old Cukrarna sugar factory. The relationships between the moving bodies and the architecture become clearer and my spectator position becomes embodied this way. From a proximity of about two to three metres, I can perceive the alternation of physical intensities as the movements of one dancer encroach on the space of another one, and they respond. At the same time, my own body desires to respond in a similar rhythm as I walk in close proximity. The side view also enables me to see the dance sculpture as a dynamic mass of pulsating individual strands.
The possibility of changing between the close-up and the long shot reveals to me the topography of the performance. From a distance, I notice that the dancers do not change positions until the final third of the performance and remain locked with their neighbour or neighbours who are placed there more or less arbitrarily – in the same way as, for example, countries cannot choose their neighbours and are locked into their locations. However, when I look closer, I can discern the very movement dynamics of each neighbouring couple and the individual movement material of each dancer, how they play with the instructions, their weight and their neighbours. Moving between different micro-locations not only offers new glimpses of the dance texture unfolding in front of us, thus stirring our interest again and again and two to three metres turns out to be the ideal distance. The performance was apparently made for this type of gaze.
In the second performance on 14 November, the edges of the première have already been smoothed out. The expression has settled and transformed into an open presence that allows the flow of movement impulses and exchanges with fellow dancers. The performers have tuned to each other in the appropriate in-betweenness between abstract movement, which points to its own movement principles, and the dynamic exchange of dance intensities between neighbouring dancing bodies. The rhythmically ordered and, at times, chaotic mass of bodies, bolero sleeves and dance interactions represent a new chapter in Mateja Bučar’s predominantly minimalist oeuvre of purified movement, an approach of different movement intensities between bodies, akin to some of the latest trends, for example, the Spider Festival under Matej Kejžar’s artistic direction. At the same time, it must be said that In Perfect Order is an extraordinary financial and production challenge for the Slovenian independent scene. Thus, it is to be expected that it will continue to evolve with potential repetitions, both in the fine-tuning between the dancers, as well as, above all, in the positioning of the choreography in particular concrete architectural spaces and in considering how to encourage the audience to move around the dancing, breathing, sweating sculptures.
CONTACT @PRODUCER (DUM – Association of Artists): dum@dum-club.si, mateja.bucar@guest.arnes.si
Ana Lorger
Don’t Dream Dreams!
Tanja Šljivar: Like All Free Girls. Prešeren Theatre Kranj, première 14 September 2024.
»Although the play’s conclusion offers nothing but bad alternatives and in many ways the future appears bleak, the play finally circles back to one of the major themes it has been weaving between the lines all along: the strong bonds of friendship and the demand for rebuilding a community where everyone would care for each other and where the autonomy of women’s bodies would no longer be in the hands of the church, the family or the state.«
The play Kao i sve slobodne djevojke (Like All Free Girls) by the Bosnian playwright Tanja Šljivar is based on her research into the event that shocked the Bosnian public in 2014. Seven girls who got pregnant during a primary school excursion later had an abortion at the request of the National Health Commission. Although the event appears to point at a peculiar social paradox, where pro-life advocates surprisingly advocated for abortion in the name of the health of 13-year-old girls, the basis of the social repression of the female body remains consistent. Under the guise of caring for children’s health, reproduction is kept under social control, and the girls’ bodies are stripped of their autonomy.
Šljivar’s research into the media coverage of the case of the seven girls found that the event raised many speculations about what actually happened, as the girls never told how they conceived. The author gives voice to the girls on stage, who only talk about other people (no other characters involved in the story appear on the stage) but discuss the event itself on the level of the possible: where and how the incident could have happened, never actually pinpointing what went down in reality. This narrative form is not confined to a documentarist recital of facts. Instead, it opens up the space of speculation, possibilities and, above all, human imagination.
On stage, we see seven actresses belonging to different generations (Vesna Pernarčič, Živa Selan, Vesna Jevnikar, Darja Reichman, Vesna Slapar, Tamara Avguštin, Miranda Trnjanin) in the roles of thirteen-year-old girls who begin telling their story on a partially empty stage. Then a black door behind them opens, behind which we can see a hotel room with a glowing neon sign saying “Don’t Dream Dreams” above it. The partially chronological narrative, interrupted by deviations into the field of infinite possibilities or into detailed descriptions of the social and family situations in which the girls grow up, does not reveal the individual girls’ reasons for conceiving but rather foregrounds the reactions of their surroundings, such as gynaecological violence and the reactions of their families and the pharmacist, as well as the girls’ personal experiences through which they bond with one another. We follow the girls as a collective.
The difficult topic and tone revealing a rural environment with no future is lightened both at the level of the text and through mise-en-scène interventions by introducing situation comedy, caricatured characters (the mother, the priest) and props (the Vučko mascot). Another striking element is the image of the foetus (Darja Reichman dressed in a bright pink costume), who at first advocates for life, which can be read as a parody, as the actress symbolically takes off the costume during the performance, thus emphasising the play’s message in defence of reproductive rights. The heavy burden of the story, however, is taken off the girls’ shoulders as soon as they connect with each other, go to the grocery store together, share with each other on social media their pictures of throwing up, or talk about how they experience themselves and their bodies. In this, Tamara Augustin is the most convincing, gradually bringing her playfulness to the border of madness, pushing her girlish laughter into hysteria but lucidly controlling both at any moment.
The text is full of different images, reflections and motifs, which is a challenge for the director. After all, the narrative format seems to imply that the performance could function very well in the form of a drama play – the language of the play conjures up powerful images and convincing notions. Director Mojca Madon thoughtfully complements the text in some parts and adds a visual dimension to the text with minimal interventions, for example, blowing air bubbles with a straw in a glass of water, pregnancy tests appearing in the form of cigarettes, or a commercial for the best gynaecologist in the region. Less effective, however, are the elements underlining the narrative or repeating the message, for example, the false pregnant bellies worn by the actresses during the majority of the performance, the plastic baby dolls or Miranda Trnjanin changing into men’s clothes.
Although the play’s conclusion offers nothing but bad alternatives and in many ways the future appears bleak, the play finally circles back to one of the major themes it has been weaving between the lines all along: the strong bonds of friendship and the demand for rebuilding a community where everyone would care for each other and where the autonomy of women’s bodies would no longer be in the hands of the church, the family or the state. The message is all the more relevant these days, as this and the following month, we are facing another March for Life in Koper, Maribor and Ljubljana.
CONTACT @PRODUCER (Prešeren Theatre Kranj): info@pgk.si
Nika Arhar
The Subtle Poetics of Didactic Encouragement
Enrica Carini and Fabrizio Montecchi: Little Lessons of Wonder. Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, première 6 February 2025.
»Montecchi’s vision of shadow theatre is realised in the overall spatial composition and atmosphere /…/ where the material and the shadowy, live-animated puppets and the moving images on the screen, external action and internal human experience intertwine into a comprehensive system that radiates in the never-ceasing movement of interdependence.«
During the last decade, Fabrizio Montecchi has collaborated with Ljubljana Puppet Theatre (LPT) as director and set designer on three performances (Duck, Death and the Tulip, Virginia Wolf, My Grandfather Was a Cherry Tree, the latter being an adaptation co-authored by Enrica Carini), in which we have been able to get acquainted with his subtle stage poetics, innovative approaches to shadow theatre and refined and sensitive commitment to the eternal questions of human life. Little Lessons of Wonder (10+) supplements this streak in his distinctive style – staying true to the gentle, subdued atmosphere and close personal experience, placing sensations and wonder at the core of the spectator’s communicative attachment to the stage. However, the latest performance also stands out by shifting from intimate human feelings to the more social topic of the relationship between man and nature and partly by employing documentary elements. It is also a continuation of the impulses featured in My Grandfather Was a Cherry Tree, in which the relationship to nature was already accentuated, as well as the impulse for social engagement in the context of family ties and memories of uncorrupted childhood.
In Little Lessons of Wonder, Fabrizio Montecchi and Enrica Carini proceed from the life and work of biologist, environmentalist and author of popular science books Rachel Carson, who studied marine ecosystems and the devastating effects of chemical pesticides. Carson’s 1962 seminal book Silent Spring incited a heated public debate that led to the banning of the pesticide DDT, which was widely and indiscriminately used on fields in the United States after World War II. By questioning the existing paradigms of human control over nature, Carson raised environmental awareness, drew attention to the need for oversight of government and industry actions and spurred the formation of environmental movements. While the performance does not delve into the broader social context, it reflects it (following the principle that each small particle contains the entire macro world of which it is a part) and, by balancing information and poeticism, directs our view towards Carson’s ethical precept – her reflections on the interconnectedness of the system comprising diverse organisms and the environment, and on the necessary balance between them. Humans are part of nature as well, and if they act against it by invasive interventions, they act against themselves, as she explains in the excerpt from a recording of her lecture, with which the performance introduces us to its system of insights and messages.
The performance literally enacts its title, and Asja Kahrimanović, as narrator and animator, leads us through the five lessons – emotion, attention, knowledge, awareness and care – as if they were a manual on how to develop a responsible outlook and attitude towards the environment. However, although the aim of this linear process of clearly structured steps is obviously to make us aware of our relationship to nature and encourage us to act to the benefit of everyone and everything – the starting point of this aim is so different from what we are used to that the entire path of this lecture and the performance seems to be closer to a story than to didactic instructions, closer to holistic healing than to the mere treatment of symptoms. The starting point for an actively caring approach to the environment can be found in wondering, building up one’s relationship with nature by nurturing sparkly curious observation, sensory impressions and a child’s receptivity to recognising the mysteries and enchantedness of the world.
Accordingly, Montecchi has designed the space with a strong sense of visuality, harmony and subtle atmosphere (to which the lighting design by Maša Avsec contributes to a great extent). The set is clothed in natural, brownish and beige tones and rich shades of wood, as delineated in the space by the spectrum of light and shadow, which is an important element of the set design. On a table, the performer carefully rearranges some shells and small plants with outreaching branches which attract our attention, enchanting us both with their materiality as well as with the patterns of their shadowy images. The jagged edge of a wooden panel she lays on the table creates a discernible line of rocky landscape in the shadow on a canvas behind the table, which then shifts into an image of a sea surface. Giada Fuccelli, the author of video animations and the visual design of the shadow puppets, creates a unique scene on the screen, seamlessly blending the video animations of the natural environment and the shadows of humanoid figures created by flat wooden puppets on a stick (puppet technology by Gabriele Genova and Iztok Bobić) which Kahrimanović animates on the table, including some additional elements that complement the natural landscape, for example, the aforementioned wooden panel/shadowy rocky landscape. The powerful aesthetic and conceptual scenic execution of shadow theatre foregrounds nature, the richness of its patterns and textures unfolding on the screen and emphasises that there are more nuances of light refracting in everything we observe in our environment than just in ourselves – in the human figures that remain present as obscured shadow images. However, in the background of this dispositive, we can also detect a meaningful implication, as the projected nature brings forth an impression of the timelessness and inherent rules of existence. At the same time, humanoid animated puppet figures enter this image and co-shape the life of nature with their own shadows – traces, effects of some action or another.
Despite the various sources about Rachel Carson (the authors draw on her books, letters, lectures and speeches), Silent Spring is the foundation on which they build the action that, with the other half of the teachings, reaches into the realm of the social and the public – the use of pesticides and the dying of birds, the growing circle of people noticing unexplained deaths and suffering, Carson’s expert research and writing, right up to the publication of her book and her speech in the US Congress – the early teachings are rooted in the cultivation of an intimate experience of nature (emotion and attention) as a justification and precondition for the desire for knowledge, awareness and care, as Carson wrote about in her essay, The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children. Just as Carson in her essay describes how she and her great-nephew were observing the sea along a rocky shore and walking in the woods, in the performance, the elements of nature and their reflection in the mental projection of Carson’s and the boy’s characters take on concrete sensual images, for example, in the shimmering of bioluminescent plankton or fireflies, the pursuit of small crabs, the rippling of the sea (which suggests a parallel rippling of the inner world). The play invites us to take up an attentive and lovingly enchanted view of the environment through the figure of Rachel Carson, an expert and interpreter of natural phenomena, who leads the boy to the seashore, lures a girl to go with her among the trees to listen to the morning birdsong and shares her enchantment and wishes with a trusted friend.
Montecchi’s vision of shadow theatre is realised in the overall spatial composition and atmosphere, which become even more explicit when we move from the personal experience to the social – when the mass dying of birds prompts a growing number of voices and a united demand for action. Human figures multiply, and intimate reflections turn into public endeavours, which is reflected in the expansion of the stage layout of puppets and light sources and their uses in the decentralised layering of the stage system, where the material and the shadowy, live-animated puppets and the moving images on the screen, external action and internal human experience intertwine into a comprehensive system that radiates in the never-ceasing movement of interdependence.
In this context, Little Lessons of Wonder functions as a reflected, precise and sensitive performance that weaves the story of a remarkable individual into our shared story and interweaves intimate experience with social action in order to chart the possibility of a different outlook on the world. It is a performance with distinctly educational (but also engaged) content, which it, however, approaches with calm and sensibility, with softness and pace. Its combination of instilling wonder and imparting knowledge encompasses a particular meeting of generations and their perspectives: in the story itself, which talks about a grown-up accompanying a child on a discovery of natural wonders but above all in the encounter of two different ways of approaching the environment – wonder and curiosity as the childlike openness to the world, which often fades away later in life, and the adult view based on information and knowledge that is not yet accessible to children. The meeting of different generations could even raise some peripheral concerns, for example, about the fact that wondering as a childhood trait is presented through the framework of adult perception in a more seriously meditative way rather than a playfully relaxed one. Also, the choice of excerpts from well-known songs (e.g., “Over the Rainbow”, “Feeling Good”), which build up the soundscape and, through their lyrics, also the landscape of meaning (“What a Wonderful World” accompanying the image of dying and suffering birds, the chorus of “Big Yellow Taxi” in the final scene, which passes the torch of action, or rather decision for action, to the audience). However, due to the English language and their referential field, these songs probably mostly affect the older audience, ultimately also due to the abundance of information that requires a great deal of concentration, especially in the subdued and languid atmosphere of the performance. Nevertheless, the overall impression and emotion of the performer engulfs the spectator as a rounded and convincing whole, a delicate blanket of snow that falls softly on the thirsty ground, where it leaves the imprint of its core attitude, the one to which Carson devoted her entire life.
CONTACT @PRODUCER (Ljubljana Puppet Theatre): lidija.franjic@lgl.si
Evelin Bizjak
Marriage Reduced to Choreographed Chores
Katarina Morano: Why We Got Divorced. Ljubljana City Theatre, 20 January 2025.
»Why We Got Divorced is a contemporary, intimate and honest depiction of the complexity of interpersonal relationships in the context of modern social tensions. When considered in the context of the continuity of the creative oeuvre of Žiga Divjak and Katarina Morano, it seems to rely more on nuance and intensification of already tried and tested performance approaches rather than on experimentation and shifts."
Katarina Morano’s drama Why We Got Divorced explores the topic of a contemporary partner relationship that is breaking down in the face of everyday frustrations, communication deadlocks and existential anxieties. It focuses on Tina and Tine, a middle-class married couple in their forties, who are defined by their two salaries, a mortgage, parenthood and a perpetual sense of unfulfillment. Their interactions gradually expose the cracks in their relationship marked by misunderstandings, routine conflicts and emotional distance – all reflecting the burdens of a repetitive existence in contemporary neoliberal capitalism, where intimate relationships are increasingly subordinated to the logic of productivity and emotional rationalisation. To highlight the complex expressivity of the text, the director Žiga Divjak bases the staging on an ascetic, refined aesthetic and subtle yet distinct political commentary, which he skilfully inscribes into the acting and the spatial and dramaturgical design of the production. He exposes their hollowness by paying careful attention to the small, seemingly insignificant tasks extracted from everyday life and isolating them. In doing so, he raises questions about how the system in which we live shapes us, how we lose ourselves inside it, and how it determines the dynamics of our relationships. The performance continues the exploration of the themes that the director already delineated on the Ljubljana City Theatre stage in the performances Seven Days and Sediments. The simple yet multilayered stage language, thoughtful composition and economy of expressive means present the partnership as a form of work requiring constant coordination, optimisation and conflict management, while the structures of everyday life – from housework to parental duties – give way to automated, soulless routines. In this context, emotional alienation appears not only as an individual problem but as a symptom of broader social circumstances, as capitalist logic is deepening the rift between the intimacy and the functionality of relationships, between the genuine closeness and the utilitarian demands of everyday life.
A man and a woman straddled with shopping bags filled to the top cross the emptied stage. They put the bags down backstage and return to the starting point, this time carrying black garbage bags. Even though they are moving in the same space and often cross paths, they appear to be invisible to each other, lost in the monotony of their chores and the dullness of the dialogic coordination of everyday life. Their movement is mechanical and automated, as if they were mere cogs in a larger mechanism, constantly turning without any chance of a break. Through this economical yet meaningful staging gesture, director Žiga Divjak sets the tone of the performance in the overture and lays down the coordinates of a microcosm of social alienation, repetitive routines and unspoken tensions that corrode human relations in the contemporary neo-capitalist milieu into which the shopping bags are situated as a symbol of the consumer society that dictates the rhythm of life, but also as a metaphor for the cyclical nature – the input and output, the accumulation and removal – of everything that builds up contemporary existence.
Combined with this unobtrusive approach in directing, the contextually rich, fragmented and atmospheric text remains the focus of the action: the staging structure follows the text’s dramaturgy, shifting between direct, dialogical depictions of the conflicts between the partners and their isolated, introspective soliloquies delivered frontally through a microphone. This duality deepens the split between the protagonists’ chaotic inner worlds and the dullness and, above all, the vagueness of their interactions marked by their parental roles. The monologues are dense, realistic, delivered in contemporary colloquial language, full of repetitions, unfinished thoughts and everyday phrases (language consultant Maja Cerar). The tangents of the spontaneous flow of thought, both simple and multilayered, recreate the impression of mental clutter and gradually uncover the feelings of hollowness and unspoken pain through an interplay of everyday banalities and existential-philosophical insights.
The action centres on Tina’s (Jana Zupančič) introspective monologues, her state on the verge of a nervous breakdown, constantly intensified by intrusive thoughts about the obligations she must still meet. She counteracts the loss of meaning, ranging from the banality of everyday life (shopping, cooking) to global problems (environmental crisis, war, death), with delusions, finding solace in the awareness of her own finitude, which becomes the only reliable way out. The insistence of the self-critical “you must” diction, reflecting internalised coercion, discursively approaches the power structure of control and conformity. The cruelty of a system which treats nature as mere raw materials for exploitation, animals as statistical numbers and killing them as a matter of course is underlined by a mechanism that reveals the insensitive bureaucratic rhythm of extermination. It holds up a mirror to humankind’s anthropocentrism, ecological insensitivity and self-destructive mentality, which, under the guise of control and progress, systematically destroys everything around it – ultimately destroying itself as well. Her use of rhythmic utterances creates an impression of discomfort and grotesqueness, avoiding preachy didacticism despite seeming to be very direct in presenting her viewpoints. The power of her experience comes alive in hyperbole and irony –presenting us with the logic of exploiting nature in a way that exposes it as absurd and destructive. In doing so, she does not present us with a simple moral lesson but opens up the space for reflection, confronting the spectator with their own stake in the system. Tine (Matej Puc) stays slightly more within the realms of concrete reality as he articulates his frustration and impotence at the changes that have crept in almost imperceptibly but are now the new normality. He, too, feels the loosened family and friendship ties and gradual distancing from the once firmly held values. The actors are dressed in simple, washed-out, casual clothes (costume designer Tina Pavlović), skilfully mitigating the realistic yet complexly nuanced experience of unbearable existence by a self-ironic distance that illuminates the text with an additional layer of humanism.
The play is divided into episodes that function like snapshots of life, which the director has positioned into a domestic setting. In the initially empty stage space, the actors gradually assemble the interior of an apartment with a wooden floor and prefabricated walls, creating an impression of fragility, set in two separate but connected spaces – a living room and a kitchen/dining room suggesting the cohabitation of two people, while at the same time subtly highlighting their separation (set designer Igor Vasiljev). A green sofa, a bookshelf with a couple of board games and children’s drawings on the walls suggest familiarity as well as stagnation. The dialogue is layered through stage action related to housework and attempts at alleviating everyday obligations. In the compressed time of the constant rush, they are also reflected in the accumulation of cluttered objects. The most ostensively present set element – the stranded car, which acts as a visual barrier in the simultaneous symbolisation of the past (memories of road trips and shared moments) and of separation – rounds up the narrative into a whole but remains somewhat representational. The lighting design (Borut Bučinel) also plays a key role in emphasising the dynamics of the relationship, the split between warm, focused light and the dark void separating different parts of the set, suggesting cracks in communication. Blaž Gracar’s music functions similarly as it fills up transitions with a tense staccato rhythm, which builds an acoustic perception of escalation towards the imminent end.
Why We Got Divorced is a contemporary, intimate and honest depiction of the complexity of interpersonal relationships in the context of modern social tensions. When considered in the context of the continuity of the creative oeuvre of Žiga Divjak and Katarina Morano, it seems to rely more on nuance and intensification of already tried and tested performance approaches rather than on experimentation and shifts. However, in light of the dictated necessity for improvement, upgrading and innovation that even artistic production is subject to, recycling preexisting approaches can also signify a meaningful performative gesture.
CONTACT @PRODUCER (Ljubljana City Theatre): simona.belle@mgl.si
Nika Arhar
The Sensibility of Imagination
Winnie-the-Pooh. Ljubljana Puppet Theatre (BiTeater), première 24 October 2024.
"Although the concept follows the ideas of Winnie the Pooh, it also significantly departs from Pooh as we know him, most prominently in the visual imagery that the animal characters and their adventures inhabit. However, as a consequence, this visual twist also brings about a different multilayered relationship to the stage action."
The concept, dramatisation and direction of Winnie-the-Pooh (3+) was entrusted to Benjamin Zajc, the house dramaturg of the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre. Billed as a recycled puppetry performance, Zajc uses the puppets made for past productions that were not used, objects and scenic elements gathered from various corners of the theatre, a costume reworked from scraps and places all of this on the shelves of a wooden construction made by Sara Slivnik from an exhibition that accompanied the production of Still Life. Zajc builds the entire concept of the performance on this ecological decision, establishing a parallel with A. A. Milne’s approach to creating his stories based on the characters of his son and his toys, which provides the underlying context of the imaginary worlds of a child’s room (or a theatre workshop), combined with the use of objects that are already there. Last but not least, Zajc organically embeds this orientation into the overall tone of the performance, which manifests as an echo of the inherent sensitivity for the things around us and the things that we do – or how we do them.
With the dramaturgical support of Tajda Lipicer, Zajc establishes the characters and motifs from Milne’s stories from the situation of child’s play in a room full of forgotten, discarded things. Iztok Bobič, puppet technologist and the production’s set designer, creates a space reminiscent of an antique shop, a final destination for unneeded things, or even the scene of a tidy workshop or repair shop, but with a balanced and harmonious arrangement of diverse small objects that does not feel oversaturated. The space is obviously a special shelter for the human protagonist – imaginative and magical, as highlighted by the musical atmosphere at the entrance composed by Darja Hlavka Godina. In the associative web of Winnie-the-Pooh’s adventures (even with minimal additions of moss and spruce twigs), the space quickly takes on the metaphorical role of the Hundred Acre Wood, although recognising this associative reference is not even necessary.
Although the concept follows the ideas of Winnie-the-Pooh, it also significantly departs from Pooh as we know him, most prominently in the visual imagery that the animal characters and their adventures inhabit. However, as a consequence, this visual twist also brings about a different multilayered relationship to the stage action, which Zajc composes from fragments and atmospheres of different stories from the original Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner books. Regardless of the author’s approach to drawing from and combining thematic elements, applying the model of children’s play and starting from the form of a collection of short stories, as well as using a variety of objects as elements of puppetry gathered from various sources, Zajc creates a unified performative and thematically rounded story, rather than fragmentariness; or rather, a story (of the characters from Pooh) within a story (of a boy and his play) – which unfolds around the search for a birthday present for Eeyore the Donkey.
However, nothing is as it seems, which suits both the spirit of Milne’s characters, who, for example, mistake their own footprints for someone else’s, as well as the characteristics of symbolic child’s play. Winnie-the-Pooh lucidly reveals the rules of its own staging principle at the very beginning, when Gašper Malnar, as a small boy not quite yet out of the realm of the real, starts taking objects out of his basket and naming each one. However, not what a thing actually is (a stone can thus be a framed hug, a jar of honey features as the boy’s first pacifier), which also primes us to more readily accept the transformations of the main characters – their imaginary personalities, as the role of Pooh is assumed by the puppet of a girl, who straightforwardly explains to us that today she is feeling as if she were Pooh, and nonchalantly suggests to (her) animator, Malnar, that he could be Eeyore. The performance thus very graphically reveals the mechanism of child’s and theatre play, where everything can become something else, or everyone can become someone else. Piglet is thus represented by a little white kitten in a pink dress, Tigger by a furry orange-and-white rabbit toy (with the very apt line, “I am pretending not to be a tiger”), and every now and then a chicken flies by slightly resembling Owl.
The witty and childlike perception of imaginary identity shifts marks the minimalist action, which seamlessly shifts from the boy playing with his toys (in a dialogue with the girl Pooh) to the story of how Eeyore’s friends are trying to find the most suitable gift for him, with light-hearted diversions from mundane tasks, without any ambitious urges, in the same vein as the girl Pooh one moment is asking the animator for a bit of honey. However, a moment later, she nevertheless descends into a whirlpool of collective destiny in the quest for Eeyore’s present. The gloomy character of Eeyore is, in a way the protagonist of the play, even though most of the time he is absent as an animal protagonist. He is, however, indirectly present all the time as the lever of the action (the one for whom everyone else is trying to find a gift) and as a “shadow” in the human figure of the animator, who constructs the overall stage narrative in a way that we can simultaneously follow it both at the level of the story of the animal characters and the level of the boy’s reality, the time he spends in the rich of imaginary worlds and the curiosity that the chosen objects trigger in him. Malnar himself, as the boy, strongly resembles Eeyore – while he may not really be so sad and pessimistic, he is nevertheless a boy who deviates from the norm of a cheerful and action-prone child or hero. He is a boy who prefers to hide from the noise of the outside world into the calm of solitude, the gentle attentiveness to the inner worlds, the fullness of his own imagination and the many stories that emerge therein, as suggested by our arrival in the room full of deserted things as well as by the closing verses of Ivan Minatti’s poem “You Must Love Someone”.
The message of this standpoint is a strength of Zajc’s Winnie-the-Pooh, which makes the principle by which the stage action appears to us as mere child’s play unique, fresh and authentic. Malnar’s acting and animation, as well as his treatment of his friends/toys, radiates a mild detachment and calm content that makes small gestures and tiny things that we often overlook in the speed and superficial ephemerality of everyday life full of meaning. It is as if he were saying: here we can have a good time, even if we are different from what we seem or what we are supposed to be; we can make the world different, our own, special – at least for a moment. As echoed in the suggestive sounds of a magical, almost fairytale-holiday atmosphere with interesting introductions of distorted, as if broken melodies and sparkling “mistakes”.
