A book of interviews with a theatre director is a rare occurrence among theatre publications. The publishing imperative for it was triggered by Tomi Janežič's directorial discourse, and the performance poetics that defined the last quarter of a century of theatre in this part of Europe.
After high school in Nova Gorica and his studies at the AGRFT, the initiation act with which Tomi Janežič entered a theatre institution was the staging of the play Equus by Peter Shaffer at the Small Stage of the MGL in 1996. A further important period of Janežič's experimental search for his own stage language is linked to his work in his Studio for Research into the Art of Acting. This creative platform later developed also through contact with playwrights: the three key ones are Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Milena Marković and Simona Semenič, the very important in theatrical terms Bertolt Brecht, William Shakespeare and Ljubomir Simović, as well as S. Anski, Mikhail Bulgakov and Georg Büchner, then Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Viktor Frankl, and from contemporary playwrights also Tatjana Gromača.
In 2000, he directed for the first time in Croatia, invited to collaborate by Ivica Buljan, then artistic director of the Croatian National Theatre in Split. In addition to directing in Slovenia, in 2005 he staged for the first time in Serbia, then directed in Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Russia, Norway, Lithuania and Romania, in environments where his staging approach with its intense dialogic charge was automatically accepted.
As a director, playwright and pedagogue, Tomi Janežič develops his creative work decisively through collaborations and interactions with the theatres of the former Yugoslav republics. His attachment to the Slovenian staging domicile loosens, but the contact is never truly severed. Although most of the more important performances he directed abroad and mentions in interviews have not toured Slovenia and have not been seen by Slovenian audiences – the exceptions are the play Crime and Punishment, shown in the accompanying program of the Borštnik Meeting in 2006, the performance Black man, which toured the Ljubljana City Theatre in 2011, and the play Seagull at the Ljubljana Kino Šiška, 2013 –, Janežič's contact with the domestic theatre scene remains alive also due to his professorial role at the AGRFT (in 2006–2014 he lectured on drama and practical directing at the first level, and since 2014 on theatre directing at the second level).
What don't interviews tell us? At performances King Lear (with Ljubo Tadić in his last theatrical role), Foundling Simeon, The Seagull, Šopalović Traveling Theatre, The Forest is Glowing, important and award-winning for the Serbian space, there is a gradual authorial shift in Janežič's directing style, his treatment of the dramatic text and especially the actor. Their difference from the performances that Janežič directed in Slovenia until 2006 stands out. One of the key aspects of this stage practice and search gradually becomes the connection with the background of psychodrama techniques, which fundamentally determines Janežič's way of working with the actor and the stage material. The importance of his directorial presence for Slovenian acting is immeasurable and at the same time immeasurable, whereby the peculiar absent presence or present absence that defines Janežič is not important.
In 2018, in interaction with the dramatic writing of Simona Semenič, a play was created at the Slovenian Youth Theatre no title yet, which marks the turning point of Janežič's stage return "home". The circumstances for creation, acceptance by the management and the acting ensemble, and no less the receptivity of the audience for which the theater is intended, are confirmed as key. The Slovenian Youth Theater proves to be an exception. In contrast to most Slovenian theaters, which are characterized by an almost factory-like pace of producing performances, the SMG has an ear for the subtle creeping of stage time, which is established by Tomi Janežič's performances, and it does not measure its ear thinly. In 2020, it receives the Prešeren Fund Award.
After breakthrough directors develop within its ranks, the Slovenian theatre space often fails to recognize them or drives them away with its normative attitude. The audience, which recognizes Janežič throughout, is different. This is not the audience of the classic black box of bourgeois theatre and the usual time parameters. Meanwhile, the plays he has directed abroad tour the world (from Germany and Slovakia to Russia and the USA) and eminent international festivals: we should mention the Italian festival Fabbrica Europa, the Belgian Kunstenfestivaldesarts, the Lithuanian Sirenos, the Austrian Wiener Festwochen, the Russian Zlata maska, as well as festivals closer to home, such as Bitef, Eurokaz, Mess, etc. Unlike the plays, which rarely reach beyond their immediate environment, Janežič's works manage to establish a specific international theatre community.
The collection of twenty-five interviews begins with a conversation published in 2002 in Rijeka, Croatia. This is followed by thirteen interviews from the Serbian (especially Vojvodina) and Croatian regions, nine from Slovenia, and two from countries beyond the former Yugoslavia (Hungary, Lithuania). The selection of interviews attempts to show the development and changes in the theatrical aesthetic interest, which is crucially shaped by Janežič's directing activity on stages outside Slovenia. The interviews also show something else: just as Janežič's stage discourse does not state anything unambiguous, his claims are also upgraded and deepened over time, he returns to the same topic(s) and at the same time opens up new ones. As an interlocutor, he arouses the attention and commitment of every journalist or theatrologist in his writing, while at the same time capturing phenomena differently each time, with original new emphases and fields of meaning. The selection of interviews, which is only a fraction of the impressive multitude of media publications, confirms this.
Janežič is not a museum exhibit in a showcase, which is why he is in performances Man, Doppler, Ubu, no title yet, Seven Questions About Happiness, Not This, That and Uncle Vanya Geographical borders no longer play the role of a determinant. The theatrical approach does not agree with this, does not agree. In particular, the collaboration with the nonlinear dramatic writing of Simona Semenič and with the master of stage space Branko Hojnik takes the sense for switching between atmospheres, associations, silent motivations and hints further. It turns out that there are no limits to the staging need, which refuses to be confined to categorized drawers. This is also indicated by the selection of pictorial material in the book. The photographs are not merely illustrative, but as visual impressions they actually escape from the factual. From a certain point on, it is worth considering how precise a list of images the book even needs.
Primož Jesenko
Publication editor, compiler of visual material and tables: Primož Jesenko
Co-editor: Tomi Janežič
Selection of interviews: Tomi Janežič, Gasper Malej, Primož Jesenko
Selection of visual material: Tomi Janežič
Translations from Serbian, Croatian and English: Bojana White
Lecturer: Martin Vrtačnik
Design and preparation for printing: Nina Sturm
Assistance in preparing visual material: Andrej Ovsec, Dana Kodermac, Nina Sturm