Performance also on:
May 11, 2014 21:00

This performance of Oliver Frljic, one of the leading and at the same time one of the most controversial representatives of the younger generation of Croatian directors, attempts, through the inflation of death, through the incessant repetition of the unrepeatable, to emphasize a theatre mechanism that always remains a representation of a certain outside reality.

With its compulsive attempts to stage collective death, this performance challenges the theatrical representation of death, as well as the idea of theatre representation itself. The repetitions of death that appear on stage in almost regular intervals and after which the protagonists ‘come back to life’ expose the standstill of theatre mechanisms of representation. It is these very mechanisms for the production of fiction – that most often remain concealed – that push out any thematic-content frame and thus remain the only visible thing.

Let’s return to the corpses we’ve mentioned at the beginning. Just like the soil of the former Yugoslavia, where it is impossible to thread the ground without wading into bones, this performance is also overflowing with corpses. And just like those non-theatre corpses have a certain value on the political market, these corpses we hyper-produce and resurrect have a certain value as well. In fact, they strive to reduce the value of a certain model of representation. If such devaluation has occurred in theatre representation of death, what is the value of real death?
To figure that out, one only needs to watch the news on Haiti or ask what Srebrenica means to us today.
Little, less, nothing?

Born in 1976, graduated in philosophy and religious studies as well as theatre and radio directing in Zagreb, Oliver Frljić is one of the leading and at the same time one of the most controversial representatives of the younger generation of Croatian directors. Since his very first professional productions, his reputation has been that of an uncompromising provocateur. Many of Frljić’s ground-breaking productions won international acclaim. His productions can be seen in both independent and repertoire theatres, and stimulate many significant public debates over censorship and self-censorship in modern art.

The Slovensko Mladinsko Gledališče was founded in Ljubljana in 1955 as the first professional theatre for children and youth in Slovenia. In the 1980s, it became a centre of theatrical research and politically-engaged theatre. It is known for a wide range of innovative poetics of different directors and an ensemble energy, a Peter Brook-like approach to acting with a laboratory for theatre research for actors, directors, choreographers and musicians to research, develop, and create.

director: Oliver Frljić
cast: con: Primož Bezjak, Olga Grad, Uroš Kaurin, Boris Kos, Uroš Macek,
Draga Potocnjak, Matej Recer, Romana Šalehar, Dario Varga, Matija Vastl
dramaturgs: Borut Šeparović, Tomaž Toporišič
stage and costume design, music selection: Oliver Frljić
assistant to the director and movement consultant: Matjaž Farič
sound design: Silvo Zupančič
light design: Oliver Frljić, Tomaž Štrucl
stage manager: Urša Červ