Slovensko Mladinsko Gledališče (SLO)
Fragile!
Pataky Cultural Center, 2008. november 28. (Friday), 7:00 PM
(130 minutes, without interval. In Slovenian with Hungarian subtitles!)
There will be a post-show talk after the performance!
Performers:
Neda R. Bric
Sebastijan Cavazza
Janja Majzelj
Marko Mlačnik
Matej Recer
Katarina Stegnar
Marinka Štern
Written by: Tena Štivičić
Dramaturgy: Olga Kacjan
Language editing: Barbara Rogelj
Director: Matjaž Pograjc
Matjaž Pograjc. Born 1967, Ljubljana, is a theatre director and one of Slovenia's most outstanding theatre artists. In 1988 he started to perform as a dancer in the performance of The Red Pilot “Zenith” (Ballet Conservatoire), directed by Dragan Živadinov. Next year he passed the exams to the Academy of theatre in Ljubljana to study theatre directing and in 1990 founded Betontanc. His performances are frequent guests at domestic and international festivals – his performances travelled the world, through 250 cities in 36 countries on all 5 continents. He frequently works as a teacher, pedagogue. Since 1993 he’s a house director in Mladinsko Theatre in Ljubljana.
A bittersweet story about contemporary immigrants who wish to succeed in foreign environments. A refined narrative about dreams, lost illusions, maturing, and especially about fragility, loneliness and foreignness which are nowadays a part of everyone’s lives, told in an innovative, surprising way, with an imaginative intertwining of the theatrical and film mediums. The technology, which we can understand as a multi-layered metaphor of contemporariness and a hint about the mediatization of society, is also an aid that brings closer the inner world of the characters and, paradoxically, supports stage art in a most refined manner.
Reviews:
“The big winner of the 41st Borstnik Festival is the Ljubljana-based theatre company Slovensko mladinsko gledalisce (SMG) (...) Among the ten productions on view in the official programme of this year's festival, the jury found "Fragile" to be the best, praising the "effective" and "painfully suggestive" way in which it tunned up the idea of the plot and the sophisticated technological machinery applied to stage this idea.” (http://www.ukom.gov.si/eng/slovenia/publications/slovenia-news/3838/3844/)
“In the show Fragile! we can observe both: theatrically effective and extremely suggestively balanced idea of the plot written by Tena Stivicic, and complicated technical machinery which is used to present this idea to us. The video, dolls and scale models serve a wider purpose and are not exhausted in the director’s self-satisfaction; rather they produce an authentic theatrical play, supported by fragmental structure of the work, transposing it into a unique and independent theatrical text. These are the foundations supporting the show which mocks the media of television and addresses the conscience of the world resting on the voyeurism of the Big Brother, but simultaneously minutely analyses the spiritual pain of those who have lost their homes, existences and identities on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia. These people are at the same time guinea pigs and experimenters in a mysterious global project, victims and perpetrators in a world which has lost all sense, actors and directors in a grand cabaret testifying that misery and suffering can easily become entertainment for the others.”
Jury of the Borstnikova srecanja, October 25th 2006
“Tena Stivicic is one of the most intriguing dramatists of the younger generation, who has had a number of staged dramas and received awards in Croatia and abroad. Besides being the only Croatian writer who lives abroad, trying to make a name for herself on very demanding British market, Tena Stivicic is an exceptional domestic author whose drama, Fragile, premiered abroad. She is currently living and working in London, where the Royal Court Theatre - the most famous theatre in the world dedicated to the new drama (premiered dramas by, for example, Sarah Kane and Marko Ravenhill) - celebrating half a century of its existence, listed her among 50 young promising authors who it decided to inaugurate by commissioning and performing their dramas. (...)
"Fragile" speaks of your emigrant experiences. What do you see as especially dramatic about being a foreigner in London?
- Life in emigration is like a continual walk on a tightrope, and even more so with a career in such an uncertain profession. Being foreigner in a country swarming with foreigners and not liking it means living in a perpetual quiet competition with the culture you don’t belong to. This means being an outsider and trying constantly to jump over an invisible crossbar with your various small and big projects. This is in itself dramatic. (...)
You have become one of the writers the Royal Court, a theatre of the world renown, is offering a chance. How? And what does that mean for your future?
- The Royal Court decided to inaugurate 50 new writers as a part of its 50th anniversary celebration, with the support of BBC. 50 British theatres nominated one writer each, so I got listed among them. What will that mean? It boosts the ego and self-esteem because it gives a kind of acknowledgement that what I write has a certain impact. It will open some possibilities I wouldn’t have had otherwise, but it also means competing further. That’s how the things work there - it’s a constant competition. Why was "Fragile" produced in Slovenia; did you offer it to somebody in Croatia?
- There are more reasons for that. The first is Matjaz Pograjc - we had been talking about him directing of one of my dramas for years and now we finally actualised it with this project. The other reason is the languages. The play was originally written in English, on different levels of the language spoken by immigrants. I’m currently living, thinking and writing in two languages, in the place where languages, dialects and accents are constantly mixed. The issue of multi-linguistics preoccupies my writing together with the problem of how to find a stage language which would be performable, yet true to reality, considering the fact that it has become impossible for me to think of a single story in which all characters belong to the same language, same race, same culture. So it was hard for me to translate it into Croatian because in this situation it is a very complicated task. Nevertheless, I finally had to get down to it for the Marulić Days. (...)”
Jasen BOKO - Tena STIVICIC (www.slobodnadalmacija.hr)
Date: 2008. november 28. (Friday), 7:00 PM
Pataky Cultural Center, X. Szent L. Square 7-14.
Tickets: Pataky Cultural Center Pataky [+36 (1)260 9959]
More information: www.mladinsko.com