The international opening of the 63rd season
The Mladinsko Theatre is starting its 63rd season with a tour to Belgrade, then it moves to Skopje, the Mexican city of Guanajuato, Berlin and, at the end of the year, also to Krakow.
Odilo. Obscuration. Oratorio. directed by Dragan Živadinov will open the 52nd Bitef International Theatre Festival in Belgrade. The theme of the play, co-produced by the Mladinsko Theatre and Kino Šiška, fits in perfectly with the main topic of the festival, which this year deals with nationalism and the growing influence of totalitarian ideologies in the world. Exceptional interest has already been shown in this performance, so we will perform it twice in the same day. This will be the fifty-members team’s first tour after their premiere in April and performances in June at Kino Šiška.
This will be followed by the now traditional guest appearance at the 43rd International MOT Festival in Skopje where director Nina Rajić Kranjac will present her Idiots based on the script by the renowned Danish film creator Lars von Trier on 21st September.
After being absent for a few years, we will once again be part of the El Cervantino Theatre Festival in Guanajuato. The play Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland! (directed by Oliver Frljić) will have its 101st performance and will be performed on 18th and 19th October. Earlier, on the 10th October, you can also see it at home, in the lower hall of the Mladinsko. The Mladinsko Theatre has wowed audiences already several times at the oldest Mexican festival that includes all arts except for film. A week later, on 25th and 26th October, we will be presenting the same play at the War or Peace – Crossroads of History 1918/2018 festival, held at the renowned Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin.
At the end of 2018, we will appear in Krakow, Poland, at the Divine Comedy International Festival with the play National Reconciliation: A Show for Tourists (directed by Wojtek Ziemilski) that was made in co-production with the Komuna// Warszawa Theatre and premiered in June. The Divine Comedy festival is the most important festival of Polish theatre and its programme is showcased for international curators and selectors.
Meanwhile, we will stop off in Maribor for the 53rd Maribor Theatre Festival. There we will compete with two projects: 6 directed by Žiga Divjak will be performed on 22th October and Odilo. Obscuration. Oratorio. directed by Dragan Živadinov on 24th October. In addition to these two productions, we will also be presenting the production experiment The New Post Office at the festival, together with Maska Institute.
The Mladinsko Theatre Artistic Director Goran Injac said, “Among the Slovenian theatres, Mladinsko is the one with the best international position. Just in the first year of my and Tibor’s term in office we have achieved a Slovenian record of 49 performances abroad. In doing so, we made it very clear that we are interested in the international sphere, not only as a touring theatre, but as a serious partner in the exchange of ideas and the various forms of artistic collaboration. We began our first, that is the 60th, season with the premiere of a project called The Ristić Complex at Bitef, a festival that holds exceptional importance for the entire region and also for the history of the Mladinsko, which is why I am particularly happy to open this year’s festival with our new production. The Divine Comedy festival in Krakow is the most important showcase of Polish theatre and an event where hundreds or foreign guests congregate each year. After Princess Dramas directed by Michał Borczuch we once again have the opportunity to present ourselves there; we are the only Slovenian theatre, and actually also the only ex-Yugoslavian theatre, to have ever performed at this renowned festival. We are attempting to establish a more intense collaboration and exchange with the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin, one of the best theatres in Germany, which is in many ways similar to the Mladinsko as it is known for its provocative and politically-relevant programme. In October we will be holding guest performances there, while they will be invited to come to the Mladinsko at the end of November. At home here in Slovenia we will be presenting a few projects at the Borštnik Theatre Festival for the third time. All of this is confirmation that the profiled theatre which knows what it’s doing and why while also reflecting its geo-cultural context, is receiving a great deal of international acclaim. We are the only Slovenian theatre that has had the honour and opportunity in recent years to successfully present Slovenian culture at the most important theatre festivals around the world, from the Weiner Festwochen in Vienna, to the many relevant festivals in the region, and all the way to Latin America.”