The Absurd Darkness
- Željko Hrs
- Klara Kastelec
- Nika Rozman
- Translation: Urška Brodar
- Dramaturgy: Nina Šorak
- Assistant director: Marko Mlačnik
- Costume design: Sara Smrajc Žnidarčič
- Set design: Adriana Furlan
- Sound: Tomaž Grom
- Voice work consultant: Irena Tomažin
- Language consultant: Mateja Dermelj
- Sound design: Marijan Sajovic
- Light design: Matjaž Brišar
- Stage manager: Janez Pavlovčič
Mentors: Kristijan Muck, Prof. and Sebastijan Horvat, MA, Assoc. Prof. (stage acting and theatre directing); Blaž Lukan, PhD, Assist. Prof. (dramaturgy); Jasna Vastl, MA, Assoc. Prof. (set design); Janja Korun, Prof. and Tina Kolenik, MA, Assist. (costume design), Katarina Podbevšek. PhD, Assist. Prof. (speech)
The Absurd Darkness is a radio play that allows the possibility of a stage performance. It was inspired by the cult classic Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. Two soldiers are ordered to venture into the depths of the fictive Afghan rainforest, to find and eliminate a crazy officer. During their own travels they meet bizarre people with even more bizarre stories. With the boat on which they travel, they penetrate the unusual world of exploitation, war horrors, abuse and the destructive desire for power. The horrifying alienation and increasingly bizarre events that prey on them in the rainforest are paradoxically close to us, as the dark core of the rainforest represents the world in which we live. In the text, we follow – through the feverish madness of two travellers – the elusive search for sense in a world in which man has forgotten about his fellow man. “We’re in the middle of a warzone, and we don’t even notice it,” is one of the sentences that cuts through the text. The Absurd Darkness is a desperate cry, an appeal to getting off a speeding train on which we find ourselves, an appeal to look around. To ask ourselves in what kind of world are we actually living?!
Although The Absurd Darkness is a radio play which the author – in line with the text, to be honest – has annotated with a somewhat humorous note that in case of stage performance the text will require extensive alterations, the staging follows a clear decision to keep the text as it is, and focuses in particular on creating a sound image (the sound by Tomaž Grom and vocal coach Irena Tomažin). Simultaneous radio play as a complement to the stage one gives the stage event a special note; the foreignness of one artistic form in the other is supported by at times a surrealist journey following the footsteps of a 'civilised' man into the heart of the 'barbaric' darkness, and above all it emphasises the mediatisation of the narrated reality. [...] We seem to have seen a model which weaves into the history of humanity the undulation of colonial occupation, wars, submission and enslaving, the destruction of nature and everything human.
The Absurd Darkness is a [radio] drama moulded into a lucid collage that opens many topics. From the Somali pirates to coltan mines, blue helmets and missions, we’re entering individual stories following two soldiers who, believing they’re executing a crazy officer, traveling up the Hindu Kush River through the primal forest woven from carefully selected images of our civilisation. [...] Director’s process thus reveals [...] a thinking about the possible ways to transfer radio text into the theatre space, with the creative team particularly effectively using the associative power of sound and translating it into the theatre space as some sort of a sound backdrop that doesn’t envelop just the stage but also the auditorium. With this is opens a wide field of imagination.
- Župančičeva nagrada Željku Hrsu med drugim tudi za vlogo v Norčevanju teme
Prevod dela je podprl / Translation supported by: Goethe-Institut.
