Girls
- Sendi Bakotić
- Ana Marija Brđanović
- Anja Sabol
- Vanda Velagić
- Concept: Sendi Bakotić, Ana Marija Brđanović, Tjaša Črnigoj, Anja Sabol, Tijana Todorović, Vanda Velagić
- Dramaturgy: Tjaša Črnigoj
- Costume design: Tijana Todorović
- Set design: Ivan Botički, Tijana Todorović
- Video: Mara Prpić
- Lighting design: Marin Lukanović, Tjaša Črnigoj
- Prevod in nadnapisi: Tina Malič
- Technical Director: Marin Lukanović
- Stage manager: Marin Butorac
Project financed by: the Ministy of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the City of Rijeka, the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Kultura nova Fund
Logistic Support: Kamov Residency
The basis for the documentary performance Girls is testimonies or stories from women of three different generations. Teens, around seventeen years of age, thirty-something performers and their octogenerian grandmothers. Girls are the second collaboration between the director Tjaše Črnigoj and the Kolektiv Igralke from Rijeka, after Grannies in 2020. This time, the artists tackle the topic of coming of age and sexuality. They investigate what ‘losing virginity’ means to contemporary high-school students, whether they fear unwanted pregnancy, and what they perceive as sexual empowerment. They are also interested in how seniors remember their coming of age, first sexual experiences and the knowledge of sexuality they had at the time.
Girls use women’s personal stories to outline the change of times and socio-political systems. In today’s Croatia, the reproductive and sexual rights of women are under a serious threat and we need to ask where we’re going. Will the coming of age of future generations be increasingly similar to the way our grandmothers grew up?
Girls are thematically linked to the lecture-performance Sex Education II: Fight, which reconstructs the efforts for women’s reproductive rights in Yugoslavia, and together with it forms a diptych.
We'd like to thank grandmas Emica, Vera, Dragica, Viktorija, aunt Eugenijia, and mums Miranda, Dajna, Danijela and Edita.
The girls who anonimously participated in the workshops and the girls present on the video.
Maša Magzan, Jasenka Grujić and Aleksandar Štulhofer we thank for the help with the research.
And thanks to Vita Tijan; her article Moje telo, moja last (My Body, My Property; Kult magazin of the First Croatian Gymnasium in Rijeka, 2021–2022) was the inspiration for the project.