Slovenia Counts

The result is text-light, movement-heavy, music-fuelled devised piece that pushes its cast to the physical limit. The stage is a shiny black expanse, bare except for a cluster of microphones forming a kind of cage. When the beat kicks in, the performers start to move one by one to the front of the stage, walking with a fixed rhythmic gait in time to Poloni’s music, rocking backwards and forwards on their socked feet. [...] While the cast never break pace, the mood continually shifts. Sometimes they pound their chests or thrust their fists in the air like spectators at a football match supporting the home team, sometimes they become a hostile mob composed of those who would keep others out. The mood veers between jubilation and shame, a sense that sometimes it is stressful being Slovenian. Occasionally the cast form a pack, only to break apart; still, they continue to chant, more intensely: a mantra, a slogan, a battle cry: Slovenia, Slovenia, Slovenia, Slovenia. At one point Lina Akif becomes almost possessed, the word Slovenia tumbling out of her mouth in a kind of breathless word vomit. [...] In other hands this might have been an endurance exercise for the audience too, but Nübling, Poloni and the performers insert so much variety and play into the piece that it never becomes wearying, quite the opposite, it is intense, visceral, hypnotic and, at times, very fucking funny.

Nübling’s and Poloni’s performance is primarily intense physical theatre, where body and voice serve as the main means of expression, while text takes a secondary role. It’s an energetic journey, a trance-like trip built from bodies, movement, sound, and music which creates an auditory mosaic reflecting Slovenian society. Text appears in later stages of the performance, but its full understanding is not necessary for comprehension. The choreography itself and its meaning can suffice to convey a deeper sense. Conceptually and ambiguously, Slovenia Counts presents the face of contemporary Slovenia. Music by Jackie Poloni, a key element of the performance, sets the rhythm for the actors’ movements and the tempo of the entire production, also building tension and atmosphere, which, along with the creators, immerses us, the audience, in a Slovenian trip full of diverse cultural codes. [...] The acting team for this performance excels not only in acting challenges but also in performance, and they adapt well to this type of theatre. They can work excellently both individually and as a collective theatrical body that moves and reacts together. However, individual personalities emerge from this collective body, where each one presents a different personality.

On a corporeal level, Slovenia Counts has created a gladiator spectacle in which the actors – without props or scenography, and merely by creating several waves of intensity – present the banality of the existence of that ostensible organism, the nation state. Through intensifying rhythms, every one of them, using their own identity that they hold onto in real life, introduces one of the absurdities that occur in Slovenian everyday life, or perhaps one of those that spin around the understanding of what “everyday” should mean to us. Commitment to tradition, a constitution that only exists on paper, the (lack of) right to speak, understanding sexual roles, slander, ‘barking’ at any ‘thrown bone’ and other ‘qualities’ of the Slovenian nation were particularly put to the forefront. By recreating these moments that kept repeating and intensifying [throughout the production], the actors brought the seemingly ordinary themes to an ecstatic climax in which their behaviour began to resemble frenzy. Although we could, at first glance, reproach the production for being too self-referencing, the authors did tackle this aspect as well. Mladinsko, after all, is a space frequented by people who feel close to the rational critique of society.

Slovenia Counts begins without words, with walking across the stage and the growing layers of rhythmical parts of a techno piece. This walking by the performers, alone or in pairs, or groups of three or four, is increasingly built by repeating the word ‘Slovenia’, with more and more gesticulation, screams and physical tension. The monotonous repetition with minimal changes in movement that establish the difference and thus propel the dramaturgy (Goran Injac), gradually dissolves into a discursive part in which each of the performers articulates one of the frustrations of the Slovenian legal, bureaucratic, and social system, interspersed with nationalism, sexism and xenophobia. The actors on stage establish the intersectionality of different forms of repression based on gender, race or language (Janja Majzelj, Lea Aymard, Lina Akif), while the heteronormative male bodies convey the legal system (Primož Bezjak), mark the radical feeling of anger and frustration due to their own powerlessness (Vito Weis) and the general, omnipresent phrases that we often hear in the society (Robert Prebil). The nonverbal, merely rhythmical-symbolic part of the production itself comes across as extremely thoughtful, evokes a weight in the audience, doesn’t offer a single moment of respite or relaxation for the spectator, and this is how the production successfully conveys the anxious feeling of the Slovenian social climate.

Certainly the best and also very witty is the part of the production in which the actors draw from their (perhaps real) experience to show the most important and current moments of life in Slovenia. Lina Akif tries in vain to set up a doctor’s appointment, Vito Weis is permanently ‘losing’ (everybody else comes first, nothing is left for him because he keeps his head down, Slovenia is a place where brute characters prosper), Lea Aymard emphasises, almost as a way of an apology, that she is not from here and also does not belong to the theatre. But it is the excellent Janja Majzelj who makes the biggest impression; a single and childless woman, which means something must not be right with her, perhaps she’s even a prostitute. Well, she is an actress and that’s her mitigating circumstance. Thespians are strange, after all. But it doesn’t matter. In the style of ‘fake’ youngsters and influencers Majzelj assures that she is okay despite everything! Slovenia Counts is clearly a result of a collective process of work during which the actors contributed a lot of improvisation and content.

Slovenia counts heartbeats – the heart beats for Slovenia, which is slowly constituting, the phenomenon is collective and without individuals. Success. Slovenia counts steps. The mass marches militantly, individuals have no leeway, the machine can either grind them or spit them out, which costumes probably also address, as they blur the line between the private and the public. Jackie Poloni’s repetitive electronic music structure provides a base for this machine. The steady rhythm of the music and the introductory choreography of actors marching moves the entire auditorium to an ecstatic state in which, from then on, only the mentioned segments of the social, or perhaps state, landscape play out, always interpreted between the extremes of construction and destruction. Interestingly, the entire production doesn’t produce a single melody, either musical or metaphysical, but it does include several scenes that are aesthetically superb – for example Lina Akif’s scene, in which she repeats the word Slovenia as fast as possible so that the meaning previously established tips into the absurd; the scene in which a mass of people transform into dogs and Vito Weis’s solo that follows;  Primož Bezjak as he tries to interpret and clarify Article 14 of the Constitution; the style of walking and the lines of Janja Majzelj, when she briefly individualises. As a whole, the production is aesthetically perfect and innovative, at times witty, at times touching, with moments when the content is not entirely clear, for the actors, it is extremely physically demanding and requires that they depend on each other. And yet, as mentioned in the introduction, one should not limit oneself to Slovenia only. Entire Europe lives in this structure, in this machine, and perpetuates it, the entire Western world.