Incubator

Although contemporary Slovenian theatre is, to a large extent, explicitly political and often addresses social issues at home and abroad through various poetics, until now we have not seen any productions about the genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is, in fact, no surprise that it was Oliver Frljić who returned to the Slovenian stage with a performance on this topic. […] The choreography of violence recalls the social 'dance' and, of course, the role of theatre in society. What happens if we show violence—and its mechanisms—on stage? Does anything happen at all? It doesn’t seem like anything can stop this horror, least of all art. Sophocles and Shakespeare did not prevent abuses of power by staging them, although their plays were seen by the masses. Still, if we believe that as individuals we can do nothing and are merely cogs in the machine, we contribute to evil. We must act. Oliver Frljić knows that children are both the first and final point of humanity and inhumanity, and he also knows they are the most effective 'tool' for stirring emotion. If he 'used' them, it is because it is high time—because the scale of inhumanity is too great. And of course, he did it not by increasing sentimentality, but by deepening discomfort. Through the performative deconstruction and escalation of the story about how medical staff saved premature babies in Al-Shifa Hospital without electricity, he amplified the discomfort and suspended it to the very end, so much so that, as is often the case with his productions, it was hard to applaud. Yet the performers deserved the applause. Especially Lina Akif, who, by executing the most physically demanding and unbearable tasks, is likely the most radical performer in Slovenia at this moment.

Using theatrical language, the production successfully avoids excessive pathos and the Western sentimental outlook on war. Instead, it turns to a satirical, grotesque, at times even absurd approach, which, due to its rawness, more radically interrogates our own ideological positions. In doing so, it avoids Western responses rooted in guilt, helplessness, and moral fatigue. At the same time, this approach intertwines with visually charged scenes of the poetics of cruelty, which evoke discomfort, even disgust, while also addressing our desensitisation to such images in an age of constant digital exposure. Through its (seemingly) simple and unpretentious execution, the performance does not moralise or didactically impose reflection but becomes a space for contemplation—an embodied consideration of how, through our work, we can address events in a world whose cruelty surpasses nearly every other theme tackled by contemporary theatre. Again, it seems the creative team is fully aware that these images must be radically cruel to even reach the modern subject; they must hover somewhere between representation and provocation to evoke any response at all—something Frljić has understood throughout much of his theatrical oeuvre.

The structure of the performance consists of scenes that are not connected by a linear narrative, yet together form a coherent interpretative whole. In fact, the phrase non-linear narrative opens the performance, while it ends with the phrase semiotic disobedience. These slogans mirror the structure and character of Frljić’s projects. Incubator is based, which is also typical of the Croatian director, on quick transitions between humour, light scenes and brutalism through which the performance does not affect the emotionality of the viewer, but creates a distance. […] The body also recurs in a scene of an imaginary letter from an Israeli woman to a Palestinian boy from whom she received a heart. This is an exceptionally powerful sequence that addresses the issue of harvesting organs from dead Palestinians for Israeli organ banks. At the same time, it shows the paradoxical bond between the two peoples, but a bond based solely on carnality and only possible after the death of one of the parties. […] Frljić may have provoked another scandal with these scenes, as he clearly takes a strong stance in support of Palestine and against Israel. Much of the performance portrays Israeli citizens as entirely consumed by their own ideology and by propaganda imposed by the authorities. However, this reflects only the most radical segments of Israeli society and fails to capture the full diversity of a nation with a complex history and a wide range of narratives. Frljić deliberately focuses on the most extreme cases to make a point. One could argue that there is a risk this performance might be seen as antisemitic. However, the director does not target Jews as a nation. As in all his work, he critiques nationalist narratives and how they can overshadow the human perspective. He highlights extreme cases to draw attention to what he sees as urgent realities – such as the deaths of children in Gaza.

The central theme and dramaturgy of the play are grounded in the events in Gaza and different perspectives on those events. Through meticulously crafted directorial choices, it offers the audience a precise balance of loud and quiet moments. Frljić does not attempt to aestheticise or moralise the themes. He presents the raw events, which offer no (correct) answers. Although the performance is a collage of temporally disconnected scenes, it stands as a coherent whole. […] The entire cast functions as a cohesive, interconnected ensemble. There is a strong synergy between them; no one tries to dominate, but rather they support each other as pillars of the acting field. Alongside this outstanding cohesion comes a thoughtful ethical engagement, which, through radical and sometimes brutally explicit scenes, suggests that art should unsettle us, even emotionally dehumanise us—much like what happens in war zones. […] While the incubator is meant to represent a safe space, in this production it can be understood both literally and as a metaphor for the entire occupied territory. Following one of the most severe Israeli attacks on Gaza this past weekend, 14,000 babies could die within 48 hours due to the blockade of humanitarian aid—thus, Incubator becomes a harrowing warning about the future. It ends with the most important question: how many more innocent deaths will it take?

Some scenes appear poetic, with aesthetically coordinated movement or even musical allure; the cast seamlessly transitions between expressive registers, questioning the power of visual manipulation and artistic effect, as well as the tension between form and content. The performance continually plays with this relationship (the structure of a joke is funny, the content despairing; the choreography beautiful, what it depicts brutal…), prompting us to reflect critically on the power of aesthetics and how easily it can be misused for passivisation, political agitation, or distraction. In Incubator, the role of aesthetics demands reflection and stirs discomfort in the viewer. It seems the performance contains nearly all the elements that define contemporary political theatre: raw, direct dramaturgy that moves fluidly between representational scenes, self-referential, partly performative presences, and documentary presentations. It targets the audience from multiple angles and demands attentive presence. […] This mixture of images and sensations forms the structure of a nightmare—but one that is real: we do not awaken from it after the show; rather, we awaken into it. One does not leave the theatre the same.

There’s no beating around the bush here. No veil of metaphor. Ten minutes in and someone holds up a cardboard sign with the words Al-Shifa on it, the largest hospital in the Gaza strip. The cast wear military gear with the letters IDF on their backs. The show is fuelled by the news, reported early in the conflict, that premature babies were dying after their incubators stop working when the hospital’s power was cut, which is framed as the ultimate afront. Like much of Frljić’s earlier work, Incubator is essentially a collection of skits and images with a unifying theme, devised with the cast. […] Eventually the male performers drop their trousers and begin slow-motion humping the incubators to the strains of Smells Like Teen Spirit. As in his previous work, Frljić excels in finding imagery that interrogates moral boundaries and, in focusing so heavily on the slaughter of infants, he knows he’s playing on – or, arguably, simply deploying – antisemitic tropes, that imagery of infanticide is often used to evoke the blood libel, but he’s also acutely aware that a desire to avoid accusations of antisemitism can lead to self or institutional censorship, to no one saying anything. And how can that be tenable when babies are dying? This queasy paradox is central to Incubator. Frljić’s imagery is never provocative for the sake of it. […] Incubator feels like a different form of ‘fuck you,’ but one born of out of frustration, and perhaps a sense of artistic impotence, a compelling need to speak out, to shout out, to do something, as Israel maintains a stranglehold on aid getting into Gaza.

Even though the play is a collage of scenes, it remains dramaturgically coherent. Through the multilayered language of contemporary theatre and performance, it opens dimensions and depths of what has recently been called hell on Earth. In its extremes—where crying and laughter merge into a single scream of horror—it reveals the absurdity and tragedy of the human experience. At its core, this is a performative inquiry: a combination of documentary material and serious questioning by the actors. It neither moralises nor passes judgment. It states and asks—especially the viewer—about their position. Theatre becomes a space of discomfort, where our selective empathy—our tendency to grant humanity to some more than others—is exposed. The collective strength of the creative team has long been a hallmark of the Mladinsko Theatre. Co-creators and actors Lina Akif, Daša Doberšek, Klemen Kovačič, Draga Potočnjak, Matej Recer, Blaž Šef, and Vito Weis—laid bare to the level of personal data, skin, and mutual relationships—establish a performance language that is not only refined but ethically charged. Frljić’s theatre once again acts as a radical intervention, a slap in the face of art’s aestheticisation, which, in the comfort of conformity, has forgotten its fundamental purpose: to provoke, to open space for reflection and awareness. Not to mention truth.