A Manifesto
- Željko Hrs
- Lenart Maček, Črt PačnikTrombones
- Text and dramaturgy: Boštjan Narat
- Set design: Damir Leventić
- Costume design: Dajana Ljubičić
- Lighting design: David Orešič
- Video: Pila Rusjan v sodelovanju z Bedrock Media
- Language consultant: Mateja Dermelj
- Production management: Barbara Zonta
- Stage manager: Liam Hlede
In september 1995, The Washington Post ran a piece titled Industrial Society and Its Future, a manifesto, signed F. C. – Freedom Club. As it soon turned out, this freedom club was an individual, Ted Kaczynski, for a decade and a half prior known to the United States of America, and a large part of the world, under his code name Unabomber. In different circumstances, the Manifesto would have been read by a couple of dozen readers, but the notoriety of its author, to this day the best-known American terrorist, provided it with a cult status practically overnight. But was the author’s controversy really the only reason for the text to be interesting? Even reading it decades later, the ideas of the murderous bombing nut seem anything but crazy. Cosmetic reforms cannot keep up with the unbridled progress of technology and the consequences that this development has on the human animal, so all of this requires us to rethink deeply the foundations of our social reality. And not just rethink, but act, too. Is it true that only bombs can wake us up? The response of the mathematical genius, murderer, visionary, criminal, amateur trombone player and tactics master is clear. The forest man called Ted has said it all. What can we add to it?
The performance is a small-form production. In contrast to the radical text that inspired it, the theatrical form remains relatively traditional and minimalist. Its greatest value lies in the text itself and the process of its creation, along with numerous references to other authors such as Dostoevsky and Kundera. The dramatic text was created mainly on the basis of the manifesto itself and other writings by Kaczynski concerning his life. An interesting dramaturgical device is the inclusion of AI in the work on the play, whose lines appear in one of the most intriguing scenes of the performance. [...] The most interesting moment of A Manifesto is the scene in which Željko and Vito are tasked with writing a monologue about freedom and decide to create it with the help of artificial intelligence, one using ChatGPT, the other using DeepSeek. The result turns out to be comical. The AI generates pompous, overly emotional, traditionally structured monologues that would hardly win the approval of contemporary dramaturgical critics. The actors perform them just as humorously, emphasizing the artificiality and awkwardness of the generated texts. This scene can be contrasted with an earlier dialogue in which Vito admits he is afraid of being replaced by technology. Yet the monologues created by AI show that such a scenario seems rather unlikely. It is also worth noting that the very idea of theatre collaborating with machines is nothing new. As early as the Italian futurists, Prampolini and others dreamed of theatrical experiments with automation.