And Many Others ...

About the performance

And Many Others … fits into the discourse on poverty and social shame. It is created based on the short story Mater je zatajil (He Disowned His Mother) and other narratives by Ivan Cankar that explore the position of the worker and class dynamics. It is supported by modern theoretical works that study the working class and shame. The production enters Cankar’s texts by exploring the motifs of poverty and their imprints in the contemporary post-capitalist context and through confronting the confusion in understanding the ideology of the working class today. It opens a series of questions: What is our attitude towards poverty and class position? How is poverty revealed – and concealed – today? Who comprises the working class in modern times? The performance also puts under scrutiny the attitude that parents and children take towards their own economic position and reveals how these class categories leave an imprint on and shape interpersonal relationships.

Thoughtful scenography, directing, dramaturgical rhythm and an atmosphere that pulls us from simple realism into the nightmares of the contemporary capitalist reality – along with a text that neither moralises nor stereotypes – revitalise Ivan Cankar’s work and bring it into modern times.

Ana Lorger, Radio Slovenija

The young generation discovers in Cankar what the old generation discarded too quickly as too naive and utopian. "Nobility in thought and will alone does not suffice. We, young people, will have to find another way," are Jože’s final words in the production.

Petra Vidali, Večer

Most importantly, the production deftly creates a coherent whole by making use of the performance space and generating and combining different actions within it. Form and thought are balanced and support the work’s central trajectory. The creators’ decision to rethink Cankar and place his work in a contemporary context – without reducing his ideas to empty form, but by enacting them and opening up the question of how to put them into practice beyond the theatre – is exceptionally astute. The crucial point is that they do not draw solely on Cankar’s ideas and replicate his critical thoughts, but rather rethink them respectfully and maturely, and, together with the audience, explore also parts that go beyond the merely conceptual. They don’t reduce art or audiences to the petty-bourgeois consumption of "critical" content; instead, they call them to the potential and necessity of taking action.

Tjaša Bertoncelj, Sigledal

80 minutes, no interval

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