Anhovo

Crew

Director: Žiga Divjak

Authors of the Text: Žiga Divjak, Katarina Morano

Dramaturg: Katarina Morano

Expert Counsellors: Jasmina Jerant, Monika Weiss

Language Consultant: Anja Pišot

Set Designer: Igor Vasiljev

Costume Designer: Tina Pavlović

Composer: Blaž Gracar

Light Designer: Aleksandar Čavlek

Sound Designer: Vladimir Hmeljak

Assistant to Set Designer: Katarina Prislan

Cast

Iztok Drabik Jug

Ana Facchini

Lara Fortuna

Miha Nemec

Ivana Percan Kodarin

Urška Taufer

Marjuta Slamič

Timon Šturbej

About the performance

In the wider region surrounding us, it would be hard to find a place that saw the magical promise of industrialisation and progress morph into its total opposite more painfully. What had enthusiastically provided the daily bread later turned out to be poison. In many cases of industrial devastation, the poison is metaphorical, but in the case of Anhovo, where children played with the white asbestos residue, it is quite literal. A single asbestos fibre is enough to make a person sick. It has taken many lives and decades after being banned it continues to take them. Many are battling the disease it has caused and many others wait, in uncertainty, if a similar fate will befall them. The valley paid dearly for those breadcrumbs, but the story of Anhovo, tragic as it is, does not end with the production of asbestos roofing. In the 1990s, its production was briefly replaced by the production of, also cancerogenic, styrene. Soon, the co-incinerating of toxic waste entered the story, as well as extensive digging of ore from the local quarry and unregulated water distribution system into which water, poisoned with heavy metals, recently broke.

But Anhovo is not only a story of the many facets of ecologic destruction and the rule of the capital over people's health. It is also a story of resistance, courage, resilience, solidarity and persistence. The creators of the performance received the Tantadruj Award for social criticism and community building (2025).

The theatrical document addresses local issues, taking them as an example for all other controversial environmental interventions, thereby constituting a community whose voice is strengthened by the performance and encouraged to take much-needed further action.

From the Tantadruj award justification

/…/ the Anhovo collective does not close its eyes or look away. It gives voice to facts that are drowned out by the appetite for profit.

Ana Jerman Obreza, SiGledal

/…/ – a call from the theater that demands action.

MPG, Primorske novice

3 hours and 40 minutes, with one interval