The Art of War/The Art of Peace

About the performance

Recommended age: 12 +

The initial stimulus for the performance was the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war in February 2022. It coincided with the première of the Mladinsko Youth first generation’s project. When the invasion started, there was an order issued in Ukraine that forbade the boys over 16 to leave the country. All the Mladinsko Youth participants were then older than 16. We therefore approached the theme of war through stories, primarily family stories: the Second World War, the Yugoslav Wars, the Russian-Ukraine War. The stories are similar, even though they take place in three different times and are told in three different languages; anywhere in the world, the sound of war is identical.

Then we went to Sarajevo, the city under siege, and the Jasenovac concentration camp where the walls of the museum are written all over with the names of the victims in tiny letters—a human is alive as long as the memory of them is alive.

How does one act in such extreme circumstances? How does the war reshape society? How does the military change a human?

FROM THE REVIEWS

''Most of the performers are young people from the audition, mixed with professional actors and actresses from Mladinsko. The young actors are excellent in their performances, both in movement and in singing and dancing, a little less so in speech. [...] The working process, into which the young performers peered and during which they sweated, was certainly more valuable than the final product. And the weight of today's world is not so much in the final products, but rather in the processuality, the becoming.'' - Maja Murnik, Sodobnost, january–february 2024

Duration: 75 minutes without interval

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