Death. A sensitive subject for some, redemption for others. It has always been present among us. But the way we look at it is changing. Today, it is perhaps one of the most difficult things to cope with in our country. Yet everyone perceives it differently. Some people find it easier to cope with, and others struggle with it all their lives.
You’re sitting in a room upstairs, waiting to hear the approaching footsteps of your mother on the stairs. But her steps sound more hesitant with each passing day until they eventually stop altogether. What happens when, one day, your mother simply doesn’t return? Will you feel grief… or rather, relief? Julia Fidelus' monodrama 20 DEN explores the life of a daughter reflecting on her relationship with her mother and the question of whether she can still call herself a daughter when her mother is gone.
Bertolt Brecht, Florian Zeller, Július Bárč-Ivan, Karel Čapek, Maxim Gorky – all of them are thematically connected by a single word, even in the title: mother. Their selflessness (even sacrifice), maternal love, and loss. But while their plays, at times, show the world through a mother’s eyes, 20 DEN, a production from the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw (Białystok branch), tells the story of the one without whom the mother would not have her title – the daughter. Puppeteer Julia Fidelus wrote, directed, and performed the piece as a monodrama.
The beginning was promising: while the audience entered the hall, actors dressed in white plastic bags walked back and forth, quiet music played in the background, and only a few lights shone in the darkness. ‘Oops, this is going to be some very artistic theatre,’ I thought to myself. But it was anything but art. For me, as a spectator, more and more circles of hell appeared throughout the production, like Dante's. But probably not in the way the creators intended
On Slovak stages, acting students rarely get the opportunity to experiment. They have the chance to explore cabaret-style performances and devised theatre, yet they seldom take full advantage of it. This contrasts with the production of Psyacha Buda (Doghouse) by the students of the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, which is far more striking than what we would expect in Slovakia. On stage, they deliver something close to a revolt. They do not perform as individuals but as a perfectly connected group. Speaking of individual performances is almost impossible; despite the actors having the space to express themselves individually, the energy here functions collectively.
People need to talk. Talk to each other, say it out loud, speak about everything and nothing at the same time, tell each other about their problems, joys, fears… Oftentimes anyone who is willing to listen is enough. Or not even that. The fact itself, that there just is someone there, is enough. Or we take a piece of paper and a pen, just as the members of the Bu-Ba-Bu group did, and we write about our twisted world and life. The poems and artistic texts of the literary and performative movement Bu-Ba-Bu therefore become the template for the Ukrainian production Псяча буда (Dog House). These young actors from the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv confess the bitterness of the reality we live in.
The third day of the Encounter Festival began with the performance of Caucasian Chalk Circle by the students of the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. The production, based on a text by German playwright Bertolt Brecht, reflects the author's epic theatrical style, i.e. a complicated plot, musical elements, breaking the fourth wall, and strong allusions to today's politics.
In Bertolt Brecht's play The Caucasian Chalk Circle, performed by students from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, the audience follows a unique story of a struggle for native land, for a child, and for freedom. It is a struggle both present and past, and in the end chillingly topical. With a minimum of props but a maximum of emotion, the play reveals who is pulling the strings, how much freedom is worth, and what must be sacrificed in the battle for it. What role does the life of an individual play in it? Because as we know, when the forest is cut down, splinters and heads fall.
The second day of the festival was marked by ancient tragedy. One of them was brought to us by the students of the Korea National University of Arts. In their performance the Nape, they combined three plays by Euripides: Iphigenia in Aulis, Agamemnon, and Electra.
