Curators’ Statement
The performance Crises by Mladinsko Theatre and Maska, which is to premiere at Bitef, rounds off the programme segment of the festival, whose mission is to promote new names. At the 56th Bitef, they are two of the most promising young Slovenian directors: besides the director of the performance Solo, Nina Rajić Kranjac, it is also the author of the performance Crises, Žiga Divjak, whose work will finally be shown at Bitef (his performance Lungs did not come to last year’s festival because of the pandemic). This performance is deliberately put at the end of the 56th Bitef because it expands the topical frame of the main programme: it tackles not only the social issues related to work but also the philosophical phenomenon of crisis. The phenomenon is approached from various perspectives, where not only negative aspects are indicated but also the potentially stimulating ones, which means that, after a rather dismal programme, we still do offer light at the end of the tunnel.
About the Production
In life, we are constantly facing different crises - be it personal, professional, social, political, refugee, health, existential, etc. Behind them lurks maybe the biggest one in the history of humankind: the environmental. But in spite of its magnitude we are losing energy to solve other, ever new crises, trying to just restore the current situation … and forgetting that a crisis can be an exceptional time when seemingly impossible ideas become possible. The key question is: Which ideas? Those that would ensure more security, protection, health and well-being to everyone, or those meant to make the already unimaginably rich even richer? In Crises, Žiga Divjak and his team tackle all these questions and explore the human capacity for collaboration and the need to re-discover natural world not as a source but as our kin.
The Author
ŽIGA DIVJAK (1992) drew the attention to himself still as a student with the trilogy Right Before the Revolution (2013-2015). His socially engaged position and sensitivity in staging burning social questions led him to direct in several Slovenian theatres and brought him a series of Borštnik Awards at the Maribor Theatre Festival, the leading national theatre festival in Slovenia: best direction for The Man Who Watched the World (Mladinsko, 2017); grand prix for 6 (The New Post Office, 2018) and The Game (The New Post Office, 2020). In 2021 he directed Fever, his first international co-production.
