rowan, strudel, dance and then some

Opening night 26^th October 2018, Mladinsko Theatre 
Running time 2 hours 30 minutes. One intermission.

Director Janez Janša (Emil Hrvatin)
Animation Luka Umek
Music and sound Eduardo Raon 

Cast
Stane Tomazin

About the staging

This text by Simona Semenič is a remarkable comedy, a truly striking bravura that tackles its own comic genre by questioning the very limits of comedy, while on the other hand addresses the perception of theatre by the bourgeois society, which is ready to accept provocation, yet only up to a certain point. Author’s "staging instructions" demand a reduction of any compromises in a rather ruthless tone, so it was not really surprising that some Slovenian theatre arts managers rejected this text:
 

If actors and actresses have any prejudice or feel uncomfortable being naked and sexual on stage, they should not be involved in the staging of this text.

At first glance, rowan, strudel, dance, and more strikes us as a play about a certain historical era (the 1960s) and the manifestations of the underlying Slovenian ideological schism (as manifested in the clerical bloc and the liberal faction) in the Vipava Valley. But as the story unfolds, the more the play evolves into a portrait of a modern Slovenian society, in which pragmatical benefits can quickly replace ideological convictions. In its intensity, the text continually moves between times and places, and is in this regard even more similar to a film script. Specifically, its film- and meta-theatre speech form the basis for a rather ambient film set-up, as the text is staged as a (silent) movie with subtitles.