rowan, strudel, dance and more

It is the 15th of August 1963 and the villagers in the Vipava Valley are getting ready for two events scheduled for the very same time – a religious service honouring the Feast of the Assumption with the Most Reverend Bishop and the celebration of the border guards of the Yugoslav National Army with the comrade Secretary of the Central Committee. They have some tough decisions to make: will they be loyal sheep or obedient comrades? At first glance, rowan, strudel, dance and more is a play about a historic period and the fundamental ideological schism between the Slovenes. But the more the issues untangle, the more they become a portrait of the contemporary Slovenian society in which pragmatic benefits easily replace ideological beliefs. The text keeps shifting between times and settings, and the political dilemma is spiced up with scenes of direct sexuality in which everyone selflessly licks, jerks off, penetrates, caresses, fondles, and rides whomever, whenever, and however. This textual bravura plays, on the one hand, with the comedy genre by questioning the borders of the comical and, on the other hand, with the bourgeois notion of theatre, which is willing to accept provocation but only up to a certain point.

We prepared the production in collaboration with the Mladinsko Theatre and thus intertwined two strong theatre traditions and poetics, just like two ideologies intertwine in the rowan. It is directed by Jure Novak, whose work always reveals interest in burning societal issues, who is no stranger to sexuality on stage, and who has already tackled Simona Semenič’s texts as a director. This time, he blended his experience and interests into a juicy whole that takes aim at  "plastic" consumerist beauty ideals, sharply analyses the situation in the society and at the same time brims with vitality.