Following the performance Damned be the traitor of his homeland!, meeting with the company Slovensko Mladinsko Gledališče, the artist Branko Šimić and Gianni Manzella.

For the translation during the meeting we thank Estranei, an independent magazine and cultural project that focuses on Mitteleurope, the Balkans and Eastern cultures.

Gianni Manzella is a writer, essayist, undisciplined scholar of contemporary theater and more. He has written and curated books focused on the contemporary theater scene, including Hölderlin Rifrazioni (1992); La bellezza amara. Arte e vita di Leo de Berardinis (2nd ed. 2010); La possibilità della gioia. Pippo Delbono (2017). His theater chronicles have been published for many years in the pages of the newspaper “Il manifesto.” He started the magazine of performing arts culture and politics “art’o”.

Branko Šimić, born in Tuzla, grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina, studied acting in Sarajevo and directing in Hamburg. In 2002 he received the Hamburg Prize for Theatre Direction. His productions have been shown in German-speaking countries as well as throughout Europe. His significant works include plays such as: Kwiskotheka: How the Smile Disappeared from Beate Zschäpe’s Face (2016) and Protest Portraits (2018). In 2015 he staged the documentary theatre project Srebrenica – I counted my remaining life in seconds… at the Thalia Gaußstraße in Hamburg. The play is still in repertoire today. At Kampnagel Hamburg, he has curated the Krass – Kultur Crash Festival since 2012. Šimić has also dedicated himself to other art forms since 2020, realising film works, installations and radio plays.

Slovensko mladinsko gledališče In English, we call the Slovensko mladinsko gledališče – which literally translated means Slovenian Youth Theatre – the Mladinsko Theatre. It carries its history in its name. And at the same time surpasses it.

MLADINSKO. For or of youth. The Mladinsko Theatre was established in 1955 as the first professional theatre for children and youth in Slovenia. In the first twenty-five years, it created for them. But it never underestimated its young audience. Since the very beginning, it has tackled heavy topics, like the Holocaust, coming of age, love in the times of revolution … And then around 1980, it took a new step and deliberately expanded its programme, in which it linked – and continues to link – political criticism and provocativeness with innovative performative procedures and fresh poetics, to attract the audiences of all ages. MLADINSKO IS NOT JUST FOR THE YOUTH.

SLOVENIAN. Mladinsko’s home is in Ljubljana. The house in which we conceive, create, study, play is here. Yet, we are an organism in constant movement, as we perform a significant portion of our performances on tour. From the very early days in Slovenia and (then) Yugoslavia, but at least since the early 1980s, we’ve been firmly embedded into the theatre landscape of Europe and, since the 1990s, also South America and other continents. In over forty countries around the world, our versatile ensemble, capable of extraordinary transformations, has left an indelible impression, as it is full of actors who can tackle music, choreography or psychological challenges and do not abide to a hierarchy or a star system, but support each other to become a fine-tuned whole. MLADINSKO IS NOT SLOVENIAN ONLY.

THEATRE. We are a theatre. But we expect more than just “watching” from our spectators, we try to engage them into a dialogue and make them active participants. We create performances. But we don’t create in a vacuum. We critically observe our society, comment on it and strive to shape it. Mladinsko is a theatre organism that tries to penetrate into the public space from the stage, so that for us, the public space becomes an equal space for performance. MLADINSKO IS MORE THAN A THEATRE.

https://mladinsko.com/