Matija Ferlin: Solitaires

2022

Matija Ferlin: Samice Foto / Photo: Danko Stjepanivić

About


House a imagine.
Own its on.
Nowhere of middle the in.
White is it around everything.
It around snow only is there.
It in live women only.
Alone completely.
Them of nine.
Grows nothing where garden a have they.
It in water no with well a have they.
Imagine.

Imagine a pure dramatic structure, the unities of place, action, time. You can imagine it as a house, why not – an outlived form of traditional drama theatre, a site of convention, of predictable formulas, actions, behaviour. However, there is this one – let’s just admit it – extremely simple conceptual decision that enables Solitaires to bring life into and redirect the dry flow of dramatic escalation. The entirety of Jasna Jasna Žmak’s play is namely spoken backwards (Backwards spoken namely is play Žmak’s Jasna Jasna of entirety the), from the final punctuation mark to the initial capital letter. The consequences and the effects are, of course, groundbreaking. In this story of nine women living in an abandoned, snow-clad house, the way in which the ensemble of Solitaires confront the challenge, which completely transforms their main expressive apparatus, opens up the abyss of intense alienation, loneliness, abandonment and bitter yearning. As director and choreographer, Ferlin is in full command of the stage situation also in this sense, unafraid to make it collapse and rebuild it anew.

Duration: 80 min
Premiere: 2011
Link: https://matijaferlin.com/Solitaires

The performance is part of the Sad Sam Manifestation festival co-produced by Cankarjev dom and Emanat Institute.


Biography

Matija Ferlin (1982) is a Croatian theatre director, ensemble dance piece choreographer and performer of his own one-man shows. Graduated from the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam and subsequently lived and worked in Berlin and Toronto. After returning to his hometown Pula, where he was born in 1982, he focused on researching and rearticulating different concepts of stage performance, collaborating both with actors and dancers.

Collaborators

Coreography, direction: Matija Ferlin
Text: Jasna Jasna Žmak
Performance: Jadranka Đokić, Dijana Vidušin, Romina Vitasović, Lana Gojak, Aleksandra Naumov, Ana Vilenica, Lana Meniga, Silvio Vovk, Luka Knez, Matija Ferlin
Music: Hildur Gudnadottir (Touch Music, MCPS)
Dramatrugy: Sandro Siljan
Stage design: Mauricio Ferlin
Costume design: Matija Ferlin, Desanka Janković
Light design: Matija Ferlin, Dario Družeta
Translation: Branka Nikl Klampfer (SNG Maribor)
Photo: Danko Stjepanović

Production: Istarsko narodno kazalište – Gradsko kazalište Pula

Previous events

  1. , Linhartova dvorana, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, SI

PHOTO