Although it has been history for more than 30 years, Yugoslavia is still used as a scarecrow for threatening anybody who refuses to accept the logic of national identities and remembers that across the present borders of former socialist republics still live humans and monsters like us. Someone not so well-intended, might add: some of us live in EU and some of us outside of it, with no prospect of joining it.
Most of us understand each other without translators, although national linguistic politics did everything imaginable to convince us that we can’t understand each other without subtitles.
Under those circumstances, what do we do with the culture that has been known as the Yugoslav one? We bury it deep in the mass-grave of our memories? And then wait for somebody to come and dig it out, expose its disembodied parts for identification?
Mass For Yugoslavia is a theatrical exhumation of the corpse of Yugoslav culture and embodiment of its different ghosts. It stands in the twilight zone between failed socialist dreams and realized capitalist nightmares. The play performs an autopsy of some of the most iconic Yugoslav art-works, showing us a paradox of fraternal love verging on mortal hatred, a paradox that was called Yugoslavia. It runs on the tension of what Yugoslavia might be and what it turned into. Between nostalgia for Yugoslavia and proscription of its memory, we choose neither.
No spoken text, music in Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, English, Slovenian Greek, German with English surtitles
A guest performance from Mladinsko Theater Ljubljana.
International co-production: Mladinako Theatre, Ljubljana; Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc, Rijeka; BITEF, Belgrade; MOT, Skopje
Note: The production uses stroboscopic lighting effects, which may have negative effects on light-sensitive viewers.
Fotos: Nejc Saje
Part of 6. Berliner Herbstsalon 2023 LOST – YOU GO SLAVIA
