The winner of the Grum Award 2016 for the best new Slovene play, People’s Democratic Circus Sakeshvili, is set in a tiny totalitarian state in which everything is restricted and regulated. A voucher is required even for masturbation, suicide or happiness. Equality is pushed to the extreme; the sexes are no longer existent, while love is one and only, i.e. a love for the »lifelong« president, called Sakeshvili (also the name of any other person in the country). However, the author is more interested in tackling the theme of the victims of a dictatorship, i.e. the citizens who not only perform in a circus, but also live in it. It is a circus in which performance and the audiences are not separated. People lost their identity a long time ago, and when the news of the president’s death spreads, no one can remember who or what they used to be. What is more, they are unable to become something else and start living a new life. Freedom is too daunting; it brings along risks that they are no longer able to cope with.
People’s Democratic circus Sakeshvili presents a series of absurdly comic situations dealing with the topic of constant »brainwashing« which destroys one’s personality, dignity and everything else that defines one as human.