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Utopia

An Archeology of Paradise
Hommage à Fernando Arrabal
World premiere

Director

Jan Krmelj

Opening nights

23 September 2016
Small Stage

10 Februray 2017
Mestno gledališče Ptuj

Duration:

85 minutes

Utopia, An Archeology of Paradise is a poem to the nonexistent. It is a surreal theatre journey with an impossible goal: to revive the lifeless. It is a celebration of imagination, dreams, and faith ̶ i.e. those irrationalities that form the core of human condition. Nowadays, the term »utopian« has negative connotations which are almost taken for granted; as if a celebration of Beauty, i.e. of something that is non-existent, simply meant living in denial of the brutality of our time. But it is utopia itself ̶ a place that does not exist ̶ that exposes objectively accepted reality. One can defy one’s time and its constraints only by refusing to comply with them. A gesture of defiance to the existing, to the contemporary, means to withstand violence. It is in the realm of the impossible that humankind begins. The same goes for theatre. Theatre is a site of extreme utopia: theater as an endless beginning of the world, a beginning of history ̶ which re-establishes the world anew. Theater is a separation from the world, not its mirror – and this is its historical privilege.
The reality is invaded by something alien: a story emerges from the blood of an animal that was sacrificed at a borderline between life and death. We follow two worlds that are in constant search of a pre-violent world: a world prior to expulsion and sacrifice. In the alchemical circus of dreams, stories are intertwined. Fando and Lis, two lost and wounded clowns, the archetypal representatives of the dual, are in search of a lost mythical city of Tar. In their mind’s eye, paradise is a site from the past that existed before the war, and beyond them. Abraham, the archetype of a father on a mountain, enters his own dreams and a story, according to which he must sacrifice his son. His search of a son is characterized by violence, which has not been committed. It opens a relationship landscape spanning two generations. His is the story of succession, understanding of the past, forgiveness and growing up. Abraham has killed an animal instead of his son. Will the animal come to life again? Is it possible to re-enact a paradise destroyed? What level of intensity can utopia, reinstated as reality, lead to? Once you experience a paradise ̶ can you go back unmarked? Modern humankind is deprived of its biography. Is there any place for humans in some extreme future? Is it humankind that we are genuinely in search of? Has it ever been, dispersed in the whiteness of the absent?
The production is also a homage and a salute to Fernando Arrabal, a Spanish-born playwright and a co-founder (with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor) of the Panic Movement, a kind of late surrealism; a homage and a salute to the exposure of the world through dysfunction, strangeness, difference.
Jan Krmelj

Creators

Creative team

CO-PRODUCER

Mestno gledališče Ptuj

Drama Igralec: Mestno gledališče Ptuj | odpri ustvarjalca

CONCEIVED BY

Jan Krmelj

Drama Igralec: Jan Krmelj | odpri ustvarjalca

DRAMATURG AND CO-AUTHOR OF THE STRUCTURE

Katja Markič

Drama Igralec: Katja Markič | odpri ustvarjalca

RESEARCH AND TEXTS BY

Jan Krmelj, Katja Markič, Tibor Hrs Pandur

Drama Igralec: Jan Krmelj, Katja Markič, Tibor Hrs Pandur | odpri ustvarjalca

SET AND PROPERTY DESIGNERS

Nika Erjavec, Andrej Koruza

Drama Igralec: Nika Erjavec, Andrej Koruza | odpri ustvarjalca

COSTUME AND MAKE-UP DESIGNERS

Špela Ema Veble, Nina Jagodic

Drama Igralec: Špela Ema Veble, Nina Jagodic | odpri ustvarjalca

CHOREOGRAPHER

Žigan Krajnčan

Drama Igralec: Žigan Krajnčan | odpri ustvarjalca

COMPOSER

Gašper Torkar

Drama Igralec: Gašper Torkar | odpri ustvarjalca

LIGHTING DESIGNERS

Jan Krmelj, Vlado Glavan

Drama Igralec: Jan Krmelj, Vlado Glavan | odpri ustvarjalca

LANGUAGE CONSULTANT

Arko

Drama Igralec: Arko | odpri ustvarjalca

Cast

Aljaž Jovanović

Fando

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