Tina Satter/Half Straddle: Is This A Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription (United States)

Tina Satter is a dramatist, director and teacher. She works internationally and is based in New York, also the home of the Half Straddle collective, managed by Satter, which produces dramas, performances, video and music, and has been seen at venues through US, Europe, Australia and Asia. One of the collective’s focal points and drivers of their aesthetics and content is queer and feminist dynamics.

In one of his novels, Mark Twain put the following words in one of the protagonist’s mouth: »Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t«. It’s hard to say anything more accurate about today’s world of post‑reality and post‑factuality. As suggested by the second part of the title, Is This A Room is a performance where the drama text is a literal transcript of the FBI interrogation of Reality Winner at her home. Reality Winner, a former linguist for a US Army contractor, currently serves time in prison, having confessed to whistleblowing – she allegedly provided secret information about Russian interference in the US election to an online publication The Intercept. One year ago, she was sentenced to the longest prison term ever given for such a crime (in order to serve as an example). Can the truth come out in a performance stripped of everything – only top quality acting, operating on an empty stage with nothing more than staging of an already »played out« event? If we cannot outdo reality, let’s give it a stage so that we can look at it. At least a part of it. At least from one side.

Concept and Direction by: Tina Satter
Score by: Sanae Yamada
Costume Design: Enver Chakartash
Set Design: Parker Lutz
Lighting Design: Thomas Dunn
Sculptural Design: Amanda Villalobos
Production and Stage Management: Randi Rivera
Company management: Mariana Catalina
Technical Direction: Andy Sowers
Cast: Emily Davis, Frank Boyd, TL Thompson, Becca Blackwell
Creative Producer: Meiyin Wang
With support of: Howard Gilman Foundation, The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Joseph & Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, City Council & New York State Council on the Arts, premiera/premiered at: The Kitchen, New York City
This engagement is supported by: Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation and the Trust for Mutual Understanding

70 minutes

Performance is in English with Slovene surtitles.

Foto: Paula Court

Information and ticket reservations: info@bunker.si

Daria Deflorian & Antonio Tagliarini: DIGGING (Italy)

Mladi Levi is a festival which aims to establish long‑term cooperation with artists – Antonio Tagliarini is one of the 6 artists who are returning to the festival with their new works. This time, together with Daria Deflorian. They are both freelance writers, directors, performers and actors, working on their separate projects, and since 2008, also collaborating on joint devised theatre projects.

Digging as a performance is a derivative of Quasi Niente, created by Deflorian and Tagliarini based on Antonioni’s film Red Desert. They buried themselves in archival material and began to discover, archaeology‑style, new and new layers of the film. The film was the first Antonioni’s color film and the last one with the actress Monica Vitti, who plays the main protagonist, wandering around her loneliness and alienation. Digging consists of excavations – a journal of one of the assistant directors, photographs and scenes not included in the final cut, Antonioni’s notes, together with their personal chips and confrontation with their own dilemma – how to create a final product from the material and ideas. Even in archaeological excavations, the most interesting part is the construction of the past reality from the pieces found and filling in the blanks from the ones not found, or the variations of the narrative that can be compiled from the same pieces. A wonderful excavation site.

Project by: Daria Deflorian, Antonio Tagliarini
Written and performed by: Francesco Alberici, Daria Deflorian, Antonio Tagliarini
Literary advisor: Morena Campani
Company manager: Anna Damiani
International distribution and management: Francesca Corona
Photography: Elizabeth Carecchio
Co-produced by: A.D., Festival di Santarcangelo 2018
In collaboration with: Italian Institute of Culture, Paris, Theatre Residency Carrozzerie | Not Roma
With support of: Italijanski kulturni inštitut Ljubljana, Vivere ALL’Italiana

60 minutes

The performance is in Italian with Slovene and English subtitles.

Foto: Elizabeth Carecchio

Information and ticket reservations: info@bunker.si

Jaha Koo: CUCKOO (Belgium, South Korea)

Jaha Koo is a South Korean musician and theater maker who lives and works in Belgium. After graduating in theatre studies in his native country, he obtained a master’s degree from DasArts in Amsterdam. Since 2014, he has been working on Hamartia trilogy (the term originates from the ancient Greek, signifying a tragic mistake by a protagonist leading to their downfall): the first part of the trilogy, Lolling and Rolling, is about children in Korea getting tongue operations for better English pronunciation. After Cuckoo comes the third part, The History of the Korean Western Theater (working title), which will premiere next year.

Koo’s theatre is devised theatre, he is the author of texts, music, videos, also performing on stage. Koo describes his work as a mix of politics, history and personal stories. This is also true for Cuckoo, which uses the tragic financial breakdown of South Korea as a political and historical background – an event which was followed by IMF forcing the country into bankruptcy and consequently controlling its finances. Koo skillfully navigates the socio‑political, social and personal consequences of the post‑bankruptcy crisis, combining them with personal stories – of himself and his friend – in a dialogue with Cuckoos, rice cookers (Cuckoo is a trademark). The Cuckoo cooks rice so well because it is a pressure cooker – but what happens with a society and an individual when they are under pressure?

Concept, direction, text, music, video: Jaha Koo
Performance: Hana, Duri, Seri & Jaha Koo
Cuckoo hacking: Idella Craddock
Scenography, media operation: Eunkyung Jeong
Dramaturgical advice: Dries Douibi
Production: Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek
Excecutive production: CAMPO
Co-production: Bâtard Festival
With support: CAMPO, STUK, BUDA, DAS, SFAC & Noorderzon / Grand Theatre Groningen
Funded by: Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie

60 minutes

The performance is in Korean with Slovene and English surtitles.

Foto: Radovan Dranga

Information and ticket reservations: info@bunker.si

Teresa Dillon: MTCD – A VISUAL ANTHOLOGY OF MY MACHINE LIFE (United Kingdom, Germany)

Teresa Dillon is a researcher, artist, curator, pedagogue, hacker … Her educational background consists of theatre studies, scenography, and psychology. She inhabits several scopes of action – she deals with the topics of interest from various angles – scientific, artistic, activist, or in a multidisciplinary way. She delineates her field of interest as »the relations existing between people, communities, technologies, and management«. Her field of interest is also a culture of maintenance and repair, where she uses her hacking skills and her artistic strategies and tactics. A Visual Anthology of My Machine Life  is a lecture performance, in which the artist walks through key machines that have marked her life – it begins with an incubator, which has significantly affected her life, but not just hers; for most machines in her life, almost all of us remember their first use: the internet, for example, an android robot, or a mobile phone. She talks about machines, but also about people and places and relationships – therefore, it is not a performance about machines, but rather about us. The relationship between people and machines is one of the key relationships of the present and the future. If we used to learn about bicycles, steam engines, electricity, etc., it is now time to deal with the machines of today – not only with their functioning, but also with what they mean to us.

Author: Teresa Dillon
Set design and live image: Teresa Dillon, Rod Maclachlan, Luke Bennett
In collaboration with the Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
45 minutes

The performance is in English, Slovene summary will be available.

Foto: Kia K., transmediale, 2018

Information and ticket reservations: info@bunker.si

Eclipse: MONSTRUM NOSTRUM (Slovenia)

exhibition with an opening performance

The exhibition will be open until August 31st in time of performances in the Old Power Station.

Performing duo Eclipse has been quiet and hibernating for a while. Their new performance, with the premiere staging at this year’s Mladi levi festival, will mark the 20^th anniversary of their collaboration. Eclipse consists of two visual artists: Tina Kolenik recently published the book Koža kot kostum (»Skin as a Costume«), which is a theoretical derivative of her costume design work, and last August, she has been exhibiting her series of self‑portraits with watermelons. Samira Kentrić is a designer, illustrator and author of two visual novels: Pisma Adni (»Letters to Adna«) and Balkanalije (»Balkanalia«). In their common performative career, they decided to stage the images. They create images which capture our attention and make us – sometimes with the subversion of pornographic imagery – reflect and take sides: to find, in today’s world bombarded by images, one that sticks out from others and provokes us.

In Monstrum Nostrum, they remain committed to the medium of body, 20 years after their performance Zajtrk na travi (»Breakfast on Grass«), shifting focus from the questions of kitsch, art, porn art, to the issue of otherness and initiation into the dominant, the correct, the ours. They will perform an initiation rite of cleansing, transferring to the civilized: a baptism. Who are the others of today, who is being washed by water before they can come over to our side, who are the monsters? Monstrum nostrum, mare nostrum, mare monstrum …

Authors: Eclipse
Director of photography: Dejan Ulaga
Assistants: Gaja Mödendorfer, Iris Kovačič
Montage: Žan Žvižej
Author of soundscape: Darja Hlavka Godina
Vocals: Shreya

30 minutes

Foto: Dejan Ulaga

Information and ticket reservations: info@bunker.si

Mart Kangro, Juhan Ulfsak, Eero Epner: WORKSHOP (Estonia)

Mart Kangro is a choreographer, director and dancer, Juhan Ulfsak is an actor and director, and Eero Epner is a dramaturg and art historian. They have cooperated on several occasions in the past. Their common ground (in addition to Estonia and performative art, of course) are perhaps devised theatre, as well as Theatre NO99, where they all worked, and Eero Epner was one of its founders. It was just this year that Theatre NO99 has been dissolved, but the cooperation continues.

Workshop is a performance that feels like throwing the paradigm of lifelong learning, together with mansplaining and a sense of humor and the bizarre, into the blender of devised theatre. Three men who are helping us to learn something more in life, in which we are made human and can only exist through learning. But there is nothing patronizing in the performance, no pedagogical ballast or dull facts. At a time when there is video tutorial for everything – from how to install a child seat in a car, to how to properly eat a pineapple – watching live advice is almost as anachronistic as watching three white men on stage. However, Kangro, Ulfsak and Epner transform the workshop into a performative cabinet of wanders, from which they are drawing bizarre advice and out of which eventually emerges a community bound together by the story. What is theatre, after all, If not common learning and working in the laboratory of wonders?

Idea, execution, performance: Mart Kangro, Juhan Ulfsak, Eero Epner
Producer, consultant: Maria Arusoo
Sound design: Artjom Astrov
Light design: Oliver Kulpsoo
Co-produced by: Kanuti Gildi SAAL

110 minutes

The performance is in English.

Information and reservation: info@bunker.si, 00386 51 269 906

Alessandro Serra, Sardegna Teatro & Compagnia Teatropersona (based on: William Shakespeare: Macbeth): MACBETTU (Italy)

Macbeth, over 400 years old Shakespeare classic about the unsatiable thirst for power, is a regular feature on stages. At a time when it seems that there is no just punishment, that the tyrants and autocrats wreak havoc without any consequences, the stages seem to be screaming for a story where someone – Macbeth – is punished; his downfall is terrible.

How to re‑stage a story which has been through hundreds of translations, actualizations and adaptations? Italian director Alessandro Serra, the founder of Compagnia Teatropersona (co‑producer of the performance together with Sardegna Teatro) was inspired by the experience during the photo exploration of Sardinian carnivals (from Barbagia region), where he was all of a sudden faced with an approaching »walking forest«. With the strong impression of carnival sounds, rhythms, masks, together with the well‑known human forest, the famous prophecy from the tragedy, Serra combined Elizabethan and Sardinian traditions and created a powerful performance which transforms Shakespeare into rituals, a truly local language, into rhythm … It doesn’t subvert the original (even preserving, for example, the Elizabethan all‑male ensemble), but rather makes it even stronger and more up-to-date by committing to the local archetypes. Macbettu is currently an international hit, it has been voted best performance by Italian critics in 2017 and was presented with the 2017 UBU Award.

By: Alessandro Serra
Based on: William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
With: Fulvio Accogli, Andrea Bartolomeo, Leonardo Capuano, Giovanni Carroni, Andrea Carroni, Maurizio Giordo, Stefano Mereu, Felice Montervino
Translation into Sardinian and language advisor: Giovanni Carroni
Collaborator for movements on stage: Chiara Michelini
Music: sounding stones by Pinuccio Sciola
Sounding stones compositions: Marcellino Garau
Direction, set, lights and costumes: Alessandro Serra
International tour manager: Laura Artoni
Production: Sardegna Teatro, Compagnia Teatropersona
With the support of: Fondazione Pinuccio Sciola, Cedac Circuito Regionale Sardegna, Italijanski kulturni inštitut Ljubljana, Vivere ALL’Italiana

90 minutes

Performance is in Sardinian langugage with Slovene and English surtitles.

Foto:  Alessandro Serra

Information and reservation: info@bunker.si, 00386 51 269 906

Urša Vidic: THE WALL

installation opening

The eastern wall of the Old Power Station in Ljubljana is not the »original«, bricked one, but a zigzag wall forming boundary between the street and the still operating transformer station of the power plant. The Old Power Station celebrated its 120^th anniversary last year, and this year, we are celebrating 15 years since the renovation and reopening of the facility – in its new edition as a stage. In August 2004, we began with our regular performance programme in the building with the opening of the Mladi Levi festival and the event »If we didn’t exist, you would have to make us up«.

The Old Power Station wall, currently covered by Applause by Toni Soprano Meneglejte, will be decorated by Urša Vidic this year, on the 15^th anniversary of the Old Power Station venue. In selecting authors, our principle for the second time in a row is to invite visual artists, but the ones connected to theatre. Urša Vidic is a scenographer who works in various different fields, and she also worked at the Old Power Station. The opening of her new wall painting will be on August 23^rd. Her work is characterized by simplicity and complexity at the same time. Her wall will be homage to artists who have been working at the Old Power Station for the last 15 years, and at the same time, it will be her message to all of us who are gravitating around the Station: a slogan written down in the alphabet of sounds. Let’s hope it conveys the message of what the Old Power Station is and what it wants for all.

Author: Urša Vidic
Producer: Alma R Selimović
Technical implementation: Igor Remeta, Duško Pušica, Marjeta Pogačnik, Andrej Petrovčič, ŠPELA ALTEN?
Supported by: Create to Connect -> Create to Impact, European Union – program Creative Europe: Culture

Information and reservation: info@bunker.si, 00386 51 269 906

Beton Ltd. on tour!

Beton Ltd. in two weeks on two festivals with two shows!

On Sunday, 30th June 2019, Beton Ltd. presents itself at the Theaterfestival Spectrum in Austria!
If you are in the neighbourhood, you can catch them this Sunday at 9.00 p.m. in Villach, with their performance s

Big Expectations ǀ Grosse Erwartungen

Danijela Zajc: THREA_S

Contemporary circus miniature – work in progress

Niti je začetek daljše raziskave življenja prežetega s patriarhatom in kmečkim življenjem. Je delo, ki se obrača na velikokrat prezrte ženske in na njihov položaj na kmetiji. Cirkuška miniaturka skuša subtilno osvetliti pozicijo kmetice skozi različne generacije. Vsebino in za predstavo “Niti” avtorica črpa iz lastne izkušnje življenja v tradicionalnem okolju. Skozi njo poskuša razumeti življenje in delovanje babic, matere in sester ter hkrati iskati lastne pozicije skozi znotraj omenjene relacije. Je poskus poklona, kritike, razumevanja in sprejemanja. Je iskanje korelacij z lastnim življenjem in ustvarjanjem.

Concept, choreography and performance: DANIJELA ZAJC
Outside eye & assistant director: TJAŽ JUVAN
Audio recording: DANIJELA ZAJC
Music: URŠKA PREIS
Light & technical advisor: URŠKA VOHAR
Producer: DANIJELA ZAJC
Artistic advisor: PIA SKUŠEK
Photo: Jasmina Mustafić
Support: Mestna občina Ljubljana

Duration: 30 min

FREE ENTRANCE

Main organiser: Zavod Bufeto
Co-organised by: Zavod Bunker, Društvo EX-teater, Festival Junij v Ljubljani, SMGL, Zavod Salesianum
Financial support: Ministrstvo za kulturo RS, Mestna občina Ljubljana – oddelek za kulturo, Turizem Ljubljana