Bunker » Betontanc: WRESTLING DOSTOIEVSKY

Betontanc: WRESTLING DOSTOIEVSKY

Wrestling Dostoievsky

Photo: Primož Bizjak

Motivated by Fyodor Mihajlovich Dostoievsky’s novel Crime and Punishment

LIFE IS REVENGE BEST SERVED

Two hundred and fifty years of psychological realism had set some seemingly untouchable standards:

each character must be portrayed with the maximum possible amount of information on his or her appearance, speech and behavior,
a character’s past must be known, because all the motivations for his or her behavior come from therein.
A character must be completely independent, meaning that the author must remove himself and his opinion from the story, in order not to disturb the reader or viewer, attempting to accept fiction as reality
But there are authors who have broken this age-old pact between novel and reader. What do we know of the childhood of K. or Švejk? Musil, Broch and Gombrowicz appear in their own novels with opinions of their own, because a character is not a mocking bird approximation of a human being but rather a fictional person, an experimental I.

But don’t get me wrong: I have no intention to complain about the viewer and the viewers naïve, yet legitimate desire to sink into a performances dream world and substitute it with reality at times. I am not however certain that the technique of psychological realism is the only possible way to get there. Due to lack of information our character shall be no less alive. Because to create a living, life-like character is to reach the bottom of his or her existential core, the bottom of the few poses, motifs and keywords that mould the character. This is why a performance does not research reality but rather existence. And existence is not what has happened, existence is a wide field of man’s possibilities, everything a character may become or could become, not even knowing. A character and his world must therefore be understood as a possibility, a world not like any known reality, but rather a final and never realized possibility of human existence.

Matjaž Pograjc

Credits

Directed by: Matjaž Pograjc
Created and performed by: Primož Bezjak, Daša Doberšek, Branko Jordan, Andreja Kopač, Irena Kovačević, Branko Potočan
Music by: SILENCE (Boris Benko, Primož Hladnik)
Dramaturgy: Željko Hrs
Theory: Urša Zabukovec
Stage set: Sandi Mikluž, Matjaž Pograjc
Costumes: Mateja Benedetti
Light design: Tomaž Štrucl
Sound design: Marijan Sajovic
Executive producer: Ira Cecić
Produced by: Bunker, Ljubljana in collaboration with Schauspielhaus, Vienna
With help of: KUD Opoka Goriška Brda, L’animal a l’esquena, Centre Creaciao Celra
Performance was made possible by: Ministry of Culture, City Council of Ljubljana

Performances

Premieres:
World premiere: 4th January 2004, Studio Schauspeilhaus, Vienna
Slovene premiere: 25th January 2004, Umetniški atelje Rožna dolina, Ljubljana

Up-coming performances: /

Past performances:
5th and 6th January 2004, Studio Schauspeilhaus, Vienna
26th January 2004, Umetniški atelje Rožna dolina, Ljubljana
August 2004, The Days of Poetry and Wine, Medana
10th to 13th November 2004, The Netherlands Tour
1st, 2nd and 3rd June 2005, Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana