About the performance
Shopping and Fucking, Mark Ravenhill's 1996 British realistic drama, shocked the British theater scene by debuting taboos such as sexuality, homosexuality, prostitution and the use of vulgar language during its early performances. Later the drama co-created the then new wave of stage poetics, "In-yer-face theatre" and attracted a completely new audience to the auditorium. Today, the text remains alive and distinctly relevant in his critique of capitalism and the struggle for survival of the younger generations.
In the drama, we follow the protagonist Mark, who leaves his friends and roommates, Lulu and Robbie, because he goes to a drug rehab clinic. In addition to the emotional shock, the latter find themselves in a situation where they have to provide for themselves financially, and this is where their battle in the labour market, the battle for survival, the battle for money begins. Unprepared, they find themselves in Brian's grip, the only one who has already conquered the reins of capitalism and the dogma of the world in which they found themselves: "Money is civilization and civilization is money." They found themselves in a world without big stories, without values, a world of fast food, fast sex and wage labour. This is a world in which, after more than twenty years since the creation of Ravenhill's drama, we have also found ourselves. A world in which we also do business with the devil to survive and forget about compassion, love, morality. Perhaps it is even worse today, as sometimes these deals are not made in the name of the struggle for survival, but in the name of greed. To date, young people have also conquered capitalistic leverages. So the young man can assimilate into the apathetic world or chooses escapism, while the open question remains, which choice is the lesser evil? To oneself, to one's fellow man, to society?
About the author
Along with Sarah Kane and Anthony Neilson, Mark Ravenhill (1966) is considered one of the leading representatives of Britain's new drama "In-yer-face theatre" in the 1990s. Ravenhill studied English and drama in Bristol. His first play, the ten-minute dramatic text Fist, was staged in the Finborough Theater program, as part of a fundraiser for the Red Admiral, a project to help AIDS sufferers and their relatives. Director Max-Stafford Clark, who watched the production, invited him to participate in the feature drama. This is how Shopping and Fucking came into being Ravenhill's first full-length dramatic text, staged in 1996. The author says that two events were crucial for its creation and the course of the story. The first is the abduction and murder of a three-year-old boy in 1993 in the UK, and the second is the death of Ravenhill’s partner, who died of AIDS. Ravenhill also often debates homosexuality in his other texts, and in his early works there is often a motif when the youngest dramatic person is taken away by older characters and consequently loses his life.
Nina Kuclar Stiković
About the director
Brina Klampfer is completing master's degree in theater directing and holds a master's degree in comparative literature. For her master's play, she directed and wrote the text Paloma, which premiered in June 2020 at the Slovenian Youth Theater. The play received many positive reviews, and was included in the additional program of the Week of Slovenian Drama. She is the leader of the Festival of Dramatic Writing Vzkrik and the president of the KUD Krik association. Brina has also performed a number of dramaturgies and theatrical adaptations - in the plays Prekleti kadilci (Makarovič, SNG Drama, 2018), Tartuffe (Moliere, Ljubljana City Theater, 2018), Gospa z morja/ The Lady from the Sea (Ibsen, SNG Drama, 2019), Martin Krpan (Levstik , LGL, 2018) Words from the house Karlstein / Besede iz hiše Karlstein(Bojetu, LG Maribor) and others. She also works as a producer in the theater space - from the platform Vzkrik, which she generated, many young playwrights emerged, who received the highest awards for drama and many dramatic texts created within the framework of Vzkrik were staged in institutional theaters.
From the reviews
"The production is complete and functional as a whole, played within the boundaries of realism, without abstractions or excessive metaphors."(...) "We haven't seen a performance like this for a long time - a performance that demands reflection, that leaves the spectator horrified and fascinated, and whose themes often remain untouched. I would recommend it to anyone who wants something fresh and different, who is ready to reflect and be thrown out of the comfort of everyday life." Patricija Sekelj, Koridor
"The cast manoeuvres convincingly through the dark humour and sharp lines of the text, successfully creating and maintaining an atmosphere of lostness and apathy. The actors' greatest strength is surely their physicality, which consistently follows a realistic, almost naturalistic design and thus successfully embraces the ideas of physicality of the In-yer-face theatre. In the movement interpretation, Doljšak stands out the most, uncompromisingly using his body for both physical actions and interpretations of his character's emotional storms." Benjamin Zajc, Delo
"First and foremost is Tamara Avguštin as Lulu, who in this production fully plays out a wide range of emotional states. From a loving little girl at heart to a confident "nobody's going to fuck me" woman, she sovereignly walks through the archetypes, where we enjoy her rare moments of triumph and watch with a pang in our stomach the all too frequent defeats, humiliations, losses."(...) "Her play opens a glimpse into a collective actor's creation, in which the main awareness seems to be of how quickly we move from the role of the manipulator to that of the manipulated. The most instantaneous of these shifts is experienced by her partner Robbie of Borut Doljšak, who shines in a restless, neurotic hyperactivity, in which there is room for a completely naive, almost infantile ideological innocence. A similarly convincing figure of a child in the character of 14-year-old Gary is created by Timotej Novaković, whose engagement is largely aimed at creating a full-blooded and non-stereotypical portrayal of a deeply repressed boy. Particularly moving is the scene of his confession of trauma, where Novaković convinces with a subtle dosage of emotion before the final gradation." (...) "In this production, Novaković convinces above all with a youthful creative energy that we can believe will only further sharpen and play up the less subtle moments of the show through repetition. However, we wouldn't want too much sophistication from a production that tries to hit us in the face." Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti, Veza Sigledal
"Vrhovec portrays the manipulative entrepreneur with such extraordinary sovereignty and intensity that even the audience feels fear of him."(...) "Borut Doljšak, despite the occasional infantilism of his character, shines above all in his physicality and movement perfection. The undisputed highlight of the performance is undoubtedly Tamara Avguštin, who navigates perfectly between vulnerable subtlety and tragic expressiveness, both in her facial expressions and gestures, as well as in her articulation." (...) "Maruša Mali's stage design, with the help of just two mattresses, an old tapestry and a microwave, transforms the hall into a small apartment, an entrepreneur's office and a nightclub. She manages the latter in collaboration with light designer Matej Primec and sound designer Mateja Starič, who recreate the epileptic lighting and deafening atmosphere of a nightclub, while at the same time the momentary change of light and darkness in accordance with the themes of the performance achieves the dissection of the party into short images of drugged dancing characters and presents their experience of enjoyment to the audience as a grotesque sequence of frozen moments of debauchery. The icing on the cake is the costume design by Claudi Sovre Mikl, who captures in the worn shirts of Klemenc both the poverty of the characters and the boundless sea of fast fashion trends that have become accessible to us in contemporary capitalism, embodied above all by the character of Gary by Timotej Novaković." Metod Zupan, Radio Študent
