Author:
Bernard-Marie Koltès

Translator:
Suzana Koncut

Director:
Ivica Buljan

Actors:
Marko Mandić and Robert Waltl

Dramaturge:
Diana Koloini

Costumes:
Ana Savić Gecan

Authors of music:
Nenad Sinkauz and Alen Sinkauz

Set and light design:
son: DA

Set design assistants:
Eve Ormisson, Paula Bučar, Matis Mäesalu

Corrections:
Simon Šerbinek

Technical crew in Ljubljana:

Tilen Vipotnik, Anže Kreč, David Cerar, Ivan Waltl, Blaž Mahkota, Rosana Knavs

Technical crew in Ptuj:

Head of the performance and sound master:
Simon Puhar

Wardrobe:
Irena Meško

Sound master:
Danijel Vogrinec

Stage master:
Andrej Cizerl Kodrič

 

Coproduction:
Mini teater, City Theatre Ptuj, Novo kazalište Zagreb and Maribor 2012 - European Capital of Culture

Opening performance in City Theatre Ptuj:
June 2012

The set for the premiere in Ptuj was designed and prepared under the leadership of Andrej Cizerl Kodrič in the workshop of City theater Ptuj. We thank Talum d.d. Kidričevo for their cooperation.

Opening performance in Mini teater Ljubljana:
January 2013

About the performance

"A play about desire, illegal and unspoken desire, which is even more forceful since it cannot be fulfilled. A play about “a business transaction of forbidden or highly controlled goods”.

- Bernard-Marie Koltès

Mini teater. Koltès. A new dimension of theater. Above the entire relationship Buljan-Koltès-Mini teater there floats the text "In the solitude of the cotton fields". Through the friendship with François Koltès, Bernard-Marie’s brother, we have been able to carry out some of the world-first realizations of his texts. The Solitude remains as a black pearl amongst them.

The masterpiece of the 80’s, a stylishly complete work of art from the end of the last millennium, this dialogue between a Dealer and a Buyer writes the history of our time  - a history built upon trade and libidinal economy - in an extremely precise, yet sophisticated way. While we do not know what the cause for the deal is, nor what is being traded, we are not deprived of beauty, passion, sorrow and happiness at the retrieval of the wanted thing or person.

In the Solitude, the director Ivica Buljan meets with, as he says himself, his most important actors - Robert Waltl and Marko Mandić.

Since the inception of Mini teater, Robert Waltl  has been periodicly performing Koltes' The night at the edge of the forests - a wounding monologue of a lonely stranger in a rainy night, surrounded by dealers, whores, drunken passer-byes and Arabs. In The solitude of the cotton fields, as Buljan says, Waltl’s “emblematic role” awaits.

Through his work with texts by Sallinger and later on in the radical version of Ma and Al, Marko Mandić has created the character of an American veteran who lost one son in the war ,while the other disappears in front of his eyes in unsure acting waters. It is Mandić’s brave interpretation of Koltes’ Solitude, that makes it unforgettable.

To see the selection of critiques click here!

About the director

»Buljan’s theatre as it appears in an unusually wide and incredible opus from the last two years seem like »theatre-river«, for it flows with its unfailing emotive and energetic flow through the scenes as on one side thorough differentiated performative wave and as a whole theatrical magma on the other side and cleaning those scenes of unimportant and unneeded scenery, illustrative, psychological and symbolic »dirt«. His plays are thoroughly thought through yet always with trustworthiness and almost invisible softness carried out theatrical nudes in which the viewer takes a crucial place by side the actor - as a live witness of the passionate drive of male bodies slamming at each other in an attempt from whether his own or the body of the one next to him to root out, rip out, destroy the strength or life as such (Macbeth after Shakespeare), as an embarrassed voyeur at the turbulent erotic relationship between two loving/hating creatures that strangle and kill each other in front of his eyes (Ma and Al) or as a turned on member of the satire ritual that influences him more with its ecstatic texture than with its sophisticated »spiritual« structure (Kiklop).« Blaž Lukan, theatre critic

The director Ivica Buljan (1965) has taught as a guest professor at the Academie experimentalle des theatres in Paris, Brussels and Moscow and as a full-time professor at National Theatre schools in Saint Etienne and Rennes in France. In the period between 1998 and 2002 he was the director of the Croatian National Drama Theatre in Split, he is the co-founder of the Mini teater in Ljubljana and also the co-founder and artistic director of World theatre festival in Zagreb. As a director and dramaturg he stems from intense interest in modernist dramatics and poets such as Marina Tsvetaeva, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Heiner Müller, Robert Walser, Elfriede Jelinek, Miroslav Krleža, Botho Strauβ and Bernard-Marie Koltès while his productions took part in numerous international festivals in France, Portugal, Spain, Cuba, Seoul, Italy, Turkey, Venezuela, Austria, Greece, Macedonia, Belgium, Switzerland, Russia, Great Britain, Bulgaria, France, Iran, Poland, Slovakia and Albania.

For his work he received a great number of prestigeous awards: The Dubravko Djušin Award (1997), the Petar Brečić Award  (1999), the Peristil Award (2001, for  Oedipus), the Borštnik Diploma and a Special Award from the Jury (2004), Grand Prix of Tempus Art festival (2004), and the Medal of the City of Havana (2005), Golden Lion for the best performances (2006 for Hamlet, 2007 for Princesse's Dramas), the Borštnik Award for the best Slovenian performance (2007 for Oedipus, 2010 for Macbeth after Shakespeare), the Sterija Award for the best performance (2008 for Oedipus), the Gavelle Award for the best performance (2010 for Garage), Grand Prix of Festival Rijeka (2011 for Cyclops), Prešern’s Found Award (2012 for performances Macbeth after Shakespeare, Sallinger, Little Mermaid, Ma&Al, Hunting scenes from lower Bavaria, Cyclops, Werther and Cat on a hot tin roof).

 


The performance was created within the international European projects “Puppet Nomad Academy 3” and “Nomads of beauty” co-financed by the European commission, program Culture (2007-2013). This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.