First World Performance
Bernard-Marie Koltès
THE DAY OF MURDERS IN THE STORY OF HAMLET
LE JOUR DES MEURTRES DANS L'HISTOIRE D'HAMLET
Translation: Suzana Koncut
Director: Ivica Buljan
Music: Mitja Vrhovnik Smrekar
Set design: Slaven Tolj
Costume design: Ana Savić Gecan
Choreography: Tanja Zgonc
Sound composition: Mitja Vrhovnik Smrekar
Light design: Igor Remeta
Language supervisor: Arko
Actors:
Jose - as Hamlet
Minca Lorenci - as Ophelia
Veronika Drolc - as Gertrude/ alt. Senka Bulić
Robert Waltl - as Claudius
Marko Gregorič - as Voice
Opening performance in Slovenia, January 6, 2005, Gledališče Glej, Ljubljana
Opening performace in Croatia: January 21, 2005, ZeKaeM, Zagreb
Duration: 70 minutes
Production: Mini teater, Ljubljana
Co-production: Gledališče Glej, ARL Dubrovnik and Novo kazalište Zagreb
The project was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic Slovenia, the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Ljubljana, and the Office for Culture in the City of Zagreb.
The project was created in co-operation with the French Institute Charles Nodier in Ljubljana, French Institute in Zagreb and Festival Ljubljana.
Festivals and tours:
ZeKaeM Zagreb, Croatia, Januar 2005, Festival of Small Scenes Rijeka, Croatia, May 2005, Exodos Ljubljana , May 2005, Slovenia;Golden Lion Umag, Croatia, 2005, July 2005;
Award for the best production- Golden Lion 2005, Umag, Croatia 2005
Award Stane Sever 2005 - The best Actor in 2005 in Slovenia, Veronika Drolc (Gertruda)
The Day of Murders in the Story of Hamlet belongs to the period of Koltes's creative writing before his five great dramas. In this period he dramatised a number of emblematic texts from the world literature: The Drunken Process after Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment, Bitternis after Gorki's Mother, March after the biblical Poem of Poems, or Sallinger … The texts were written during his working with a student drama group at the Strasbourg theatre, but also as exercises in drama writing, as stages in the construction of his own drama world. Later, Koltes transferred Hamlet's character from drama to drama into other male characters. These represent in many features the contemporary equivalent of Hamlet; Koltes's last hero Roberto Zucco is the most sublime such character among them.
This text is marked by contemporary interpretations of Shakespeare's tragedies. First, the author does not follow entirely the development of the drama; he presumes that the spectators are acquainted with the script about Hamlet. He narrows his interest to certain aspects of the drama. He focuses the mechanism of Shakespeare's Hamlet to four persons of the family huis clos (actually to five if we count the ghost voice of Hamlet's father). The repetition of the narrative material through doubling the translation of Shakespeare's drama in dislocated fragments serves as a structure of the drama text. On dramaturgic level, the counting on the conscience of the spectator as a consisting part of the performance results as the fact that not even the characters serve the function of developing the narration any more – they, too, just like the spectators, have their complete 'information' about their play. In this play it is totally understandable that everything is shown openly – be it the drama development or the motives driving it on as in a closed myth structure. The characters – as if their disentanglement was cut – are struggling with their last energy in a frantically accelerated murder game. Now, we have only to guess the conditions of interactive relations, the rules of behaviour in this game where the end is already known. So in the end, nobody survives the tragedy, there is no witness to testify about what happened and to tell on as a lesson or example. There is no sublimation of the tragedy in a cathartic moment. Considering the fact that the drama is narrating itself, its content reflects the modalities of its form, while the closing story is bound to end as a catastrophe.
