Who can dream?
“Whether they are dead or just sleeping, in any case they could not be awakened either by the rude alarms that squealed from the street, or by the footsteps, the sirens, the explosions that came closer and closer, alarmingly close. There was a kind of public apocalypse going on that had no effect on the hermetically sealed private apocalypse in this first-floor apartment. There, as in a dream, as in a drift of snow, as under an avalanche of cocaine, the dead lightness of inertia and the boredom of eternity have already covered each of them."
Gilbert Adair: The Holly Innocents
Inertia is a state characterized by a great desire to persist in rest, inactivity; laziness, idleness (source: SSKJ). Lazy idleness as a way of life is something that the vast majority of people cannot even dream of affording. Perhaps inertia sets in momentarily, on a vacation for which the average family saves all year. Nevertheless, there is a specific class that can afford inertia, because they lose nothing by inactivity, rest, or dreaming. Almost regardless of the economic situation, he can always buy food, he has petrol, a car, service for his living expenses, he can afford a holiday... In short, when the economic conditions are bad and these conditions push the lower class into the streets, representatives of this rage the upper and even the upper middle class will not automatically be impoverished. Due to historical experience, the ruling class has made sure to find allies in the upper and middle classes who will protect it through inaction - whether they realize it or not.
Our protagonists Théo and Isabelle and their parents are representatives of the upper middle class. They own an apartment in the center of Paris, their grandmother owns land, their father is a renowned French poet, and their mother does not have to go to work. When protests begin in the colleges and in front of the Chinemathéque Française, Théo and Isabelle still appear on the street, but when the protests turn into riots, when the police use violence against the students, when the unions join in and the workers organize mass strikes (about 6 million French people at the time strike), Théo and Isa sneak up on each other. Only Matthew, an American exchange student who comes from a lower class and recognizes the goal pursued by her actors in the images from the street, confronts them with this question, while Théo talks enthusiastically about revolutionary ideas: "If you really believed what you're saying , would be outside.” “Where?” “Out there, on the street.” Can we recognize the mechanisms of the ruling class in which we ourselves are embedded? Why not)?
Bor Ravbar
Dreamer's body
The process of creating The Dreamers or a Love Story in the Revolution is a threefold process of dramatization of the novel, theatricalization of the script (the transformation of film mechanisms for the stage, it is therefore a process of condensation) and the actualization of the protests in Paris in 1968 (the process of reading, interpretation). The text (or several of them) is not sacred, but a flexible, malleable material that we "use" for our own purposes, so that it can speak about the revolution as such, the necessity of the revolution and above all the passive, egoistic attitude of the Western world towards it today. It does this by connecting the symbols of the revolution at that time with the symbols of the protests that have taken place in Slovenia in recent decades, and with the state of the world in which we "find ourselves" today. With a situation where everything seems to be falling apart and the idealism of almost 60 years ago is no longer possible. Imperialism as the main (but absolutely not the only) target of the protests at the time has changed, but the actors who drive it most strongly remain the same: the world superpowers, with the bourgeois class of our Western world at the head.
The amalgamation, result of these processes is a conglomeration of various pop culture texts, films, songs, books and visual artifacts. Splicing uses Gilbert-Adair's text for the backbone, making the rest of the materials the vertebrae, while the organs, flesh and skin are created by the actors. The interpretation of the main characters is modern, the cruelty and violence they use against each other is restored. But the outside penetrates into their closed world, a revolution breaks in and destroys their love story, which made it possible in the first place. It breaks in like Marlene Dietrich, it breaks in like a granite cube, it breaks in like a soldier of an invading force, like protesters shouting for Théo, Matthew and Isabelle to join, like a barricade, like flowers still wilting, like “Etre libre en 1968, c 'est participer.', like 'Sous les pavés, la plage!', like 'Soyon cruels!', like 'Il est interdit d'interdire.'...
As the revolution invades the stage, the play invades the auditorium, not to threaten and drive the audience out of the hall, but to hit them straight in the body, hoping to pin them to their seats and force them to reflect on their own responsibility for the situation and crimes at home and elsewhere, then and now. That someday, in the future, there could be a dreamer's body, naked, sincere and unadulterated, which would look at the past as something finished, derived, surpassed.
Nik Žnidaršič
Bor Ravbar was born in Novo mesto and is currently completing his studies in theater directing at AGRFT Ljubljana. His second year production Strah in beda Tretjega rajha(Fear and Misery of the Third Reich) was included in the student program of the 56th Borštnik festival and the Festival Istropolitana (Bratislava) and Artorium festival (Banska Bistrica), while the graduate production Nekje daleč nekaj bo (Somewhere far away something will be) was included in the student program of the 58th Borštnik festival. He received the Zlatolaska award for directing the production of Bambina. For three years he was a member of the editorial board of the professional magazine Akademijski list. As a lighting designer, he participates in various performances: Heiner Müller: Kvartet, Žene v testu, Juriš (all directed by Živa Bizovičar) and Agmisterij (by Klemen Kovačič). For Žene v testu, the creators collectively received the Šelig Award for the best production of the 53rd Slovenian Drama Week, the Award of the Society of Theater Critics and Theatrologists of Slovenia for the best production in 2022, and the Borštnik Award for the comprehensive treatment of the material at the 58th Borštnik festival. In his fourth year, he directed his first professional play at the Glej Theatre, based on the play of Nina Kuclar Stiković: deklici, which was included in the accompanying program of the 54th Slovenian Drama Week.
Nik Žnidaršič is a master's student in the Dramaturgy and Performing Arts programme at AGRFT. He has written for Academic Blog (where he was also co-editor), Neodvisni, Maska, Adept, ECPCP and Akademijski list, and has collaborated with Fabula and Vzkrik festivals. He regularly collaborates with Živa Bizovičar (Müller's Kvartet co-produced by Moment, Borštnikovo srečanja and AGRFT, Žene v testu at SNG Drama Ljubljana, Juriš at SLG Celje) and on original projects: Razmetana soba (at LGL, co-authored with Klemen Kovačič), Agmisterij (master production by Klemen Kovačič at the Old Town Power Plant) and Od kod, dekle, si ti doma (co-produced by Cankarjev dom and AGRFT, co-authored with Lea Mihevc). The play Žene v testu won the Šelig Prize at the 53rd Slovenian Drama Week, the Slovenian Theatre Critics and Theatrologists Association Award for the best production of the last season and the Borštnik Award for an integrated approach to the treatment of the material. For his graduation thesis Kemp he received the Prešeren Prize of the Academy of Performing Arts of UL AGRFT.
