Cankar

15 +

In Slovenian, without translation.

Cankar is a complex and visually rich puppet portrait of one of Slovenia's greatest writers, Ivan Cankar. The show’s director and visual designer Silvan Omerzu delves deep into Cankar's intellectual world. In using puppets from the director’s various creative periods, Cankar also chronicles the development of Omerzu's poetics and aesthetics.

The performance draws on the extraordinarily prolific oeuvre of Ivan Cankar – vignettes, plays, novels, and letters – and focuses on themes running through his writing: longing, guilt, social inequality, eroticism, faith, and death. Cankar is not only a tribute to the writer Ivan Cankar on the 150th anniversary of his birth, but also a witty, moving, and occasionally dark visual study of an artist whose ideas are still alive and inspiringly relevant today. Blending puppetry, stage adaptation, and atmospheric imagery, the show creates its own theatrical language, embodying Cankar's ideas.

The performance combines various puppetry techniques, while drawing on the power of poetic set design, where automatons, masks, light, and shadows incarnate the landscapes of Ivan Cankar's inner worlds and dreams. The central narrative thread is a selection of letters written by Cankar the puppet in different periods of his life: to his mother, Ana Lušin, Etbin Kristan, and Zofka Kveder. The show’s main dramatic block is Cankar's play Pohujšanje v dolini šentflorjanski (Scandal in the Valley of St Florian), the second act of which is performed entirely with Javanese puppets, while the first and third acts employ the formats of shadow and narrative theatre. Silvan Omerzu is one of Slovenia’s most prominent contemporary puppetry artists, working at the intersection of visual and performing arts. Cankar’s director and visual designer, Silvan Omerzu, is Slovenia's leading puppetry artist, known for his unique authorial vision, precise mise-en-scène, and distinctive visual style. 


Silvan Omerzu (1955) is a visual and puppetry artist. After graduating from the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana, Omerzu started working at the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre. In 1983, he completed his specialization in puppet theatre scenography and puppet design in Prague. After returning to Ljubljana, he developed a signature artistic style applied most manifestly to the productions of the Konj theatre, co-founded with the director Jan Zakonjšek. As a freelance artist, he collaborated with the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, the Maribor Puppet Theatre, the Glej Theatre, Cankarjev dom, and the Mladinsko Theatre, as well as with international partners. His shows toured numerous international festivals in Croatia, Italy, the Czech Republic, France, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, and the United States. Omerzu’s collaborations with the Maribor Puppet Theatre include standout, visually stunning productions: Salto mortale (2012), Zlata ptica (2014), Sanje o zvezdi (2016), Zlatolaska in trije medvedi (2019), Besede iz hiše Karlstein (2017) and Želodkova skrivnost (2022). Omerzu is recipient of various international and Slovenian awards for his achievements in the field of visual arts and theatre, most notably the prestigious Prešeren Fund Award (2006). In 2025, he won the Klemenčič Award for Lifetime Achievement (UNIMA Slovenia).