Drago Jančar: And love itself (In ljubezen tudi)

Stage adaptation by Luka Marcen and Tatjana Doma
Director Luka Marcen

The story of Drago Jančar’s monumental novel And Love Itself (2017) begins with a chance event: two girls stand in the middle of Maribor’s square in front of the Astoria Cafe, and one of them recognizes an acquaintance in a passing member of the SS units. This encounter triggers a dramatic series of events that forever change the lives of all involved. And Love Itself is not just a historical war or love novel, although it is both. Primarily, it is an intimate story about the destructive power of love – and hatred that fatefully connects all four main narrators.

Through the intimate stories of people from different corners of history, Jančar essentially includes the city of Maribor as the central protagonist, thus creating a literary monument to it. The stage adaptation by director Luka Marcen and dramaturg Tatjana Doma takes Jančar’s complex web of intimate human destinies and perspectives on a turbulent historical time as its starting point. And Love Itself is not a historical view of the events of World War II in the city of Maribor but primarily a reminder of today’s turbulent moment of how important humanity is. For love to survive, love alone is not enough.