SLG Celje: (Assault) Juriš

“We juxtapose events in the performance, following the stories of two boys, Kajuh and the unnamed Young Man, who are trying to find their own way, a way that would not lead to self-betrayal in the maelstrom of war. They are tossed back and forth by tides of war, they fall in love, suffer, leave their families and miss them, wondering if their families would still exist after the war. It is impossible to reconstruct events onstage, even if allowing for the possibility of a reconstruction of such extensive events. At the same time, reconstruction is also unnecessary, generating only fascination, with which nothing is achieved. Only fragments can be staged, glimpses at life’s intersecting tracks. The two stories needed to be cut into fragments (where not already fragmented), the testimonies interlaced, creating a polyphony of voices echoing from the past, and then the fragments edited, divided into chapters while constantly stressing the fact that these are stories. Narration told by people most of whom are no longer with us. That these are real stories that happened not far from here, cruel and sad stories, stories that belong to the past, but nevertheless leave behind scars. The viewers must feel the horror pervading the stories, but with the awareness that this horror must be prevented, or what inevitably follows is – see you in the next war.”

Nik Žnidaršič, Karli, Korlek, Kajuh, excerpt from the playbill

“The text could also start anew here – in view of the legacy of the prematurely deceased poet and the stunning corpus of literary history compiled about the artist (mainly thanks to authors such as Emil Cesar, Vlado Vrbič, Matjaž Kmecl, Miklavž Komelj and Denis Poniž, who have recently been joined by Dušan M. Pirc, Marijan Rupert, etc.), the show marking the (upcoming) centenary of Kajuh's birth complements, in a very special way, the equally enviable tradition of artworks inspired by the proletarian poet from Šoštanj. In a certain sense, this performance, which creatively blends Kajuh's unique synthesis of the tendencies of his time with some of the boldest formal expressions of contemporary drama, constitutes precisely that missing aspect, an art intervention that opens up the space of democratic and aesthetic imagination which I aspired towards when joining the Student Literary Society for the first and last time.”

Assist. Prof. Andraž Jež, PhD, Briefly about Kajuh, excerpt from the playbill