MASS FOR YUGOSLAVIA

Although Yugoslavia has been a thing of the past for over 30 years, it still serves as a deterrent to anyone who refuses to accept the logic of national identities and remembers that on all sides of today's borders between the former socialist republics live people and monsters like us. Someone with little turned intentions might add: Some of us live in the EU and some outside, with no prospect of joining.

Most of us understand each other without translations, although national language policies have done everything possible to convince us that we could not understand each other without subtitles.

Under these circumstances, what do we do with the culture that was considered Yugoslav? Do we bury it deep in the mass grave of our memories? And then do we wait for someone to come and dig it up and expose its disembodied parts for identification?

Mass For Yugoslavia is a theatrical exhumation of the corpse of Yugoslav culture and an embodiment of its various ghosts. It stands in the twilight zone between failed socialist dreams and realized capitalist nightmares. The piece takes an autopsy of some of the most iconic Yugoslav artworks and shows us the paradox of brotherly love bordering on deadly hatred - a paradox called Yugoslavia. It lives on the tension between what Yugoslavia could be and what it has become. Between nostalgia for Yugoslavia and the prohibition of its memory, we choose neither.

No spoken text, music in Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, English, Slovenian, Greek with English surtitles.

With Primož Bezjak, Uroš Kaurin, Jerko Marčić, Nika Mišković, Draga Potočnjak, Matej Recer, Blaž Šef

International co-production: Mladinako Theatre, Ljubljana; Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc, Rijeka; BITEF, Belgrade; MOT, Skopje.

Photos: Nejc Saje

In the framework of the 6th Berlin Autumn Salon 2023 LOST - YOU GO SLAVIA