DIRECTING SCENOGRAPHY ABOUT
HERE IN THE BLACK FOREST
Jon Fosse
Premiere: 2.10.2025, City Theatre Ljubljana
Direction , Scenography and Video: Dorian Šilec Petek
Dramaturgy: Eva Mahkovic
Composition: Andrej Kobal
Costumography: Timotej Rosc
Light Deisign: Andrej Hajdinjak
Performed by: Jernej Gašperin, Jure Rajšp, Judita Zidar,
Boris Kerč, Nina Rakovec, Jaka Lah
An unnamed young man drives his car into the woods.
“I was bored”, is the reason he gives for driving into the woods.
In the middle of the night, he gets stuck in the snow and the cold, stranded in the forest, which in the tradition of European literature and drama is generally a place of terror and freedom, and above all a place of crucial change.
This confrontation raises a set of questions that Here in the Black Forest asks: what is the face of postmodern sublime? How to coincide with a series of contingencies that are our history that drove us to a human induced sixth extinction. What if we are to abolish ideas of supremacy over other beings? What if the idea of being stranded in a wintery forest is what we will dream of in times to come.
Here in the Black Forest follows a gradual descent from the civilized into the nonlinear and non-hierarchical reciprocity of a universal, raw reality that transcends the boundaries of our sterile and orderly world. Here in the Black Forest unfolds as a concert of thoughts - both conscious and intrusive - accompanying a journey into the unknown.
The performance follows an individual confronting their own fears and self-evident beliefs, while a combination of reason and something other, something unfamiliar, leads them ever deeper into the forest, away from home, safety, and life as they know it.
Performance merges live electronic music, video, scenography, and performance into an experiential experience.
Set in an occupied venue, the former Kino Komuna, it emerges as a contemplative homage to the more-than-human world.