Inventor on Earth at the 54th Maribor Theatre Festival
Première: 29 November 2018, Anton Podbevšek Theatre
Director and author of concept Bara Kolenc Dramaturg Miklavž Komelj Sound designer Matevž Kolenc Authors of adaptation of the piano compositions by Marija Kogoj (Malenkosti) Matevž Kolenc and Sašo Vollmaier Set designer Marko Japelj Choreographer Bara Kolenc and performers Video designer Zack Sievers Costume designers Špela Ema Veble and Nina Jagodic Assistant director Ana Laura Richter Language consultant Jože Faganel Visual identity Eva Mlinar
Performers and co-creators Andraž Jug, Leja Jurišić, Urban Kuntarič, Ana Pandur/Bara Kolenc, Pavle Ravnohrib, Sašo Vollmaier
Performance Inventor on Earth marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Anton Podbevšek, whose poetry is associated with the beginning of the historical avant-garde movement in Slovenia. By tracing the internal tension of his poetry, the play seeks to stage Podbevšek's "cosmic anarchism", expressing the force of endless expansion of the edge of possibility. If this force in the title song manifests itself in the desire to liberate the potentials that are suppressed by the unjust regulation of human society, the image of a man who is a prisoner of the universe itself is sketched in cosmic space after overstepping the bounds of the horizon. What could give rise to the liberation from this captivity?
The poetry of Anton Podbevšek (1898-1981) opened up new space for the Slovene language of some kind of visionary tongue, to which no one could remain indifferent. The contemporaries, who were initially puzzled over it and over Podbevšek's public appearances in Novo mesto and Ljubljana, and then began to forget all of it as though it were some kind of trauma, often perceived this poetry as an excess of images, which have an impact as a lushness of an exotic primeval forest, where one can lose oneself. However, a more meticulous reading of his poetry offers the reader a chance to discover, as one of its core features, exceptional precision and consistency in the formation of the smallest semantic units; the poet was able to establish extreme tension and free up maximum energy merely by juxtaposing two words.
Podbevšek was the first person in Slovenia to fill up a theatre hall with his poetry. He understood it as poetry which requires a theatre stage. Inventor on Earth is now bringing this poetry back onto the stage. Podbevšek recited it on the stage in his solitude, and the play Inventor on Earth wants to rekindle his unique poetry with a new stage language while raising awareness that poetry is not just poetry; it is a state of mind.
Miklavž Komelj