Drama Bound!

Overwhelmed with thrill and almost festive anticipation we present to you the 2023/24 season. It is going to be the final season we will prepare and perform in our building as you know it. According to plans, a complete renovation of the Drama is to begin in mid-2024, meaning we will have to spend the next few seasons performing in other venues. This is why our invitation to join us at the »old« Drama for the very last time is truly special. It is our wish you leave our venues with new insights – amused, shattered or captivated – but by no means indifferent.

The underlying point of departure for the repertoire of the 2023/24 season is to continue along the lines of the best in Drama’s distinguished tradition: to present classical texts and to strive for relevant and contemporary stagings that can address a broad spectrum of audiences. Therefore, we present you a carefully thought-out selection of ten plays to be staged by distinguished directors and their creative co-workers. Performed by members of our outstanding ensemble, the texts will be transformed into ten magical theatre evenings, with the aim to incite you to join us in the exciting and unpredictable world of art.

Intertwining classical and contemporary texts by Slovenian and foreign authors, we wish to touch upon as many relevant themes as possible. We hope to raise as many questions as possible for you, our loyal audience, because of their current topicality and perennial appeal.

Our upcoming productions – six on the Main Stage and four on the Small Stage – will reflect the period we live in, one way or another. They include a wide range of themes that share a common trait: a focus on storytelling and human relationships which often spiral into a struggle of passions on a personal and social level.

We invite you to join us on the Drama Main Stage to bear witness to the unyielding enquiry of ethical issues in Antigone by Dominik Smole. Immerse yourself in an intriguing vision of a slice of our here and now as expounded in the latest novel by the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård, The Morning Star, stage adapted by Goran Vojnović. Indulge in thought-provoking fun teeming from two immortal classical comedies – William Shakespeare’s What You Will, with its plethora of bittersweet scenes of amorous torment and memorable comic snags, and Molière’s The Miser, laying bare unsparingly bare the deceitful power of money in a bravura interplay of erotic desires. Make your way through a gripping »courtroom« drama to a surprising denouement in The Welkin, a play by the outstanding British playwright Lucy Kirkwood. Cheer for love to triumph in Edmond Rostand’s unforgettable tale of Cyrano de Bergerac, presented in Martin Crimp’s original contemporary adaptation.

As for our Small Stage upcoming productions, you can probe your own identity alongside the characters in The Day When I Was No Longer Me, a thrilling play by the contemporary German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig. Sławomir Mrożek’s Tango examines who can be the bearer of any kind of revolution in today’s world. The closing of the season will pay a unique tribute to our treasured small scene venue. As the programme of the Small Stage will take place in a new and completely different hall after the renovation, we will stage Edward Albee’s The American Dream, a peculiar grotesque. Its first production in 1963 was the launch of the Small Stage in terms of its content and structure. The very last performance to open in the venue will be the latest play by Matjaž Zupančič. He will thus share with Yasmina Reza the worthy title of the most frequently performed author on out Small Stage. In his new grotesque play bearing a suggestive title This Game Will be Over, a meteor will symbolically hit the Earth (and the stage) …

We hope you will choose to explore with us the new worlds hidden behind the ten play titles. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for your patience and understanding in view of the many changes to the 2022/23 programme, caused by various structural difficulties during and after the pandemic that were unfortunately beyond our control. We will do our utmost to minimise such problems. It gives us immense pleasure to see that you are persevering in our company in spite of everything.

Welcome to the Drama!

Vesna Jurca Tadel
Managing and artistic director of the SNT Drama Ljubljana