The project 2020 aims to present the challenges of the immediate future in a performative way. The starting point of our exploration is the year 2020. In theatre, for example, in the work of director Ariane Mnouchkine, one is familiar with productions that attempted to reconstruct significant years, such as 1789, 1848, 1914, or 1968. In fiction, we are familiar with the works that predicted the future, such as Orwell’s novel 1984. Kubrick’s brilliant film 2001: A Space Odyssey enquired whether we, as a human species, are capable of coping with a wonderful message of hope with the overtones of humanism.
The production 2020, inspired by the works of Yuval Harari, will address a destiny and evolution of man. Analogies with Kubrick’s Odyssey 2001 are emerging in a philosophical and allegorical sense. Similar to the film, inspired by a short story The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clark, Harari’s thoughts will become a starting point for dialogues, monologues, dance and music acts in the genre of a science cabaret. Our ambition is to create a smart, amusing and educational work dealing with the evolution, the universe and our place in it; existentialism and artificial intelligence.
In his effort to offer answers to important questions of our existence, Harari puts forward the inclination of immortality and improved physical and spiritual abilities of people as future projects in which mankind as a collective will turn its efforts to.
2020 (MMXX) will be a leap year and will begin on a Wednesday according to the Gregorian calendar. This will be the twentieth year of the third millennium, the twentieth year of the twenty-first century and the first year of the new decade. The symbolism of numbers is more than obvious. In 2020, a major world exhibition in Dubai will open, as well as the summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. It will be the year of the first post-Brexit general election in the UK, and the British will finally leave the European Union at the end of 2020. On November 3, the United States will famously hold the presidential election. In 2020, NASA plans a mission to Mars in order to explore the possibility of settling the planet and preparing it for future human-manned missions. Also, a launch of a space probe without a human crew, Euclidean, is planned to study dark energy.
Liberia will become the first African country to replace the felling of trees in return for development assistance. Norway will fund the survival of forests in poor countries which are due to rapid development doomed to turn into an ecological disaster. According to Christiane Figueres, head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the year 2020 will be critical in terms of restricting climate change and preventing its irreversible consequences. In 2020, the construction of the Jeddah tower in Saudi Arabia will be completed and is expected to be the tallest building in the world. In Poland, the Aegis Ashore missile defense system is scheduled for completion.
The 2020 production explores what is good life. Its central issue does not only formulate a philosophical or religious thought, but puts human existence at the forefront! We ask ourselves how humankind has put into practice two fundamental ideals: love and respect for the other.
The problem of the omnipresence of death in the human mind makes us wonder how to make life happy and exciting. What are the existential values? Is the world rational or chaotic?
What do we want on Earth? In fact, this issue is determined by the aforementioned ones. An artist seeks the meaning of life like Homer in The Odyssey. From chaos to peace! From exile to a return to one’s family and people. From ill-fortune to joy!
A wise man overcomes his fear. This enables him to love the others and think of them. Today we live in societies that are governed by fear.
A wise man is not only the one who has overcome his fear, but the one who lives in the present moment, not in the past or in the future. As Seneca put it, we seem to run of time »because we are living in the past or in the future, disregarding the one and only true dimension of time.«
To quote Spinoza: »The passions that occupied the Dutch Lands in their Golden Age most were hope and fear, since both of them arise from the uncertainty regarding the fruits of the future.« Based on a number of scientific and artistic quotations, we will try to ask the right questions.

Ivica Buljan