Nothing is as it seems. Or at least not as we were told. Lately, we have come to a realisation, more or less slowly, more or less quickly, but most definitely unrelentingly, that nothing is guaranteed for us. No rights, no values, no freedoms. Do we still think they are? Do we still believe that everything that goes on in the world – all the horrific, senseless and scary things, everything inflicted by people on other people – is not part of us and does not concern us, much less threatens to happen to us personally? Be that as it may, we can hardly brush off our discomfort upon seeing that in our direct vicinity or neighbourhood, voices are being raised and even legal acts proposed and introduced as a threat to the long-time conquered territories, such as universal human equality, the rights of women over their own bodies and equal position in society in general, and modern-day notions of family. And this discomfort – essentially the subconscious knocking on the door of consciousness – is enough in itself to throw a premonition over the Zeitgeist, namely that the basis of our reality is being radically transformed from the cruel to the liquid, from the static to the dynamic. There is no reason to fear. It only means that we are invited to continually question and occasionally redefine our rights, values and freedoms. Because none of them are to be taken for granted.
This is why it is possible that a play presenting a rather bygone story of a girl who decides to cause her own death as she feels trapped between be the internalized patriarchal conventions of the ultra-Catholic Italian society of the 18th century and the forced disclosure of her own forbidden instincts, proves to be a topical, almost a burning issue. For it is obvious that on this level of civilisation we still fail to properly understand the meaning of true liberation of women, as well as of men. We remain, as of yet, stuck in the midst of a patriarchy that has long since stopped believing in itself, but persists as a dominant social form, paralyzing and oppressing us in different ways in different cultures. The creative team of the production based on Lessing’s Emilia Galotti (1772) appreciates the play as a polygon for exploring different views on several topics and issues: the role of women in maintaining and simultaneously superseding the patriarchy; the men being stuck in the stereotyped demands of the same patriarchy, leading to misogyny and – despite of its power – to its own misery; the role of institutionalised religion as a mechanism to instil inherent fears of the search for freedom; the dichotomy of the urban and the rural – the challenges and traps brought on by city life, and the peace and safety brought on by life in the countryside; and the civilizational, as well as political starting points of such views…
We aim to open and intertwine different ways, let water fill dried-up sinks of old questions. Perhaps, one of the branches of those newly formed meanders will lead us to A Question Answered, a metaphysical brainchild by William Blake, written around the time of Emilia Galotti, using only four lines to disperse beautifully, almost magically the entire sexual embarrassment on which the patriarchy so strongly rests:
What is it men in women do require
The lineaments of Gratified Desire
What is it women do in men require
The lineaments of Gratified Desire

Katarina Pejović