»History: the devil in us, in me, in you.«
(Peter Handke: Storm Still; MandićCircus, role no. 63)

Following the brilliant opening of MandićCircus performance on 6 May 2022 on the Main Stage of the Ljubljana Drama, we now present its reinterpretation, arranged for the Small Stage by the creators of the original production. MandićCircus project which includes dozens of roles from the beginning of Mandić’s professional acting career in 1996 until May 2021, set a mirror to itself immediately after its premiere. Realizing fully the power of the context and the circumstances of performing, the creative team with director Bojan Jablanovec has prepared a new staging – with an extra bit, suggested in the title to emphasise the most obvious difference, creating a field of intrigue and speculation about the difference itself and the reasons for the change of title. MandićCircus (dressed) is a reconsideration of the strategies of performance and the power of interpretation, as well as a test of Marko Mandić’s acting madness. As he set out of reinvent himself as a medium, an actor and the author of all the ninety-one roles he has played on the stage, he has (re)invented the role of the absolute actor testing the limits of his body and soul. If MandićCirkus is a nonchalant gesture of subjectivised history in which the actor “unreservedly confronts the actor and the performer, the artist and the impostor, the exhibitionist and the voyeur, the divine and the banal, the pathology of ambition and the misery of success”, MandićCircus (dressed) implies the same gesture, but with the power of a peculiarly comic, even farcical persiflage. With the surprising production of new meanings, it cuts into the very critique of the production of ideological fiction with new intensity.

Eva Kraševec