The new play The Blue Monkey Hotel is based on real events that took place during the 1913/1914 season at the Provincial Theatre in Ljubljana. The period was marked by the approach of the looming Great War, heralding not only a financial crisis but even more, a fundamental change in the way of thinking and system of values. The theatre as an institution and art form is most vulnerable during such tectonic changes, resulting in its “care” being manifested through reduced funding and an appeal for commercialisation and amateurism.
The play focuses on an episode in the career (and life) of the great Slovenian actor and director Ignacij Borštnik (1858–1919) who was called back from Zagreb to Ljubljana to save the Slovenian theatre from the crisis. The task itself was too demanding for the tired artist of the old school, and the local Slovenian environment itself did not prove supportive either. Intrigue, vanity, envy, party struggles and plain old profit-making were effectively hiding behind the high-flying words. Before the season was even completed, Borštnik literally fled back to Zagreb, the world witnessed the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Sarajevo and the Provincial Theatre in Ljubljana re-opened as a cinema.