An Event in the Town of Goga

Slovene Permanent Theatre in Trieste and Glasbena matica

Première: 12. 2. 2016, Slovene Permanent Theatre in Trieste
Running time 1 hour 35 minutes. No interval.
 
Director Igor Pison
Dramaturgs Katarina Košir, Ana Obreza
Set designer Petra Veber
Conductor Igor Zobin
Language consultant Laura Brataševec

Cast
Afra/Hana/Ms Prestopil Patrizia Jurinčič
Tarbula/Ms Tereza/Komi Omar Prelih/Pisar Klikot/Grbavec Teobald Daniel Dan Malalan

Slovenian Musical Centre ensemble
Ana Obreza (violin), Valentina Bembi (viola), Irene Ferro Casagrande (cello)

A Slovenian classic, merged with the singular creativity of the Trieste director Igor Pison, has acquired a new musical theatre appearance in the production of the Slovene Permanent Theatre. The focus is on Hana’s story as well as on a pronounced playfulness that is otherwise present between the lines. Dealing with relations in a dysfunctional society, the text underlines the lack of humanity, which in certain cases results in the replacement of humans by puppets. The town of Goga is infused with (also Ibsen’s) Ghosts manifested through hidden traumas and frustrations of its inhabitants: they breed their phobias amid the stifling monotony of everyday life, while merely waiting for a "redemptive” event. Those weird characters with their eerily empty lives and ungratified longings – the author, among other, found the inspiration for them while he was working in a psychiatric asylum – are unable to experience an epilogue thus remaining captured in their uncanny hopelessness. The only way to surpass the emptiness of the town, where no story moves away from the deadlock, is by establishing a parallel world – it is the music that accompanies, supports, strengthens and at times even drowns out the noise of the inner disquiet for which no one in the town has sympathy.

"The new production of the Slovene Permanent Theatre in Trieste, directed by Igor Pison, sited the gloomy textual basis occasionally permeated with irony in a dark and ironic atmosphere. We are even able to laugh at the characters living in the staleness of permanent expectations, those people who don’t make a move outside of their comfort zone, wrapped in their habits. That laughter is light and pleasant until it lands in the field of reflection where awaits the realisation that what we are laughing at are actually incidents in real setting that are quite familiar to us. An Event in the Town of Goga is namely still highly topical and the Trieste production proves that once we take it out of the old wooden chest of Slovenian classics there is no need to modernise it or make a radical adaptation.”

Ivana Zajc, Primorski dnevnik, 14 February 2016