Simona Semenič
onethousandninehundredandeightyone
Summary
One of the most well-known Slovene contemporary playwrights Simona Semenič, born in 1975, chose her native town of Ajdovščina as the setting for the play onethousandninehundredandeightyone (2013). "The inspiration for 1981 came while I was walking through Ajdovščina with my friend Luka. The Lipa factory stood empty and that made me feel terrible. I was in shock; it is probably something that you don't necessarily notice unless you live there permanently. Together we observed the empty windows and the deserted town; it was when my school friend Erika committed suicide. The text 1981 is dedicated to her. To her, to my family and the friends from Ajdovščina,” said Simona Semenič. While working on the project onethousandninehundredandeightyone the young Bosnian director Selma Spahić came to think that the text written by Simona Semenič dealt with something that is quite specific and that will be her focus – the major generation gap between the generation who remembers the socialist era at least to some extent, and the generations that cannot remember it at all, except from what they have been told. "This gap is frightening, /.../ because it cannot be overcome in terms of life's principles and the social norms with respect to the ideological view and the view of the world. Yugoslavia will actually disappear from everyone's personal experience fairly quickly, it will disappear from one's memory and so there will remain in art and in life – as it is common practice – only a dichotomy between idolising the freedom of the red passport and the repression of a totalitarian regime. Simona Semenič is putting this latter moment of the personal memory into focus,” says Selma.
The dramaturge Dino Pešut said the following in his analysis: "With intertying two days, one in 1981 and the other in 2013, a question arises of what remains, what is left. Simona Semenič embraces the trauma, hiding the tragedy in an almost antique process and observes the consequences, her heroes in their search of the essence, an attempt of putting together the pieces of memory and life. /.../ Simona Semenič is suggesting that buildings and streets can bear more history than people. The closed-down factory forgets the change of the political and economic system harder than people: the main characters. As if in 2013 things and people – especially people – are unrelentingly losing, disappearing and leaving. In this way Ajdovščina becomes the cartography of quiet oblivion and pale memories.”
Cast
Mateja PuckoNika Rozman
Ana Urbanc
Jurij Drevenšek
Davor Herga
Kristijan Ostanek
Matija Stipanič
Vladimir Vlaškalić
Photo gallery
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
Photo: Damjan Švarc
