What has theatre in Slovenia gained with the independence of the country in 1991, my experiences in the theatre management in the society in transition, stereotyped perceptions of the East and art as the ultimate purpose of all these endeavours.
In Stockholm, this year's cultural heartland of Europe, there is a building whose rooms will come alive in June with the intermingling of theatre performances from all Europe. The way from one room into another, however, will not be something to be taken for granted. A complex dialogue with "bureaucracy" will chart its course, an attempt to "block" a free flow of movement between the various spaces in the art and spirit. I was first introduced to this idea in Lisbon; I sat in a café on the waterfront, the favourite of Pessoa, as they say. He used to sit there and watch the shimmering of the waves. Slowly, but increasingly I was enthused by the Euralien project. It evoked a certain memory from a few years ago when I landed at Heathrow. Following the logic of economizing on time, I queued up at the end of the shorter line of passengers from different flights. At first, I wondered why my queue so much shorter than the other one, but upon examining the signs more attentively I realised that my queue was in fact intended for the citizens of the European Union, whereas the longer one moving on more slowly was meant for "the others". I went back to the other line, thinking how the queue set for my entrance to Europe was to be different than for the passengers with European passports. Of course I wouldn't dream of comparing this innocent episode with serious - if not tragic real-life events which many experience whilst crossing all the different borders on this planet. For me, though, that was an enlightening experience: I was born in Europe, and yet was not considered a European when I stood face to face with the British immigration officer. Anyway, I find the idea of an European identity with all its Eurocentric, colonial and imperialistic ingenuities, an alien one; the category defining certain Europeans such as myself, Asians, Americans, and all the rest of the human beings as "the others", makes one look - from the ethnic point of view - rather interesting and colourful, but nonetheless marginalised and unequal when compared to the "European identity".
I am hoping that what I'm trying to say here will shed more light on some of my personal experiences in theatre management. All my life I have, in one way or another, been involved with the theatre, from theatre direction to producing; currently my most important work seems to be the theatre programme at Cankarjev Dom, the largest Slovenian cultural centre. The cultural and artistic programme of this multi-purpose centre consists of theatre, film, music, fine arts, and humanistic programme. From October to June, theatre events take place in five different halls; the largest one can accommodate 1,400 visitors; the smallest one serves as an experimental studio for only 60 viewers.
We try to follow two basic guidelines in our planning of the theatre programme: to provide our audiences with an information on the state of the theatre worldwide, and to produce new drama and contemporary dance performances. Annually, we bring ten to fifteen foreign visiting theatre productions to Slovenia. By producing or co-producing home productions we support the development of Slovenian theatrical creative endeavours. We have pledged our support to young artists at the beginning of their career and to the unconventional poetics of those artists that do not stand a chance of finding their place in the average Slovenian repertory theatres. In our selection of foreign authors we try to represent a wide variety of genres. Last year's productions featured the DV8 Physical Theatre, Bill T. Jones, Josef Nadj, Meg Stuart. The series of "body-art" performances entitled The Beauty of the Extreme included Jerome Bell, Ron Athey, Annie Sprinkle, and Lawrence Steger. We produced Matjaš's Farič's Trilogy, On Three Sides of Heaven by Betontanc Group, and also assisted in the production of an excellent young choreographer Maja Delak. In addition, we staged the most recent production by Iztok Kovač and his group En Knap, The Codes of the Cobra. We joined forces with the Slovenian National Theatre to produce Shakespeare's Macbeth with en ensemble of thirty actors on our largest stage. One of the halls has been converted into a theatre laboratory for six theatre directors to stimulate the making of new productions. We are keenly aware of the negative effects of the repertory theatre, where all the creative efforts are submitted to the making of a theatre performance, which is why we really saw no other option but to set aside enough room for young artists, who will thus be able to really focus on their work and explore the possibilities of this medium over longer periods of time. In this case it is really the artistic process and not the final product which matters most.
Cankarjev Dom, which was built twenty years ago, is a centre dedicated to the explorations in the theatre, to the growth and development of new forms of artistic expression. Slovenian artists with international acclaim who haven't at some point collaborated with Cankarjev Dom would be hard to find; for most of them it was their starting point. Cankarjev Dom is an important part and parcel of the rich and diverse cultural life of Slovenia and Ljubljana, a town with a population of 380,000 which has become the capital of the new independent state in 1991. It would be impossible to make comparisons of this political change with the fall of the Berlin wall, or with the changes in other East European countries. Politically and spiritually, Yugoslavia was always open to many different influences from the East as well as the West. The impact of Slovenian independence on the theatre, however, was far-reaching. War on the territory of the former Yugoslav state has severed the once lively cultural communication between the republics; theatre was no exception. Even a decade ago there had been a number of theatre festivals that served as a platform for an exchange of ideas and experiences vital to the development of all. Theatre directors worked as "visiting" directors in various theatres across the country and thus facilitated the flow of communication. In the nineties, the boundaries have narrowed; drama, which prospers more where the language barriers are felt the least, was especially hard-hit. At Cankarjev dom we are very much aware of these changes - political, economic, and those on spiritual level - in the life on the territory of former Yugoslavia. We are going to conclude this season with visiting performances of theatres from Skopje, Belgrade, Zagreb, Podgorica, and Sarajevo. Our efforts to re-establish the broken links are far from wishful thinking that we can restore what has been lost by the war; we are simply trying to facilitate an open flow of information about the developments in what was once a familiar theatrical setting.
The ideas and the aesthetics of the Slovenian theatre of the eighties - or of the uninstitutionalised Slovenian theatre groups, to be more precise, were strongly influenced by the so-called physical theatre, and the sparks of "Belgian explosion" have touched Slovenian contemporary dance as well. Slovenian choreographers and dancers established creative collaboration with other choreographers or groups in Western Europe; this also stemmed from the fact that no study programmes in contemporary dance were available at home. The early nineties marked a notable increase in the presence of Slovenian theatre groups at various international festivals. It is true, to some extent, that Western-European interest in our theatre intensified on account of the war which suddenly placed Slovenia on the headlines of the world press coverage, but this "fashion fad" was of short breath; the attractiveness of this "political component" soon faded and Slovenian theatre groups were subjected to the "usual" scrutiny of the selectors. Regardless of all this, some Slovenian theatres - the most notable example being Theatre Mladinsko - have been present with their visiting productions in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as in the Americas, for over twenty years.
For the newly founded, two million-strong Slovenian state the task of establishing its presence within the cultural diversity of the global or, for that matter, European theatre market has proved to be a great deal more complex and difficult in comparison with our larger and production-wise well-developed neighbours. In the mind of many a European, Slovenia actually does not even exist. Whenever I pop the question, the reply I usually get from Europeans is a positive one; it is only after a persuasive attempt to tell me that I actually come from Bratislava that I finally see what they really mean - the Slovak republic. During my two years of studying in Austria I was amazed at the stereotyped misconceptions about Eastern Europe, but I have also noticed them elsewhere. The Eastern block was commonly associated with the mental image of a grim, cold, threatening, tightly sealed Soviet Russia described in the bedtime spy novels. It is true, those who knew better admitted that Russian ballet was good, but more often than not I have met with that kind of prejudice, and not only when I talked to hotel receptionists, but even at the seminars for cultural bureaucrats from important European associations and organisations. My encounters with those who embraced these misconceptions were always too brief to even begin to explain the abounding differences within the countries of Eastern Europe. These have all followed, regardless of everything they had in common after the second world war, their own particular courses - politically and otherwise, and are now different one from another in at least as much as the Western European countries differ between themselves.
In my daily work I come across and examine a large number of offers sent from all over the world by theatre groups interested in performing at Cankarjev Dom. Ninety percent of these are from the United States and Western-European countries. Finding information on the current theatre production in the European East, however, requires considerably more digging. As far as the unfettered flow of communication on what is happening in the European theatre is concerned, we are still far from being a global village. Information tends to travel one-way only, and even that mostly thanks to the efforts of West-European producers. After the fall of the Berlin wall, theatrical management in Europe has been following the so-called "West-European model" which is, by many of us, seen as alien and with regard to our different cultural and political traditions and structures even impossible to implement. The dominance of these models of theatrical production in the European market also shapes and dictates the taste itself, and thus influences the selection of the programme, especially in the segment of international exchange, the visiting performances. The subject of the aesthetic imperialism of the West, as it is reflected in the theatre, certainly deserves to be examined by a separate in-depth study.
For Slovenia, the year 1991 marked the beginning of a gradual transition towards a different social model; this process has affected all the spheres of life on the economic, social, cultural and other planes. Theatre managements of small and more flexible production units were the quickest to adapt, but new principles of cultural management in the theatre have taken time to gain ground, due to the slow-paced response of cultural administration. The new cultural policy is, frankly, in the on-going process of gradual transition - on the national as well as local levels, without exception and in all the fields, be it the national cultural programme, its financing, priorities in the development of individual projects, the selection of appropriate human resources, or the cultural promotion of Slovenia abroad. Those of us who are involved in international projects often encounter enormous difficulties in our daily work, due to the inconsistencies between the demands of international cooperation and the laws of modus operandi in the country where we work.
Foreign visitors to Ljubljana are often amazed at the variety and the quality of the cultural menu in such a miniature country. For those of us who try to enhance our contribution to the Slovenian cultural life as artists or producers, it is natural to keep improving the existing models and methods by adding to it new knowledge. In those rare moments when we feel that we really have been of assistance in the making of a genuine work of art, we finally stand face to face with our essence. As far as art goes, in the East as much as in the West, regardless of the geographic position, all paths lead to the same destination, which is seen as a myriad of different images and as countless possibilities. Boundaries in the mind can best be comprehended through art; as a symbol of division and separateness on the purely physical level - as Euralien proves - they are often difficult to cross; those marked in our heads are even harder to transcend.