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Gregor Kocijančič on Saint Joan of the Stockyards, “Mladina”, November 8 2024

Reality reflects
Gregor Kocijančič, “Mladina”, November 8th 2024
https://www.mladina.si/236437/resnicnost-odseva/

“From the very first idea of staging Brecht’s text, the creators envisioned that the Black Hats, called the Salvation Army by Brecht, would be played by the members of the band Laibach, as their “aesthetics, iconography and play with the themes of totalitarianism and capitalism” perfectly fit the vision of the show conceived by the ErosAntEros directing duo, Agata Tomšič tells. Indeed, “the mixture of politics and aesthetics, or ethics and aesthetics, to quote Ulay, is also characteristic of the work of the ErosAntEros group,” the director points out.

[…] “We live in a permanent crisis,” she is convinced, “even though the centers of production have shifted, the great working masses no longer live in the privileged West, and the owners are harder to identify, the exploitation of living beings and resources is not over. She continues, “On the contrary, new changes have emerged-global warming, wars, pandemics, the energy crisis-that are the result of the same sick economic order.”

[…] During the creation of the production, Agata Tomšič remembers reading an article in “Der Spiegel” that “millionaires were reading Karl Marx’s Capital to save capitalism from the crisis it got into.” “So I thought that we too can reread Saint Joan to try to oppose capitalism.” Because of this ambitious mission the creators have given themselves, the promotional material also includes a quote from the father of the French Novelle Vague, Jean-Luc Godard: “Art is not a reflection of reality, but the reality of this reflection.” As Agata Tomšič explains, Godard’s quote testifies that art is not only a tool for understanding reality, but also for changing it. “If we want to change the world, we must first imagine it differently,” she says. “This is also the central idea of our theater: the belief that theater is still the place where the present society can collectively reflect on reality and change it, through the power of imagination.” […]”