Affabulazione

Original title Affabulazione (1966–1970)

Premiere 24. & 25. 1. 2024, Small Stage SNT Nova Gorica

Running time 2 hours 45 minutes, with intermission.

Post-performance discussion with the artists.

Director Jan Krmelj

Translator Gašper Malej

Dramaturg Živa Bizovičar

Language consultant Anja Pišot

Set and video designer Dorian Šilec Petek

Costume designer Brina Vidic

Composers Jan Krmelj, Luka Ipavec

Cast

Miha Nemec, Marjuta Slamič, Željko Hrs, Žiga Udir, Lara Fortuna, Peter Harl

In this modern tragedy, the present is already something past. A simple dream interrupts the peaceful and successful life of a Milanese industrialist who is vacationing with his family. His attempt to understand the meaning of an unusual dream leads to an even more destructive obsession to control his son. When the father asks the son to kill him (some kind of Oedipus in reverse), the son runs away – and finally, the father kills the son. History ends, and the passing on of the world like a torch between generations stops. In the epilogue, twenty years after the murder, the father lives at a train station as a beggar and, reminding us of an original histrion, shares his story with his imaginary listener. This is not the story of one father but a story of the inevitable violence of a human being who wants to have, know and understand everything. The son rejects murders, old and new, which shakes the father’s certainty and triggers his desire to destroy. Like capitalism, patriarchal society also cannot accept change but instead demands destruction. Pasolini puts human life into words as inevitably mythological.