Whiteness Behind Me

Moderator Petra Vidali

Guests Martin Kušej, Tina Mahkota

Director Martin Kušej returns to the Slovenian theatre space after almost two decades – not only with two resonating productions at the national theatres in Ljubljana and Maribor, but also with his collection of autobiographical essays Za mano belina (Whiteness Behind Me). In it, Kušej reflects on his artistic journey, highlights the key productions of his career and opens an intimate insight into his creative process of searching for “the moment of truth” – that transformational moment when the lights go down in theatre and the audience sets off on a journey into another, magical reality.

The text is more than a chronicle of Kušej’s theatre work, as it thematises the art of transcending the past as a conditio sine qua non for the future, ponders about identity politics, about the dangers of the dictatorship of opinions and about the gradual shrinking of the freedom of expression. It gives a special place to the identity of a Carinthian Slovenian – which he has never denied despite living and working outside Slovenia – and reflects on his first steps in the Slovenian theatre in the 1990s.

The book, originally published in German in 2022, came out in spring 2025 in Tina Mahkota’s translation, a collaboration between the publishing houses Beletrina and Mont.