The Welkin

Original title The Welkin (2020)

Premiere 28. 3. 2024, Main Stage SNT Drama Ljubljana

Running time 2 hours 45 minutes, with one intermission.

Post-performance discussion with the artists.

Director Sebastijan Horvat

Translator Tina Mahkota

Dramaturg Milan Ramšak Marković

Language consultant Arko

Set designer Igor Vasiljev

Costume designer Belinda Radulović

Composer Drago Ivanuša

Lighting designer Aleksandar Čavlek

Make-up designer Julija Gongina

Assistant set designer Katarina Majcen

Cast

Maruša Majer, Nataša Barbara Gračner, Saša Pavček, Silva Čušin, Sabina Kogovšek, Iva Babić, Vanja Plut, Pia Zemljič, Nina Ivanišin, Eva Jesenovec, Maša Derganc, Zvezdana Mlakar, Mina Švajger, Igor Samobor, Nejc Cijan Garlatti, Silva Čušin

Lucy Kirkwood’s theatre trajectory includes her writer-in-residence with the English theatre group Clean Break, which, since 1979, has been exploring questions of female criminality and the judicial system through in-prison theatre programmes. Their work transcends art, as the stories of incarcerated women expose the judiciary’s systemic inequalities and biases – themes that resonate throughout The Welkin. The events in 1759 in Suffolk, where an all-female jury deliberates on the life of Sally Poppy, on trial for murder, bring forth key emancipatory questions that remain painfully pertinent today. Through a series of cracks between the historical period of enshrining capitalism, enclosing common land and unpaid women’s domestic labour, an unbearably clear picture of the struggle to shed the yoke of patriarchy emerges, a struggle that often appears as imposed antagonisms between the masculine and the feminine.