Pavla above the Precipice by Andrej E. Skubic, and: Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, and: The Heart in Hand by Draga Potočnjak, and: Hero 1.0. by Uroš Kaurin and Vito Weis (review)

When a theatre calls itself “Youth,” one can assume that the political agenda of the company is probably focused on the perspectives of young people who are questioning the older institutions of their parents. The Mladinsko Theatre in Ljubljana, Slovenia, began over sixty years ago as a theatre for young people under the guidance of its first director, Balbina Battelino Baranovič. Her astute leadership brought the theatre into prominence because she favored productions that reflected some of the avant-garde trends in European theatre at the time, including collective creation and theatre of images. In the repressive environment of the cold war where few theatres dared to oppose government policies, Mladinsko turned itself into an alternative theatre willing to raise social issues and dramatize them. Under the direction of Dušan Jovanović during the late 1970s and ’80s, the theatre intensified its political agenda and began presenting plays about the exploitation of ordinary people by various institutions in the country, a move that reverberated in other countries behind the Iron Curtain, as well as in other parts of the world. Mladinsko began touring some of its shows to other European cities, as well as to South America, and its growing reputation as a home for political and experimental theatre provided an international platform from which it could sustain its creative voice. Today, the theatre continues to survive as a multigenerational family of theatre professionals committed to redefining political change by rekindling a version of “total theatre.” The actors experiment with multiple elements of performance, such as focusing on physical movement, integrating music into the action, and creating visual images onstage.

For the past eight years Mladinsko has been presenting its “Overflight Festival,” an annual presentation of full-length plays and shorter individual performances from its past season that also introduces several new works. Most of the productions belong to its Slovenian repertory of original works or adaptations from other media; also included are freshly realized interpretations of foreign plays. The 2011 festival that I attended focused in part on the social and moral costs that artists pay when managing their careers, including works that staged the lives of a famous dancer (Nijinsky) and an infamous actor (Gustaf Gründgens from the novel Mephisto), and an autobiographical piece by company actor Marusa Geymayer-Oblak. During the intervening years the theatre has endured budget cuts and has had to reshape its repertory. Mladinsko is a theatre that is proud of retaining its employees (from actors to front-office people) for a considerable period of time—some of the actors have been employed on and off for over thirty years. Helmed by new artistic director Goran Injac, the theatre is trying to return to its roots as a vibrant political institution after having had to present more commercial works and rely upon international funding.

The most visually alluring production on display in this year’s festival, Pavla above the Precipice, was written by the prominent novelist and translator Andrej Skubic, who has translated many English plays, particularly those of Gertrude Stein. Skubic focuses on Pavla Jesih, one of the first female professional mountain climbers to scale a number of peaks in the Slovenian mountains during the years leading up to World War II. This was a period that romanticized mountain climbing, and she and her male climbing partner, Joža Čop, became quite celebrated until a serious accident on Mount Velika Mojstrovka forced her retirement from the sport. During her notable secondary career as an owner of a chain of cinemas in Ljubljana and other cities she...