64

Eva and Danijel are a couple yearning for a child, unsuccessfully. They are both approaching forty, which makes successful conception increasingly less likely. On top of that, they still struggle to secure their material existence. They decide to begin fertility treatment and 64 is the number of hormonal injections that Eva must administer to her lower abdomen. But even this exhausting procedure does not guarantee a successful ending.  

64, one of the contemporary Croatian author Tena Štivičić’s recent plays, is an urban drama with elements of humour and it discusses an exceptionally crucial issue that is more and more common in Western society. Couples – most often for material reasons – put off having their first child, which causes a rise in pregnancy-related complications or even the inability to conceive. Infertility has become more common in younger couples, too. The statistics show that in Western societies fertility rate is decreasing, more and more couples are unable to conceive naturally, there are fewer children. Director Nina Šorak, herself an author and a dramaturg, is a part of the generation of women who face the decision: a child or a career. A burning question that as a society we shouldn't even be posing, because the response shouldn’t be “or-or” but rather an emphatic “and” … And yet, time and again it comes up for young women who, on the top of it, can’t even talk about it, because this topic is laced with patriarchal expectations as well as with radical feminist solutions. By using it as a theme – which is very close to the director and at the same time irritates her in a way that promises a very thoughtful socially critical production – we want to lend support for the topic in public discourse.

The problem of infertility is increasingly more present in Western society (statistically, every sixth couple in Slovenia is infertile), and the reason for that is not always the advanced age when deciding on the first child (because of education, career and material safety) but a wider phenomenon that is very little talked about. It is a taboo because it is a painful topic.  

Nina Šorak