August

August is a boy, a son of a poor young widow who had lost her husband in an accident before the child was born. The mother places all her hopes and dreams and she wishes the world for him. She asks her neighbour, a slightly eccentric old man with geraniums in his window, to be the child’s godfather. The old man offers to fulfil one wish for the son as a christening gift. The mother cannot decide on any of her hidden wishes, the unusual gift confuses her and she doesn’t believe the neighbour, but nevertheless she makes a wish in the last second; namely, that all the people should love her son. But the realisation of this wish in time turns into a curse that nearly kills Augustus. The need for people to love us, acknowledge and admire us is hidden in us all. The story of Augustus tries to show us the real source of love, which is not in external confirmation, but in our own ability to love others, although they might hurt us or we believe they behave incorrectly. 

Hesse’s Augustus is a sensitive fairy tale for adults which, once we read it, we can never really forget. We can only forget is for a short while, but then it finds us again, because it marks us with its depth, its expressiveness and artistic power. Actress Maja Poljanec Nemec once again remembered the story, which she had also read to her children, at the beginning of the complete lockdown of public life, and started to perform it with Miha Nemec, her partner in life and art, and other colleagues, first from their homes and later in the SNG Nova Gorica Studio and in collaboration with Teater na konfini. The production mirrors the emphasised need of the current time – the need for closeness, for authentic contact with others and for ethics, represented in the production by the potted plants adopted from the Refuge for abandoned plants in Velenje, which with their presence establish a world that reaches beyond our everyday thinking.