Five Kinds of Silence

Five Kinds of Silence by the English playwright Shelagh Stephenson opens in the bathroom, where a woman and her two adult daughters lean over the body of their murdered husband and father. The production uses this moment as a starting point for an actual reconstruction and a documentary debate about intimate partnership violence. The project, created in collaboration with experts in the fields of family violence, police, judiciary, prosecution, psychiatry, social services, SOS telephone and women’s shelter Varna hiša, uses the fictional story of Mary and her daughters Susan and Janet and factual data and fragments of dialogue to build an intimate history of a family and at the same time reveals the mercilessness of the social and legal system that enables this violence.

The production was directed by Maša Pelko, a prominent member of the youngest generation of Slovenian directors.

Worldwide, 33% of women over the age of 15 have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, and 22% of women were subjected to physical and/or sexual violence from their partner, while in an intimate relationship. In 90.8% of the perpetrators of violence are men. In Slovenia, 56.6% of all women  experienced one of the forms of violence. The data from the Slovenian police show that during the time of the »corona crisis« partner and family violence increased by 12.9 %. Every seven minutes, a woman is murdered in the world as a victim of intimate partnership violence.

Maša Pelko and Tereza Gregorič