52 Hertz

Somewhere underneath, in the vast depths of the Pacific Ocean, a whale calls every year. A whale nobody has ever seen, but whom we have listened to since 1989. A whale who sings at the frequency, incomprehensible to other whales. Somewhere above us, in the blackness of the Universe pierced by starlight, are the astronauts who have been stopping at the International Space Station since 2000. People that we all dreamt of when we were little. People who, time and again, see the Earth and us in all our smallness. Somewhere among us, a happy family lives. Mum. Dad. A little boy who likes looking at the sky and wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. A girl who loves the sea and will … A family so many of us knows. And in the moment of the greatest loneliness, the greatest sadness, every one of them, and every one of us, faces the image that flushes all the sadness from our lives – a clown. A clown who is at the same time somewhere below and somewhere above. A clown that might be able to brighten up our lives with a trick or two.   

A young Serbian playwright Tijana Grumić, here introduced to the Slovenian audience for the first time, intertwines three narratives in her subtle poetic family drama. Using documentary materials as a starting point, she selects motifs that help her dissect the question of hope in a world filled with confusion. Her characters come to life in their inability to converse, in the transiency of their existence that connects in the surrealist coincidences of fate. It takes us on a journey through the life of a family, stretched between the sea and the universe, between the loneliest whale and the equally lonely astronaut, while a Clown walks the Earth searching for meaning, so that he can put on his red nose once again.   

The project was Mojca Madon’s directorial debut with the SNG Nova Gorica ensemble. She is a director from a younger generation who was educated at the drama and theatre grammar school in Nova Gorica and later graduated with a degree in theatre directing from the UL AGRFT.