And the Century Will Blush. The Kocbek Case

The production And the Century Will Blush. The Kocbek Case, based on the biography written by Andrej Inkret, limits the period of Kocbek's life between 1928 and 1952. It is a complex life story, a socialist vesrion of a melodrama about a cofounder of a movement that was at the same time a resistance movement and an attempt to build a state. In anticipation of the newly emerging social and class context, his fellow combatants – his comrades – see and condemn him as a transgression, as something that sticks out, as an ideological and ethical troublemaker, an outsider … The story  becomes more complicated when the protagonist, nominally occupying positions high in the administration (Minister for Slovenia in the Provisional Government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, the Vice-President of the Praesidium of the People’s Assembly of the People’s Republic of Slovenia, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Liberation Front of Slovenia), acts like an artist who uses art to articulate ethical dilemmas of the heroic wartime period – including the questions of settling wartime scores, including the liquidations. The questions are ethical, religious and above all, political. Excellent young actors perform a documentary reconstruction of part of the events from Kocbek's pre-war period, partisanship and comradeship, and the anathema triggered by the collection of short stories Fear and Courage.

The production was created in collaboration with Anton Podbevšek Teater from Novo mesto, the youngest Slovenian professional theatre, whose performative and conceptual strategy is based in a theatre as a form of thought, primarily linked to philosophy, and which has a signature audio-visual image. It was directed by the theatres artistic director Matjaž Berger, who within the broad field of contemporary performing arts, including musical, dance and sporting spectacles, state celebrations and commemorative events has for decades been putting into practice his interdisciplinary background of a philosopher, dramaturg and director.