For the Welfare of the Nation

The programme has got lost. What about Ščuka?

Cankar’s comical, farcical mirror of the society shows an increasingly grotesque, monstrous, nervous image of the world. Selfishness, corruption, amorality, cynicism and indifference; this unstoppable gambling instinct to have even more, on other people’s account, seems insurmountably pathological. And inhumane.

The horrified segment of the nation is quietly asking itself where is the bit of the true “good” that it is justly entitled to, and, humiliated and insulted, patiently waits for the promised social state guaranteed by the constitution, a state that is in the hands of an invisible Empire of the small group of “blessed psychopaths”.

While the political elite, gathered around Grozd, meticulously takes care of the “programmes”, creates chaos and skilfully lulls the nation to sleep with virtual ideological disputes, it seems that our esteemed individualist and intellectual Ščuka has got lost somewhere, hid, skulked, perhaps excluded himself, taken to the bottle … it doesn’t matter! What matters is that we laugh, are entertained and generally have a good time. That we lack nothing, that wine pours from bottomless barrels and that roasted chickens and sexy chicks abound!
Everything!
For the good of our nation!

Miha Golob and dramaturg Krištof Dovjak have already studied Cankar for the authorial project Cankar (full profile) at the Slovene Permanent Theatre in Trieste (2011) and the staging of The Serfs in our theatre (also 2011). This staging of For the Good of Our Nation is a part of the events celebrating the centenary of the death of this great Slovenian writer, playwright and poet.