The Bloody Mountain

The performance The Bloody Mountain tells many stories that happened one hundred years ago around the erstwhile Gorica and along the entire Soča river, at the foot of the bloody mountains surrounding it. These are stories about people who rose above their time, and about perfectly ordinary people who, because their Fates so decided, found themselves on the line of the Soča (Isonzo) front which was then open. We’re introduced to the whirlwind of this frontline – the largest mountain battlefield in the world – by Albin Mlakar, the most famous Slovenian officer in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, Alice Shalek, a Viennese journalist who spent four months on the frontline, Countess Lucy Christalnigg, a philanthropist from Gorica and the first civilian victim of World War I on our territory, and the stories of soldiers of different nationalities who fought here. These stories show the cruel fighting from different perspectives and in different forms of stage art, from drama and puppet theatre to theatre of objects, musical, singing and dance theatre, as well as film or video art.  

In The Bloody Mountain, Matjaž Pograjc will build upon his innovations with audio-visual material from the Soča Front, where the actors, on an immense model of the Goriška region, animate miniature puppets, battle sites, shellfire, life in the trenches and encampments and with a combination of acted scenes of stories about the people affected by the war conjure the hopeless slaughter. The stories told create an anti-war satire and, in combination with the miniature people, original objects and arms from the Soča Front, speak about the cruelty and senselessness of war.