Suddenly, a River

“Suddenly, a River is conceived as a space to speak for those who, because of their fear, will not (or must not) speak publicly about their position – about their deprivileged status and their oppression. In The History of Sexuality 1 – The Will to Knowledge Michel Foucault says: The power speaks and that is the rule. This was the starting point for my text. How to give the power of speech to those whose position in the social hierarchy prevents them from being heard?

Through the lens of historical revisionism, hyperproduction of self-analysis, and self-representation in public spaces I study the phenomena of the colonial past, the experience of life under totalitarian regimes, and the capitalist exploitation of people. The idea of the text is to project the possible picture of humankind’s future by working on our attitude towards the past and our acts in present.

The text was created as a response to the dystopian stories of the famous 20th-century novels, particularly George Orwell’s 1984.”

These are the words of the playwright and dramaturg Dimitrije Kokanov about his new text, which has been the author’s debut on the stage of the SNT Nova Gorica and in front of the Slovenian audience, and was followed by the staging of his play Motion (the 2020 Sterija Award winner for the best new play in Serbia) at the SNT Drama Ljubljana.

The award-winning Serbian director Kokan Mladenović previously directed three plays in Slovenia, all three in Theatre Koper. In the latest production, a co-production of the SNT Nova Gorica and Ptuj City Theatre - the director questions the totalitarianisms of our time – from the state totalitarianism that still clings to the classical steps of propaganda and intimidation of the population to those more modern ones that currently rule us.

Can we, using “digital self-defence”, revolt against the misuse of personal data, or are we, like Wilson Smith in Orwell’s world, simply beyond help?

Kokan Mladenović