Curators’ Statement
Rupture by Slovenian director Jan Krmelj, produced by City Theatre Ljubljana, is based on a text by a British author who, for the purposes of this performance, was given the pseudonym Rrose Sélavy. In an introductory note to the text she emphasises that the production must not be marketed under her real name and that the original title of the text may not be used. This intervention already provides a key to interpreting the text, which explores the fate of two climate activists found dead in their apartment in 2021, yet about whom there is no information on the Internet despite it allegedly being a documentary story. Young director Jan Krmelj, who recently won the Borštnik award for directing this piece, skilfully plays with the manifold meanings and layers of the text while constantly shifting between reality and fiction, personal and political. In the times of post-truth and omnipresent surveillance, this exciting performance lays bare the mechanisms of control and raises questions pivotal to the moment we live in.
About the Performance
“The author of the text states in the introductory note: the production must not be marketed under her name and actual title. This witty and lucid intervention is only an introduction to the author's procedure of playing with reality; it is an invitation to the rupture that is fundamental to theatre: truth and fiction interact through a constant play with our expectations.
This intervention is not occurring by chance: the story we are telling cost both protagonists their lives; even if we see their death as a conspiracy theory, it is hypothetically possible that the information about their lives and work has been deleted from the web - a process often used by companies and countries. Data about our lives is worth more than oil - and it also drives more digital machines and their profits than the motor vehicles do.
Rrose Sélavy is the alter ego of Marcel Duchamp, the founder of conceptual art. The choice of this reference stems from the fascinating association between his insights into the fact that reality is an interplay of contexts and illusions, which we choose to believe in and attribute meaning to, and the processes of the text that generate a kind of performative deepfake. Perhaps, it is in this very act of processing that theatre truly mirrors reality: it is an interplay of our expectations and beliefs, of the taken-for-granted, which the theatrical event inverts. To look at reality as ready-made is a procedure that is crucial to understanding documentary principles - at the same time it is an act of emancipation, since it allows for a radical look at the ideology of the present. Reality is always in the making: it is defined by the choices we make, the way we live and the position in which we are placed.”
Jan Krmelj
The Author
Jan Krmelj (1995, Maribor) is a theatre director, writer and designer. For production of Rrose Sélavy’s Rupture (MGL, 2023), he was awarded the Borštnik award for directing. He recently directed Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Affabulazione (SNT Nova Gorica, 2024), for which he was awarded the Tantadruj award. His other projects include: State of Emergency by Falk Richter (MGL, 2021), The Arsonists by Max Frisch (Slovenian National Theatre Drama Ljubljana, 2021), Antifone (osmo/za, 2019), For the Void: a camera’s lament (Flota, 2019), Utopia: An Archeology of Paradise (SNT Ljubljana, 2016) and others. He is currently developing a diptych of projects, titled Nafta and The State, exploring the dynamics of power, reality and fiction in times of surveillance capitalism.
From the Reviews
“This precise understanding of which elements in the text can and cannot work once they are taken out of their primary context makes the production an accurately and solidly constructed deepfake, which cleverly casts doubt, while at the same time demonstrating on a communicative level how quickly it is possible to create an effective fake news, a story. Above all, it explores when we start to question these potential false narratives, even if they are mediated in a format that we are convinced is always credible, legitimate, and above all documentary.
While the issue of misinformation is at the focus of the play, through the story of two people who have decided to live differently, Rupture also unravels the harsh landscape of the real world, where the line between conspiracy theories and real actions is increasingly blurred. By dissecting the system's response to rebellious individuals who were unwilling to simply accept everything the system demanded of them, the play (and by extension its Slovenian staging) asks what we are willing to do to maintain our personal safety, and what the system is willing to do to ensure that we never achieve it.”
Benjamin Zajc, Delo
