Sex Education II: Fight

Curators’ Statement

One of the three lecture-performances that constitute a distinct part within the festival’s main programme is Sex Education II: Fight by young Slovenian director Tjaša Črnigoj, co-produced by the Mladinsko Theatre, Maska Ljubljana, and City of Women. This lecture-performance explores the struggle for reproductive rights in post-war Yugoslavia, while at the same time informing us about the contemporary context that defines this issue at present day. This is the fifth and final part in the lecture-performance series entitled Sex Education II, comprising pieces Diagnosis, Consentire, Ability, Play and Fight. Each of these five pieces addresses some aspect of sexuality: from painful sexual intercourse, questions about consensual sexual practices, stories of women with disabilities, their sexual maturation and attitude towards their bodies and sexuality, to the topic of unconventional sexual practices and finally Fight, which focuses on reproductive rights in post-war Yugoslavia, implicitly paving the way for discussions on the right to sexual pleasure. In a convincing, empowering, and often humorous manner, two female performers guide us through the exciting history of this struggle and its leader in Slovenia - Vida Tomšič, a participant in the National Liberation Struggle, a national heroine, Slovenian Parliament speaker, president of the Women's Antifascist Front (AFŽ), a revolutionary, and feminist. She was one of the key figures responsible for Yugoslavia inheriting progressive practices regarding reproductive rights, which, although hard-won long ago, unfortunately are not guaranteed even in nominally progressive parts of the world at present day.

About the Performance

The fifth and final part in the lecture-performance series reconstructs the struggle for reproductive rights in Yugoslavia which only implicitly touched upon sexual rights but paved the path for us even being able to talk about sexual pleasure today. This struggle goes back to the time during and after World War II when the so-called epidemic of (backstreet) abortions claimed many women’s lives. At the time, abortion was illegal and carried a prison sentence, and the concept of marital rape did not legally exist. Using the biographies of Vida Tomšič, a partisan and an important Yugoslav politician, and Dr Franc Novak - Luka, a partisan, prominent gynaecologist and Vida Tomšič’s second husband, the artists outline the development of the policy, progressive for that time: the development of the idea of family planning as a human right, and the right to sexual education that goes beyond the biologistic notion of sexuality and focuses on the so-called humane relationships between sexes. At a time when society is being re-traditionalised and policies are re-questioning the right to safe abortion and contraception, the idea that women’s bodies belong to them alone cannot be taken for granted, but instead, as something that must still - and again - be fought for.

The Author

Tjaša Črnigoj is a theatre director (AGRFT) and a philosopher and literary comparativist (UL Faculty of Arts). She is currently in training as a psychodrama psychotherapist (Slovenian Society for Psychodrama). As a theatre director and author she works both on the institutional and independent scene. In recent years, she has directed “Gilgalovanje” (Glej Theatre, 2018), “Satirikonijada” (Moment and AGRFT, 2018), “Smrčuljčica” (SNG Nova Gorica, 2018),” Plesni stroj BUM BAM” (Slovene Youth Theatre and Kino Šiška, 2019), “Bakice” (Savez udruga Molekula, Kolektiv Igralke, KUD Transformator, 2020), and the “WoW Awards” (City of Women, 2021). “Gilgalovanje” was included in the competition programme of the Borštnikovo srečanje festival, “Bakice” was performed at the Young Lions and were invited to  Theatertreffen’s Stückemarkt festival in Berlin. In recent years, she has also worked as a dramaturg and as an assistant director and dramaturg or co-dramaturg with director Tomi Janežič (“Seven Questions about Happiness”, LGL 2020; Beyond Human Power, National Theatre Oslo, 2021). She was in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris as a laureate of the French Institute, for which she also received a scholarship from the Jernej Šugman Fund, and where she completed her residency project, the transdisciplinary laboratory “Through the Eyes of the Others”. She uses a creative approach known as devised theatre, lately she has been focusing particularly on documentary theatre. 

From the Reviews

“In lines with the feminist principle, the theatre narrative constantly intertwines the personal and the political, reminding us how we take the rights which are the result of the long and persistent fight of our sisters for granted. Our journey through The New Post Office spaces, through historical and collective memory, through the experiences of the previous generations of women and through our personal history, tells us the story of how we should not stop and settle for the world in which we currently live in. We can lose everything we have gained in a heartbeat. This is why it is necessary to remember those times, but also to gain an awareness of the current situation. In fact, in Croatia the vast majority of gynecologists exercise the right to conscientious objection and abortions are often performed against payment, and in Slovenia it may happen that gynecology will be excluded from basic health insurance. With its format, Sex Education II reminds us of the activist extent of theatre [...], which finds it function mainly in its ability to change society through aesthetics. All those of us who followed Sex Education II all the way to the end certainly found ourselves at least a tiny bit changed by this feminist school.”

Ana Lorger, Sigledal