BADco. “Is there a life on stage?” – Exercises in Terraforming

Wednesday, 24. 10. u 21 h, HKD na Sušaku, Strossmayerova 1

BADco.’s new production is an artistic exploration of two connected sets of problems: establishing the minimal conditions for life and the facticity in the theater. Our starting point is the question “What are the consequences of theater’s fictionalization of a reality such as the global environmental crisis?” Therefore our reference horizon spans artistic and media sources ranging from documentary footage of our conquests of outer space, through science-fiction prose and eco-art.

The performance-series starts out from the idea of terraforming, a hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of planet, moon or other body to be similar to those of Earth in order to make it habitable by terrestrial organisms. Conceived as serial, made up of individual episodes, the production’s primary interest is to approach and exhaust the topic of establishing new conditions for life and work on stage, networks of relations, ecosystems, forms of life, communities etc. On the one hand we wish to reflect on a heightened sense of urgency to relate the global environmental crisis, on the other hand our aim is to reflect on the status of the real in theater. While theater’s social and political argumentation increasingly exhibits a passion for reality, for the documentary, for the “real people” on stage, theater always inevitably fictionalizes relations between people and things, facts and illusions. And yet, theater always is a collective act of sorts, always a temporary community with its own set of sociopoetic consequences.

The performance has a serial structure whose segments will be changing from occasion to occasion, from venue to venue. The production has already been presented twice as a work-in-progress, while the Rijeka performance opens a cycle of public showings in theaters. The initial project propositions were developed through a number of workshops and collaborations with artists and experts outside of the collective. The performance will remain after its premiere open through continuous workshops with the audience and yet other creators, resulting in yet other segments that will be added to the serial and permutable structure of the performance. It is adaptable to performance and gallery venues, but also other open-air of enclosed public spaces.

Key words: terraforming, ecomimesis, imitation, atmospheric atunement, biosphere, series, gravitational clocks, choreography as an instrument

Authors: Pravdan Devlahović (performance and choreography), Ivana Ivković (dramaturgy), Ana Kreitmeyer (performance and choreography), Tomislav Medak (dramaturgy), Goran Sergej Pristaš (directing), Nikolina Pristaš (performance and choreography), Zrinka Užbinec (performance and choreography).

Collaborators: Daniel Turing (software), Silvio Vujičić (costume design), Alan Vukelić (light design), Jasmin Dasović (sound design).

Company manager: Lovro Rumiha

Coproducers: BADco. and Domino

Supported by: Zagreb City Council for Education, Culture and Sport; Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia

The production was prepared at the Culture Center Novi Zagreb.

BADco. is a Zagreb-based theatre collective. The collective, a confluence of interests in choreography, dramaturgy and philosophy, is nowadays made up of Pravdan Devlahović, Ivana Ivković, Ana Kreitmeyer, Tomislav Medak, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš, Lovro Rumiha and Zrinka Užbinec. Since it was founded in 2000, it has systematically focused on theatrical and dance performance as a problem-generating rather than problem-solving activity – questioning the established ways of performing, representing and spectating. BADco. approaches the theatrical act as an unstable communicational exchange, a complex imaginary, challenging the spectator to look beyond the homogenising media reality and reclaim her or his freedom of spectating.