ROUND TABLE: THE THEATRE OF INTIMACY


July 3, Monday at 5 pm
Academy of Drama Art, Trg maršala Tita 5

For the final day of the twentieth Eurokaz, the students of directing and dramaturgy at the Zagreb Academy of Drama Art have organised the round table on the theatre of intimacy, a segment of contemporary stage practice, which, at a conceptual level, underlies this year's programme of the festival. 

The theatre that sets up a rapport with what is termed intimacy disrupts the conventional division into the performers and the audience, creating an illusion of collusion between them. But the levels of intimacy in the theatre can also be defined as the relationship between the performer and the role, the interrelation between the performers in a production, and the closer relationship between the performer and the spectator in the controlled, totalising space of play. Finally, intimacy, which somehow a priori implies trust, affection, and straightforwardness, can also have its aggressive variants and levels.

The discussion will focus on the work of Boris Bakal, John Jasperse (inner and outer gaze and stage space), Saša Božić (theatre of minimal expressiveness), Bojan Jablanovec (shortening the distance between the character in drama/opera and the actor) Béla Pintér (intimate threshold of the actor's impression), and Branko Brezovec (hyper-claustrophobia).

An attempt will be made to render problematic and to valorize the social position of intimacy, as well as to ponder the means offered by the theatre of intimacy in the production of (imaginary and actual) theatre space.