The project Via Negativa, an exploration of the basic relations of theatricality, was begun in 2002 by Bojan Jablanovec as director and Nana Milčinski as dramaturge. The subject is seven deadly sins, the exploration of each sin being allotted exactly one year. In the eighth year, Via Negativa will conclude the project by staging Via Nova, a collective performance including all performers and work of the previous seven years.

In its explorations, the Via Negativa project stresses the ethical, rather than the aesthetical aspect. Their work is therefore not based on developing specific acting or performance techniques, focusing instead on the model of creativity that consciously reduces the conditions of production. This is the concept of the dissolution of character's privacy and his (primarily negative) traits, by means of which the actor presents his position, with the deadly sins as basic agents. So far the following parts have been staged, Starting Point: Anger, More (presented at Eurokaz # 18), Incasso(presented at Venice Biennale 2005 as well as More), and Would Would Not, dealing with the sins of anger, gluttony, greed, and lust, respectively.

In More, seven performers throught thirteen scenes are busy solving the riddles of nutrition, revealing their gluttony, or else trying in more or less disingenuous to bypass the subject. Startin Point: Anger is situated at the intersection of various contexts of visual arts. The performers are presented as gallery exhibits during a fifteen minutes long outburst of anger. Incasso explores different strategies enabling individual control over monetary relations. Would Would Not deals in sexual exteriorisation. The erotic end presupposes sexual collusion, but is finally savoured in the absolute solitude and egoism of orgasm.

In its fifth year, Via Negativa takes on sloth. This exploration relies upon an international cast, including the eminent opera singers of the Zagreb National Theatre, and is aimed at investigating the opera, the most traditional (and, therefore, rigid and insensitive to individual reward) form of stage art, and performance art, considered as the form of impatience of the contemporary stage practice. This production, directed by Bojan Jablanovec, is an endeavour, using the devices of performance art, to open up a new context that would enable a productive combination of opera and performance art without destruction, degradation, parasitism or subjection of one form to another.

The fact that creative base, social strata and artistic aims at opera and performance are completely different, presents in that sense even bigger challenge for their scenic fusion which has, as a starting point, four mysterious events in biography of grand opera master Giuseppe Verdi:

• 1842: Great success of the opera Nabucco at the Scala. The famed Hebrew choir in Babylonian captivity, features some Italian singers, then under an Austrian dynasty. Verdi's name begins to be used for political ends: Viva VERDI becomes the acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia.
• 1867: After the opening night of Don Carlos, Bizet declares: “This is no longer an Italian, this is Wagner.” Verdi takes grave offence.
• 1871: Verdi's Aida opens the Suez channel, the greatest engineering undertaking of the 19th century, a means to achieve the geo-strategic goals of European colonial powers. The Maestro is not present, he fears a long sea journey. He ceases to compose for the next 15 years.
• 1901: Verdi is buried without music or singing. That was his last wish.

In 1999, after several years of dodgy experience, Bojan Jablanovec gave up directing in repertory theatre houses and turns to the theatre of exploration. His previous projects, Lenora, Europa – A Little Girl Who Rushed too Much, and Olga Grad vs. Juana Regina, all point towards the methods, contents and references of the seven years of exploration named Via Negativa.