DON JUAN. WHO? / DON JUAN. KDO?

Download the PDF: DON JUAN WHO?

Conceived and directed by Anna Furse

A co-production between Athletes of the Heart (Artistic Director: Anna Furse www.athletesoftheheart.org ) and Mladinsko Theatre, Ljubljana, Slovenia (www.mladinsko.com) with Damjana Černe, Željko Hrs, Mare Mlačnik, Tanya Myers, Matej Recer, Giovanna Rogante, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie.

This unique European partnership project is dealing with totally contemporary subject matter using up-to- the-m inute technology. It confronts the thorny subject of male/female relationships in today’s globalised culture, plunging into the unlikely intimacy of cyberspa ce to make live theatre. It works from the potential the web offers for private li ves to become public, for exhibitionism, confessional correspondence and masquerade. It asks: Where are we now? Is there still a battlefield in the war of the sexes? What do we still fight about? Are we changing? Into what? Where is Don Juan now? Is he a she? Whats going on here in the post-feminist landscape? 

commitment to theatrical research, each coincidentally inspired by the example of Peter Brook. Mladinsko's ensemble of actors, still working today from a Communist cultural employment model with annual salaries and permanent c ontracts, contribute intellectually and artistically to the creation of new works and conduct intensive literary and practical research over many months on each new project. Whilst less funded and conducted over shorter periods, Furse also encourages the performer to be an active intellectual and artistic collaborator in theatrical creation. In the Don Juan Project such habits are being stretched in new directions, using new technology alongside physical/devising theatre methodologies. The inventive and original approach to the research and developmen t of a dramaturgy – using cyberspace as a research studio – is an experiment in how to harness technology to artistic synergy. 

The co-production has involved a core company of four Mladinsko/three UK researcher-performers, and one Dramaturg/performer. Prior to the research in rehearsals they met and played in a specially designed CyberStudio in directed research, improvisation, role play for one year on a weekly basis. They interrogated the icon of Don Juan as manifest in classical and modern drama, poetry, opera, film as a springboard, and explore gender theory, psychobabble, sex manuals, self-help, popular culture and their own lives. 

“DON JUAN.WHO?/DON JUAN.KDO?
Is about men… is about men and women… is about fear of intimacy… is about seduction… is about violence… is about crisis… is about sex and power… is about love. “ (publicity leaflet)
A poetic, complex, simple, intelligently directed performance, bounding in eroticism and desire… Don Juan. Who? is a unique piece.

The production previewed in Ljubljana and at the Shunt Vaults in 2007. UK performances at Riverside Studios in 2008 are being presented in association with FeEAST.