Invisible Woman

Original title Nevidljiva žena i druge priče
Première 11. november 2022, Anton Podbevšek Teater
The first Slovenian performance

Running time 1 hour 10 minutes. No intermission. 

Director Ivana Djilas
Translators and text adaptation Špela Frlic, Ivana Djilas
Puppet designer and maker Gregor Lorenci
Set and lighting designer Sara Slivnik 
Video designer Vesna Krebs
Costume designer Jelena Proković
Composer Boštjan Gombač
Choreographer Branko Potočan
Language consultant Barbara Rogelj
Assistant costume designer Saša Dragaš

Cast
Špela Frlic
Maja Kunšič
Katja Povše 

When we dream, we never envision ourselves as eighty years old. Old age is never desired. Coming to terms with ageing is difficult, especially for women. Like obesity, old age is often hidden, and the elderly are excluded. And we know that exclusion is inevitable. We strive to prolong our youth by any means possible. We are bombarded with images of people in their fifties who look half their age. Youthfulness has become the new norm. We feel it is our responsibility to achieve it, and it is shameful if we fail. We cover up the signs of ageing with images of happy, calm, vital and cheerful older people. Keeping the reality of growing old hidden. Erased. Non-existent. All of us are young until we are not – and then? We are no more ... And yet: when does one realise they are old? Our bodies exist and move linearly. They grow, wear out and age. Our minds, however, can wander back and forth through time, allowing us to remember. Does this ability to remember prevent us from accepting our physical appearance? Slavenka Drakulić’s Invisible Woman is a string of fragile and thus no less agonising personal anecdotes, revelations and reflections that raise the question of why old and ageing are almost forbidden discussion topics nowadays. Are we becoming invisible as we age? What happens to our bodies and the relationships we share with others, and others’ attitudes towards us? Invisible Woman is a narrative about relationships, about parent-child relationships, about leaving, forgetting, disappearing, oblivion, pain, shame and illness – about our deepest emotions about which we dare not speak.

Director

Ivana Djilas is a theatre director, writer and occasionally a columnist of magazine Mladina. She is, emigrant, artist, woman with carrier, feminist, precariat worker, long time PhD student, owner of master’s degree, one novel The House and second A si lahko vsaj enkrat tiho, real house and a bank loan. Still married for the first time, mother of an adopted black child, and a child with disability, loud, overweight, not using twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tick Took. Makes art and writes about equal rights, stereotypes, and accepting differences. She was born, grow up, and finished schools in Belgrade. She is leaving in Slovenia and working for adults and children in all major Slovenian theatres since 2000. She is brave only when she really must be. 

Producer

The Anton Podbevšek Teater (APT) is the youngest professional Slovenian theatre and the first to be established and to operate in the region of Dolenjska and Bela krajina. It is named after Anton Podbevšek, the first Slovenian avant-garde poet and the 'front man' of the artistic movement that gave rise to the first Slovenian artistic avant-garde called the Novo mesto spring. The name suggests an active ontological direction taken by the theatre. Within the theatrical field, this direction is a path and an exploration within the realm of modern art and is focused on the exploration of performance, scenery, movement and sound connected to the reflection of ethics in the field of the criticism of everyday life ideology.