Kaspar/ Speechtorture

British director and playwright
Anna Furse is the author of over forty performances. Her creativity has been
strongly influenced by collaboration with Peter Brook in Paris and her work at
the Grotovsky Theatre Laboratory in Poland. At the beginning of the
nineteen-eighties she formed a feminist theatre company, Bloodgroup, with which
she toured Great Britain and Europe. About her new adaptation of the famous
Handke play, in which Kaspar is a woman, and whose english version premiere
will be part of our festival, she writes: “This Speech Torture as Handke calls
it thus becomes a poetic metaphor for the way in which a society recreates
itself through the individual, how the outsider is brought into the values of
dominant culture, how we learn to conform, how power works. Our Kaspar is not a
feminist heroine, nor a mere victim. She is a survivor. She adapts, or she
would probably die. This is not a piece of theatre celebrating women’s
emancipation, nor her potential, nor her struggle for power. It is a
description of (feminine) powerlessness being drawn into a (masculine) system
of power which is unyielding, pitiless and cocksure. The male characters in
this production are not pathological or psychotic. They too have learnt the
system. And they must pass it on.”

Directed and adapted by Anna Furse from a play by Peter Handke;
Slovene translation: Lado Kralj; Language advisor: Mojca Kranjc; Set and
costume design: Irena Pivka; Music: Drago Ivanuša; Lighting design: Miro Janežič; Design: Brane Žalar; Photos: Anja Zavadlav. Performed by Polona
Vetrih, Alojz Svete, Željko Hrs.

Produced by Cankarjev
dom
Main Sponsor:
Imos
Supported
by Gorenje, Droga Portorož, Zavarovalnica Triglav, Britanski svet.