“My wish is big. i *egret. i deeply *egret it.”
I confess to almighty and to you, brothers and sisters, that I have sinned in thought, word and deed, abandoned many good things and done bad things. I*egret. I deeply *egret it. Therefore, I am asking the holy virgin mary, all the angels and saints, and all of you, to pray for me to God, the heavenly father.
The performance was conceived in the Via Negativa laboratory for contemporary performance art – VN Lab.
Rok Kravanja (b. 1983) is a theatre actor, performer and teacher. He graduated from the Faculty of Pedagogics Maribor (2009) and from the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana (2014). He is performing in both institutional (Slovene National Theatre Drama Ljubljana, City Theatre Ljubljana, Ljubljana Puppet Theatre Cankarjev dom, APT Novo mesto, etc.) as well as independent productions (Via Negativa, Maska, ŠKUC, Bunker, Glej Theatre, Celinka, Moment Maribor, Exponto, etc.). He is also active in the project Performance Under a Microscope by Slovene Theatre Institute and as a mentor to students in project StudentTheatre by Glej Theatre.
Conceived and performed by: Rok Kravanja
Text: Rok Kravanja, Bojan Jablanovec
Artistic direction: Bojan Jablanovec
Set design: Olja Grubić
Expert assistance: Klavdija Janežič
Producer: Špela Trošt
Public relations: Sara Horžen
Photos: Marcandrea
Production: Via Negativa
Financial support: Ministry of Culture of RS and Municipality of Ljubljana
Organised by: Emanat, Via Negativa and Glej Theatre
Premiere: 2 Feb 2019
*OLY *ARY could be a stereotypical socio-critical performance on the position of LGBTQIA+ community and their attitude towards religious institutions. Kravanja skillfully avoids that and presents his experience without moralizing or polemicizing, which is absolutely universal and not bound to a certain marginalised group, about someone who prefers to attend jazz ballet rather than Sunday school but yet an experience simple enough almost all audience members are able to relate to it.
Nika Švab
– Neodvisni
By jangling the chains and making racket around the space, ringing bells and crawling around, by placing himself in the semantic field between the Mary (ceramic one and the one in the first row) and phalluses, and also by announcing that his God is not the author of gruesome thoughts that can be found in the Bible but that his God is theatre, audience, freedom, he creates a crystal clear parable.
Matic Ferlan
– personal website