Nataša Govedić: In Memoriam: Eurokaz(i)
Even accomplishment of the metaphor of sweat as a proof of work didn’t succeed to argue audience’s prejudice that the “quality” art is only the one which has its result in “torture”. It is obvious that the audience too has its own system of discriminating artists. (Zarez Zagreb, 4 July 2009)
Irmela Kästner: Self-Irony – A Sweaty Business
“Lovers of Italian opera would perhaps be shocked. Not that there was bad singing on stage, but some might understand the following vision as frivolous or as a violation of the established seriousness of opera: Nabucco, the chorus of slaves, the singers dressed in black and among them a tipsy clown rummaging for beer in a plastic bag. The Slovenian group Via Negativa takes art very seriously, if not deadly serious. So seriously that the art they present on stage goes beyond extreme toward absurdity and as such can no longer exist.” (Die Welt Hamburg, 10. 3. 2007)
Nataša Govedić: Under the sign of creativeness and self-criticism
“Theatre is here presented as a sweat machine which, despite the effort of Barbara Matijević who dances constantly for ninety minutes and collects drops of physical effort from her body, cannot be transfused into the glass. […] Different extractions in this performance are in polemic with tradition of performance, but also with numerous conservative prejudices about artistic vocation. Viva Negativa, by my opinion is an excellent play, full of self-criticism and critique of different ‘truisms’ in theatre.” (Novi list Zagreb 3. 7. 2006)
Igor Ružić: 20th Eurokaz, second report
“The encounter of performance and opera did not result exactly with a rebellion in Croatian National Theatre, as it might have been expected and coveted. Therefore cooperation happened, for the first time and possibly the last for the next twenty years, between two so separate and distant performative models, which also share equally hermetic character. Via Negativa managed to create one of the most sensible and clever, and in that sense also the most entertaining performances in their work and which the audience in Zagreb could see at Eurokaz. Further more, among ten individual statements of each group member, only few of them are on the edge of banality, while others are soul-stirring life confessions, or lucid comments of scenic and other reality, that in context of Croatian National Theatre attain very special and even worthier gilt.” (Radio 101 Zagreb, 3.7.2006)
Jasen Boko: Urine & sweat
“Performance, confronting classical beauty of Verdi’s arias to radical view on the art of theatre, puts the ironical touch on everything starting with the concept of Eurokaz and all along to the personal performance [...]. Irony, which constantly includes auto-irony, is the one that enables exaggerations to become entertaining. Honestly, not all the performers were naked and pissed on the scene, but their glasses, they toasted with opera singers in Verdi’s arias, were filled with sweat, urine, and even gastric contents. But, corporal juices have dramaturgic purpose here and ten performers from several countries, orchestrated by Bojan Jablanovec, accomplished bright and attractive performance, cross feature of Pirandello’s view on the theatre illusion and of contemporary body art.” (Slobodna Dalmacija Split, 3. 7. 2006)
Bojan Munjin: Personal statement
“Viva Verdi is actually extremely painful and honest actors’ expression in their own name on suffering and meaning of artistic work. While in the background we watched the opera ensemble of Croatian National Theatre singing aria from Nabucco, actors were undressing till the end out of protest, they denuded till bareness and drown in the brooks of sweat to demonstrate that art, as every other job, happens between ideals and disappointments and between love and extractions. Play Viva Verdi is not vulgar but radically honest performance where actors on the scene have taken out their hart and stomach to demonstrate the simple expression on heaviness.” (Scena Novi Sad, XLII/3, July-Sept. 2006)
Helena Braut: Shocking and controversial
“Via Negativa fairly justified their emersion and, although consternated the audience, showed exceptional theatrical string, energy, invention, imagination, demonstrating without restraints where the European theatre goes. […] The spontaneity of performers, their urge to expose to the audience their hidden biographies, irony and self-irony towards theatrical practice in the artificial, hermetic institution that avariciously admits “weirdoes”, makes part of the entire aesthetics of this, certainly most interesting group in region.” (Vjesnik Zagreb, 3. 7. 2006)
Zrinka Radić: 20th Eurokaz. Opposites that do (not) attract
“Viva Verdi was one of the most distinctive creations of Eurokaz Jubilee. Not because of the bareness, urinating or vomiting on the scene of the National theatre that consternated audience, for who knows how many times, recalling the time when some other physical extractions almost provoked the death of Eurokaz. But because Via Negativa managed to connect the incompatible; Verdi and his opera with the proscribed tightness with the physical and ideological unyielding of the performance. All that through intelligent, self-ironic critique of their and our ‘place in the world’ with authentic images of professional Croatian National Theatre choir.” (Večernji list Zagreb, July 2006)
Gregor Butala: Performance that “never happened”
“This type of fusion of opera and performance might appear slightly bizarre at first glance, but one has to admit that it is extremely effective: the contrast between the classical beauty of the opera and uncompromising intimate exposition of the performers only arguments the provocativeness of the latter and adds meaning. Shocking? Depends on the viewer. Worthy of seeing? More than that: it is a must!” (Dnevnik Ljubljana, 22. 9. 2006)
Rok Vevar: It must be said – a quality program
“Viva Verdi uses a very literal approach to concentrate on the problem of artistic “expression” as a manifestation of knowledge, skills and excellence. The actors want to materialize their non-material work through bodily expression, while others strive to shift their work towards the register of the useful. Jablanovec brings in a contrast, that is, the unproblematic skill of opera singing, from which different time contexts have not exacted any essential changes. The questions that arise are: “Is skill in theatre a matter of laziness or of perseverance? Is problematization of the politics of viewing and staging a matter of laziness or of perseverance? Is the decision to “accomplish” the performance in front of the public a matter of laziness or of perseverance?” Viva Verdi is by all means one of the more powerful performances in the Via Negativa project to date.” (Večer Maribor, 26. 9. 2006)