MandićCircus

“No, it is not the world that is bad, it is the fiction in which we enclose it that makes it repulsive.”

(MandićCirkus, role no. 64)

MandićCircus was created ten years after the premiere of the performance MandićMachine (25. 06. 2011), which was conceived as a parade of Mandić’s very diverse acting creations (37 roles from the period 1996-2010), as a living museum of theatre and performance aesthetics, in which the quoted characters retained their physical characteristics, original texts, stage language, typical situations, original costumes, props and musical equipment. Although the idea of a sequel to Machine was written into the concept from the very beginning, Circus is not an extension of the series of acting quotations and does not intend to be a sequel to Machine.

MandićCircus starts again and anew from the beginning: it includes all the roles that Marko has created from the beginning of his theatre career (1996) until May 2021 – 91 acting creations. Although Circus also follows the conceptual premise of Machine (the actor as a machine for the production of emotions, as a medium of identification, as a body of fascination), it is not a continuation but a consequence of Mandić as a machine for the production of emotions. Circus transcends the logic of the living museum of performance aesthetics – it is subjectivised history as it is uploaded and fermented in the memory, intimacy, consciousness and body of the maker, actor and performer, who thinks with the body and presence, who manipulates emotions, who elusively offers himself for identification, and who is kept alive by his fascination with theatre.

In Circus, Mandić confronts the actor and the performer, the artist and the imposter, the exhibitionist and the voyeur, the divine and the banal, the pathology of ambition and the misery of success… In doing so, he is as unforgiving of himself as he is of the spectator – both establish and enable a Faustian theatrical consensus which, in its essence, is no different from the ideological apparatus of the state. On the contrary, both the state and the theatre – whether critical or affirmative – are media for the production of ideological fiction. Or as Pascal Rambert says in Love’s End: “… it is not the world that is bad, it is the fiction in which we enclose it that makes it repulsive”. (MandićCircus, role no. 64) This schizophrenic noose, which today tightens around the neck of the individual and slowly erodes the chair on which he stands in the name of community, inclusiveness, political correctness, etc., also gushes out of Mandić’s solo.

In Circus, Mandić egomaniacally appropriates everything he has ever said on stage and in performance – regardless of who wrote it, when and why. Everything he has ever said, performed, acted, screamed, recited, declaimed, sweated, internalised or extracted – all of it has shaped his unique habitus, and all of it erupts on the spectacular surface of Circus. “My dignity is a grimace… Spotlight on me, cunt!” (Wajdi Mouawad Scorched; MandićCircus, role no. 89) The only objective fact that remains as the conceptual basis of the project is Mandić’s theatrical biography, which includes 91 acting creations from 1996 to 2021. MandićCircus strictly follows the chronology of their creation.

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Twenty days after the first performance of Circus on the main stage of the Slovenian National Theatre Drama Ljubljana, its derivative for the small stage of the Mala Drama SNG Drama Ljubljana was performed under the title MandićCircus (dressed). On the small stage, the performance strategy of Circus was changed due to the context and architecture of the space. In this derivative, Marko establishes a different relationship with the audience and also shifts some of the thematic emphases, which is why the title also bears a contextual addition (dressed).

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Peter Uhan

MandićCircus

2022
Solo performance • 105 min

Conceived and devised by — Bojan Jablanovec, Marko Mandić
Text — The performance text includes text fragments from 91 of Mandić’s acting creations from 1996 to 2021, following the chronology of their creation. Selected and edited by Bojan Jablanovec and Marko Mandić
Performer — Marko Mandić
Direction — Bojan Jablanovec
Set design — Matej Stupica
Music — Samo Kutin
Sound design — Eduardo Raon
Video — Matej Stupica, Stella Ivšek, Jure Lavrin
Light design — Bojan Jablanovec, Mojca Sarjaš
Stage workers — Robi Laznik, David Potočnik, Viktor Čuk, Marko Kržič, Tomislav Samardžija, Aleš Anžič
Prompter — Gaja Pöschl
Producer — Špela Trošt
Production — SNG Drama Ljubljana, Via Negativa