Slowenisches Kulturinformationszentrum in Österreich (SKICA): Since when have you operated your theater and what is the common thread of your repertoire?

Barbara Novakovič Kolenc: Muzeum Theatre was founded as early as 1993 as a conceptual project that envisioned a framework of six authorial performances that explored five separate spheres of art and the relations between them: visual arts, architecture (space-time), drama (history), music (sound), movement (gesture). The performances were staged on various locations: first in the film studio (a church space) then in SNG Drama Ljubljana and Mladinsko Theatre, finally on the stage of the Ljubljana opera house.

A non-profit organisation Muzeum, Institute of Art Production, Mediation and Publishing (1995) was promoting the first research projects of young authors who entered theatre with various backgrounds, architecture, visual arts, dance, as well as theatre and visual theory. Since 2000 Muzeum has participated in numerous international projects, since 2004 also in three European projects. During the two decades that followed Muzeum produced forty-four events devoted to the exploration of theatrical art as well as the relations and borders between individual spheres of arts and humanities.

What are you telling in this theater performance?

The performance Library of Letters: Walk through the letters features some fragments from the letters by Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci and a public record related to Paolo Veronese. The texts from the Renaissance period reflect individual passions, fears and limitations, nightmares and desire to achieve the freedom of expression.
The spirit of the artists is intertwined with the thoughts of the Russian immigrant in quest for her memories and her own self, recording the power of writing and its vulnerability through the symbols, the textual alleys, gardens and clouds. The space of a letter and painting, the private and public, the profane and sacral, are set on stage in all its materiality and relativity. The theatre can generate abstraction of truth.

What kind of audiences do you want to obtain?

Muzeum productions with their concept of interdisciplinary research have always brought together mixed public: theatre goers, contemporary dance audiences as well as gallery visitors or students of humanities. Festival public has been of great importance because of its versatility, feed-back was sparkling, natural, unbiased, unpredictable, probably because actually festival bring to people unexpected encounters opening up a different perception of art forms.

What do you mean by the international roaming?

International dimension is actually inscribed into the project in the process of conceiving it, during its first production stage. International cooperation and networking that wipe out the borders of the local as well as national is a vehicle for the development of new concepts. Each touring brings new experience to all members of the team, to director, actors as well as to set , light or sound designer, as all of them have to work on the »site-specific« performance that is actually a new work of art.

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