All articles by this author

Essen versus Kochen

January 20, 2012 | Comment

Das Publikum benimmt sich im allgemeinen wie Gäste in einem Restaurant, die auf ihr Essen warten. Sie wissen alles, sie kennen alles. Ihre Geschmacksnerven sind außerordentlich sensibel. Sie sind wählerisch und anspruchsvoll.

Ich habe fast mein ganzes Leben im Theater verbracht. Als ich fünf war, sah ich, wie meine Mutter auf der Bühne ermordet wurde – am Ende eines Melodramas, in dem sie die romantische Heldin spielte. Sie täuschte vor, zu sterben, sie imitierte den Tod; sie beschrieb ihn weder, noch sprach sie darüber, sie zeigte ihn. weiterlesen »

Eating Vs. Cooking

January 20, 2012 | Comment

All audiences are like guests in a restaurant, waiting to be served. They know everything, they’ve seen it all. Their taste buds are finely tuned. They are picky and demanding.

I have spent most of my life in the theatre. When I was five, I watched my mother being killed on the stage at the end of a melodrama in which she was the romantic heroine. She simulated death, she imitated it, she didn’t describe it or talk about it, she showed it. weiterlesen »

On Stories

February 8, 2010 | Comment

All living creatures are born with a survival instinct. In order to survive spiders spin webs. In order to survive humans spin stories – about who they are, where they come from and where they are going. For us there is nothing more important than these stories. They are the essence of our life, the backbone of our identity.

Identity is a story about who we are and what we want. In order to survive in the harsh world our stories must be true and have deep insight. A false story can lead us to delusion and a dead-end, even death. As our landscape is ever-changing, our stories are in constant process of readjustment. The story is a map. If it does not correspond to the landscape, we are lost, as in a jungle.

From early childhood we are hungry for stories. Through stories we study life, we prepare for it. We learn about contrasts, contradictions, conflicts – we learn the drama of our lives: Little Red Riding Hood against the wolf, good against evil, love against hate, truth against lies, “what is” against “what seems”, Hamlet against Elsinor.

We have a heartfelt need to understand our story, to see our reflection, to recognise our face, to take courage. We yearn to compare our story with other stories, to examine where they are the same, where similar and where totally different. We crave a master storyteller who will read the runes for us, take off the masks, connect causes and consequences, offer us signposts.

The story is sometimes an unarticulated shriek, sometimes a harmonic melody; sometimes dark and opaque like an ex-ray image, sometimes colourful and merry like a fairytale, sometimes funny or terrible, or indeed sometimes both. But one thing is clear: no culture can survive without a true, powerful and authentic story! Indeed culture IS a true, powerful and authentic story.

Theatre is a mighty workshop and an engine for storytelling. In the theatre the story is not only TOLD, but also SHOWN. It happens here and now, in front of us – it is within our reach. Theatre is a battlefield on which we sharpen the tools of our story, we weave its tapestry, we flex the muscle of our consciousness and our conscientiousness, we adjust the sights of our action, we study life.

Goran Stefanovski