VR, kimchi and witches: Karolina Bugajak on the 27th edition of Ljubljana’s Mladi Levi Festival, its innovative international programme and the festival as a political space.
At 18 Slomškova Street in Ljubljana, there is a gate between low, post-industrial brick buildings, with heavy machinery visible in the background. This place is called Stara Elektrarna, and it is an important cultural hub in the city. It houses the non-profit organization Bunker Ljubljana which organizes the annual Mladi Levi Festival.
The festival held its 27th edition while Stara Elektrarna was celebrating its 20th birthday. The anniversary was significant in the context of the festival, as the celebration played a major role in both the theme and the atmosphere of this year’s edition. On the last day of Mladi Levi, the seasonal Golden Lightning Awards for outstanding artists, performances, cultural workers, projects, and programs for the 2023/2024 season were presented during a ceremony. In addition to special awards, there was a light and sound performance titled Golden Times, prepared by Špela Frlic, Lea Kukovičič, and Toni Soprano Meneglejte, which was based on the memories of people involved in projects at Stara Elektrarna.
The festival has a long history of inviting international independent theatre creators to Slovenia. It’s one of the few places where the Slovenian audience and theatre community can experience renowned and innovative shows from abroad, featuring globally recognized names in contemporary theatre. The festival has evolved significantly over time, changing its name and format, and ultimately arriving at the form we enjoy today—a multi-day theater event packed with premieres, performances, film screenings, workshops, and debates.
20 years of Stara mestna elektrarna. Photo: Nada Žgank
The main focus of the festival is on showcasing new, foreign, and progressive forms of performative arts and theatre. This year the organizers including performances from countries such as Germany, Belgium, Norway, and Bulgaria. The program featured artists from Rimini Protokoll, the famous German theatre collective, and a production by CAMPO, a renowned Belgian production house. The performances were diverse and were presenting various approaches to theatre containing lecture performances, robots on stage, and quiz-performance. Unfortunately, the program seemed uneven. Some performances introduced creative and innovative pieces; others were less inventive or well-executed. However, I would like to focus on three performances that aligned with the main vision of the Mladi Levi festival and successfully fulfilled its mission.
On food, nature – and witches
Shared Landscapes, Caroline Barneaud, Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll), premiere: 22nd August 2024
The festival opened with Shared Landscapes directed by Caroline Barneaud and Stefan Kaegi. It is an ecological performance consisting of seven different sections, with nature as the main protagonist. Each participant is equipped with wireless headphones—a technological medium that allows them to experience and listen to the shared landscape and forest where all the segments take place.
This project is designed for travel and presentation in various countries. It is not the first of its kind created by the Rimini Protokoll team. Previously, the theatre group built the traveling truck-theatre Cargo-X and produced DO’s & DON’Ts, a piece co-created by local artists in each city where it was performed. A similar approach was used in the 100% City project, which told the story of a city and was adapted to each new location, ultimately being produced in more than 35 cities. In Shared Landscapes some content remains unchanged, but the initial part is always created by a local director. For the Slovenian premiere, this was Tjaša Črnigoj. Shared Landscapes begins on the edge of the forest, where the audience is asked to lie down on blankets provided to them and listen to material prepared by the Slovenian director in collaboration with Stefan Kaegi. This material includes various perspectives on the forest. We can for example get to know the perspective of a child, a meteorologist, a forester, or a psychoanalyst. Each offers their own knowledge, history, and view of the place we are in.
The subsequent sections alternately present perspectives on nature and practices that allow participants to connect with it, reflect on it, and engage with it through the medium of theatre. Participants could listen to a concert in the forest that enhanced the sense of nature’s majesty. There was also a segment offering the perspective of a person with a disability on nature and the challenges it sometimes presents. One part included a VR visualization, while another was a New Age-style practice of creating community in the forest through performing small tasks heard through the headphones: pick up the stick and touch the tree, pretend that you are a tree, or hold each other’s hands and create a circle around the tree. The final scene offers the opportunity to listen to nature itself through a large screen and speakers. Nature’s voice, reminiscent of Gollum’s, was scary while reminding us that we have forgotten her despite her presence with us since the beginning of our lives and the entire history of humanity.
Even though I refer to it as a New Age, hippie performance, I don’t see that as a negative thing. It demonstrates that performative arts are embracing another genuine ecological turn. In the past, the only way to achieve this was through Grotowski-style theatre, which involved performing in forests and seeking the essence of ritual. While remnants of this approach still exist, they often come across as more humorous than authentic, as seen with Shared Landscapes. Today’s activist and ecological theatre not only incorporates elements like stones and sticks (as my professor once referred to Grotowski’s theatre) but also embraces technology, which can help in appreciating nature. This piece shifted the meaning of technology. Instead of seeing it as something that makes us more distant from nature, it brought us closer. The quest for ecology and nature in theatre didn’t end in the 70s; it continues today with new tools and forms.
Susie Wang’s The Hum. Photo: Alette Schei Rorvik/
The Hum, Susie Wang, premiere: 12nd October 2017
The most intriguing offer at the festival was The Hum, made by the Norwegian theatre group called Susie Wang, which includes Trine Falch, Martin Langlie, Mona Solhaug, and Bo Krister Wallström. The performance can be described as visual, feminist thriller theater. A genre typically associated with films and reserved for the camera was skillfully adapted for the stage.
The lighting frame, which is usually located at the ceiling of a theatre stage, was positioned just above the ground this time. Blue fabric of various shades was draped over it, imitating the ocean. The set resembled a beach, transporting the audience into a vacation-like atmosphere. However, strange things happen in this idyllic setting. A couple suspiciously confuses the beaches, the husband disappears to get his wife a Coke, and while she is left alone, she finds an egg, which she is magically forced to incubate. A new female character, who also seems lost—or at least pretends to be—adds to the mysterious atmosphere. Over time, the new woman shows her other, darker side; she drinks body lotion, we notice her long nails and blackened teeth. At a certain point, it becomes clear that she is a witch and that she is the one who brought the couple to the beach. She establishes an erotic connection with the woman incubating the egg, while talking about how women are caring creatures. The witch also creates a ritual circle, leading to a struggle in which both women fall into a hole beneath the stage. First, the woman emerges from the hole, followed by the witch in a new form: a naked woman with long grey hair and claws, who embraces the other woman before disappearing into the ocean. In the end, the husband comes back, seemingly having gone through his own adventure by looking at his destroyed shorts and bloody body. At the end the couple looks at the sunset together, sipping their Coke. Finito.
The greatest strengths of the performance are its visual quality, creativity, and innovation. The aforementioned egg moves across the stage on its own, as does the one piece of clothing forming the ritual circle. The fabric draped on the rig works wonderfully on the imagination, imitating the ocean. The visual aspect is closely tied to the cinematic nature of the performance. The music is created by a musician on the side of the stage, playing the drums, building tension and adding character to individual scenes, much like in films. The style of acting and the slow introduction of strange behaviours and elements that don’t belong to the real world also resemble techniques known from horror or thriller films. Another major plus for the performance is its feminist dimension. The woman as the witch, who despite her evil and hellish power, feels the need to care for and incubate the egg. The show seems to follow a popular slogan: “We are the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn.”
Jaha Koo’s Haribo Kimchi. Photo: Bea Borgers
Haribo Kimchi, Jaha Koo, 2024
Food is experiencing a renaissance nowadays, with more and more people following popular restaurants on social media and creating aesthetically pleasing photos of daily food. The TV series The Bear was a big success, and before it, there were films about food such as Julie and Julia, Menu, or Little Forest: Summer/Autumn . Foodcore and the aestheticization of food have not remained solely on television screens, Instagram, and TikTok. They have also made their way into theatre.
The last film I mentioned is a Japanese production about a woman who reconnects with her tradition, country, and family through preparing meals in a traditional Japanese manner. A similar theme, but with a focus on the author’s identity and culture – South Korea – , is explored in Jaha Koo’s performance Haribo Kimchi, produced at CAMPO. In this performance, the author discusses the relationship and history of food in his home country, with the main focus on the importance and meaning of national food for emigrants.
Food stand is situated on the stage. On both sides of the cooking station are two large screens showing visualizations of Korean cities, providing a sense of culture and place. At the beginning of the show, Jaha invites people from the audience to sit at a table at his stand. He offers them Korean meals while performing and cooking for them. Throughout the entire performance, the performer shares stories about various Korean dishes along with personal anecdotes from his own life. He chose the dishes which had an impact on him as an emigrant and which carries meaning for him. These dishes serve as a starting point for conversations about diaspora, longing for home, and reconnecting with one’s identity as an immigrant through food.
Jaha Koo is not the only character in the performance. On the side screens, we see a singing Haribo bear as a symbol of German influence into his eating habits and changing identity. There is also a snail that Jaha once found in a pack of kimchi and who sings touching poem about fermented cabbage. After telling a story about an eel, a robotic eel slithers onto the stage singing a song.
Haribo Kimchi is another great example of a performance that uses an innovative form to tell a personal story while addressing broader topics like migration and identity. It demonstrates how live cooking can be creatively integrated into theatre. Robots and screen visualization offer excellent solutions for a one-actor performance, adding a new dimension and moving theatre into the realm of new media.
The Mladi Levi Festival and the Slovenian theatre scene
Slovenia has many good festivals showcasing the national scene. However, what it lacks is much in the way of international performances. There are a few places where you can see performances directed by well-known names from abroad, but it’s not just about the popularity of these names; it’s about exposure to quality and innovation. In a city like Ljubljana, where most theatres focus on conventional drama, Mladi Levi is a breath of fresh air, especially for Slovenian creators, offering them new sources of inspiration.
Tickets for the events cost only 1 euro, making the festival accessible for everyone. Besides accessibility, organizers also value inclusivity which was visible during the closing ceremony. For the first time in my life, I saw the entire crew being appreciated. We not only clapped for the technical team, but they were also invited on stage. The award for the best worker was given to the caretaker of the venue – Marjeta Pogačnik. Such a gesture demonstrates the democratic and human aspect of the festival, which positively influences its atmosphere and challenges the toxic hierarchy often seen in many theatres and art centres which so often focus on the figure of the director.
Art and theatre are political. The same applies to festivals. Mladi Levi is political in the sense that it is activist and engaged in local, social, and minority issues. The strong social nature is evident in the debates on critical topics organized during the event, as well as in the themes of the performances chosen for the program like the ones described above. The organizers then consciously take on an activist role in the city and country by developing the Slovenian theatre landscape and by educating audiences on crucial topics. The local and social aspect is also reflected in the warm communication, the friendly team, and the small group of regular attendees whose faces become familiar over the course of the festival. It creates a cosy atmosphere full of people wanting to explore new forms of theatre. All of these elements, in my view, are essential for fostering and advancing the theatre scene in any city.
For more information, visit: Bunker.si
Further reading: Interview with Tjaša Črnigoj: “Women’s sexual pleasure is taboo in our society”
Further reading: interview with Lea Kukovičič: “We set out to save men from the patriarchy”
Further reading: The 25th Mladi Levi Festival: independent, international, optimistic
Karolina Bugajak is a theater critic from Poland, currently living in Ljubljana. She studied culture and contemporary art at the University of Lodz. The title of her master's thesis was "Theatricality and Exaggeration. Camp aesthetics as a strategy for creating new identities in the plays of Grzegorz Jaremko". Her main theatrical interests include topics such as institutional criticism, the representation of marginalized groups in plays, and most recently the theater of the former Yugoslav states.
