Mladinsko Theatre, Ljubljana, premiere 22nd March 2025
Many of us will have experienced a moment in life where we sat with our grandmother, flipping through a photo album as she recounted the stories of each family member. Although the creators of 1974 – Tomi Janežič;s latest production for the European Capital of Culture 2025 Nova Gorica – Gorizia, in a co-production with Slovensko Mladinsko Gledališče – describe their performance as a “transgenerational documentary fiction,” it also feels like a family album – one that allows us to uncover hidden family secrets.
1974 is the first of two pieces of Janežič’s immense dodedekalogija project to be presented in Ljubljana. The continuation, 1980, will follow in September, as the characters humorously reminded the audience by interrupting their own lines. The Dodekalogija consists of twelve productions that explore life in the former Yugoslavia between 1972 and 1983. The unifying element of all twelve plays is the city of Nova Gorica, where the director grew up. His memories of it serve as a foundational thread running through the entire project.
The Ljubljana performance is a brilliantly acted and conceived family saga based on the stories of individual family members from the former Yugoslavia living between Ljubljana and Nova Gorica in a communist housing, where everyone lives next door to each other and the lives of the inhabitants are intertwined. This is the story of grandmothers, mothers, cousins and neighbours that everyone has had or heard of.
We learn about the problems of Matija (Matija Vastl), a former Dachau prisoner who was then wrongly imprisoned for two years in Yugoslavia, his younger partner Nataša (Nataša Keser), who, despite falling in love with another man, stayed with him to raise his children from a previous relationship and become a mother to them, his rebellious son Klemen (Klemen Kovačič) unwilling to do military service and nervous daughter Anja (Anja Novak) and her husband Vito (Vito Weis) – a romantic man suffering from cancer. We also learn the story of Matej (Matej Recer), Vito’s colleague, who cannot forgive himself for not saying goodbye to his friend as he should. The head of this family is the talkative grandmother Damjana (Damjana Černe), who comes from Novi Sad – the city she has never stopped missing. Her brother Robi (Robert Prebil) often drops by to visit his sister’s family and even presents them with a colour TV. The family also includes Stane (Stane Tomazin), the son of Damjana’s brother, who tries to fit in with the family and goes on a trip to faraway countries with Klemen. Their neighbours are student Lina (Lina Akif) helping to raise the sister of Blaž (Blaž Šef) – her roommate – who lost his parents in a car accident.
1974, Mladinsko Theatre, Ljubljana
The performance tells the story of a family whose members’ lives intertwine, revealing their personalities, motivations, and personal experiences. However, these individual stories unfold against the backdrop of major geopolitical and cultural changes. The year 1974 marked the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, Nixon’s resignation from office, and Yugoslavia’s spectacular 9–0 victory over Zaire in a football match. The history of the era constantly accompanies the characters, shaping their daily relationships and personal dilemmas. The play follows the lives of the inhabitants of a small republic of Yugoslavia – Slovenia – during a period of dynamic global transformation. While major world events provide an essential context, the characters are more deeply affected by personal experiences like first love, the loss of loved ones, or renovation of a house. Great history seeps into their everyday lives through the technological advancements of the time, such as the constantly present radio and the newly popular colour television. The director skilfully mixes globalization with local culture, weaving into the performance elements familiar to every Slovenian, such as the famous Gorenje company or the traditional doughnuts from the Trojane town.
In addition, Branko Hojnik’s set design and Marina Sremac’s exquisitely chosen costumes act as time transporters. The auditorium has been arranged in an unconventional way with the audience positioned along the longer wall of the lower hall instead of the usual end-on setup. This makes the playing space of the “apartment” where the scenes take place longer and creates a different spatial dynamic. The scenography features characteristic furniture from the period, including a large black box – once a novelty television. In addition, a staircase has been built in to further increase the spatial possibilities for the actors. The whole set perfectly captures the style of the 1970s and the spirit of the era. The actors change costumes several times, using sets of clothes typical of the time, which helps the audience to immerse themselves in the reality of the era. Each of them wears a wig stylised for those times, and all these elements create a kind of time machine, transporting the audience to the past. The set design, refined down to the smallest detail, faithfully conveys the atmosphere of the title year. Even small elements, such as glasses or hairdressers’ tools, characteristic of that decade, bear witness to its precision.
The actors of the Mladinsko Theatre are hugely talented, which they have proven in many other productions. In this performance however, they really had the opportunity to showcase their skills. The play’s structure – each character’s story is told one after another, allows every actor to create their own monologue. Following the conventions of epic theatre, the actors address the audience, narrating their characters’ stories in the third person and just after that they become their characters and play their role. However, this sense of distance does not diminish the audience’s emotional engagement with the characters’ complex psyches. At times, the actors form a “collective actor’s body” – standing together as if posing for a photograph, attentively listening to another character’s story and following their journey. Sometimes they react collectively to the narratives or even step into them. The actors remain on stage even when they are not actively participating in a scene. This is a tool of post-dramatic theatre, where they never fully step out of character but instead engage with their colleagues’ performances, listening and responding to their stories through their presence.
Janežič, who is also involved in psychotherapy and psychodrama, has an excellent understanding of the human psyche. As a result, the characters are finely crafted and their problems are presented with remarkable sincerity and sensitivity. Particularly noteworthy is the role of Nataša Keser – the young actress skilfully portrayed the struggles of an mature woman with a complicated issues. Blaž Šef’s monologue also stood out – his character, instead of talking about the death of his parents, focused on the grieving process of his grandfather. An extremely moving performance was created by the actress playing Damjana, about an elderly woman who cannot escape her childhood traumas, yet remains a colourful and warm grandmother.
1974, Mladinsko Theatre, Ljubljana
The performance also incorporates humour. The actors frequently break character, stepping out of their roles to, for example, show a holiday photo from Cyprus or promote the next part of the show 1980. A particularly humorous element is a video featuring Carlo Zoratti. The video playfully distances itself from the storyline while simultaneously taking a documentary approach to transport the audience and showcase the locations where the performance takes place. Styled like a documentary, Zoratti guides us through the places as if he were a television presenter. This element also serves as a link to productions from the Dodekalogija project, having previously appeared in the Serbian production.
Although many theatrical tools are used in this production, the most important one, shaping its emotional reception, is nostalgia – perfected by the director and actors. It is nostalgia that can evoke both tears of sadness and joy, bring back memories or give them a new dimension. The play is almost the epitome of nostalgia, balancing between emotion and laughter, guiding the audience through extreme emotions – a moment of crying can instantly be replaced by laughter. It also touches on the nostalgia of falling in love for the first time, especially in the scene where Anja and Vito meet for the first time. It awakens memories of youthful dreams in an amazing concert scene, where the male part of the acting ensemble performs an arrangement of the song Piši mi. The performance weaves personal stories into a tale so real and human that it becomes universal.
An example of this emotional rollercoaster is a scene inspired by a tragic train accident in 1974. At the time, a tram set off from a station in Zagreb. In the play, Klemen was on board it. The crash claimed the lives of 153 people, but he survived. The play recalled this story, emphasising that the victims were found in an embrace. The actors recreated this scene by hugging each other on stage – a simple gesture that carried extraordinary emotional power, due to both its symbolism and the power of the human touch. Immediately afterwards, Matej begins to talk about how they used to travel in trains and sleep in carriages. He jokes that this is what they were trying to recreate in the previous scene. Thus, the heaviness conveyed in this scene changes and turns into a slight smile, allowing us to continue to follow the family’s story.
The atmosphere created by the show makes you want to stay in the world of the 1974 family and never leave the theatre. The performance allows reflection on the year as a carrier of memory and history. Although there are traces of Yugonostalgia in it, the director has rejected the handling of collective memory. There is no typical postcard laurel for Yugoslavia here. It is a tribute to 1974 with all the great and small stories that happened in it and to those who lived through it. Because at the time when the Cocktail album performed by Marko Brecelj was a hit and Nixon resigned from office, there were other stories going on that our grandmothers know about. And we will only know about them if we go through the family albums with them.
For tickets and further information, visit: Mladinsko.com
Further reading: review of 1978
Further reading: review of 1981
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.
