Authorial project
The Learned Ladies
Celje People’s Theatre and Ptuj City Theatre
Crew
Authors of the text: creators of the performance
Director: Jernej Lorenci
Dramaturg: Matic Starina
Stage designer: Branko Hojnik
Costume designer: Belinda Radulović
Composer and répétiteur: Branko Rožman
Choreographer and assistant director: Gregor Luštek
Language consultant: Jože Volk
Cast
Philaminte: Pia Zemljič
Armande Minca Lorenci
Belise: Barbara Medvešček
Henriette: Liza Marija Grašič
Clitandre: Primož Vrhovec as guest
Chrysale: Vojko Belšak
Trissotin: Gregor Zorc as guest
Vadius: Andrej Murenc
About the performance
Original title: Učene ženske
Première: 18 September 2015 at SLG Celje and on 12 October at MG Ptuj
110 minutes, no interval
The text of the performance was created on the basis of motives from Molière’s The Learned Ladies translated by Josip Vidmar.
The performance is based on Molière’s comedy The Learned Ladies which presents the gap between spirituality (wisdom) and love/sexuality. Between the "higher sphere" and the earthy, vulgar, old-fashioned. Even today, when the media bombs us with images of violence, with lies, with the "perversity" of human nature, in a time when the crime columns are a pleasure with the morning coffee, the act of love is still taboo. It is absurd that the images and wordplays inviting to sex are everywhere and serve to awaken fictive needs and to sell desire. Sex, fulfilment and satisfaction, though, are nowhere to be found. Foreplay is allowed, the result, in the form of a child and a holy pregnant woman, is idolised. The act, the core, is hidden in the fog of fake moralising. The performance doesn’t rebel against societal norms, but rather plays with them in Molière’s spirit. It is an ode to sensuality, it is foreplay, it is the act and it is the after-act.
At first sight, The Learned Ladies directed by Jernej Lorenci doesn’t have much in common with Molière’s comedy other than the names of the protagonists, the text is, in the vein of an authorial project, not only modernised, but also completely improvised ... Regardless, this is all about detecting identical anomalies which today manifest themselves completely differently, yet in their essence remain almost unchanged. Among these are ostensible knowledge, affectedness, shallow culture, the
idolatry of self-proclaimed artists, the intertwining of relevant and pop contents, the contrast between the conservative and the "avant-garde", tiredness, weariness, exhibitionism ... And the eternally questionable and manipulative strategies of achieving goals on the one hand, and the a priori refusal of culture and art as parasitism; all this is presented as an event, as something that should give an image of a real, unmediated project.
(Peter Rak, Delo)
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