DRUGAJANJE 2014
The times we live in require courage! Not headless bumping into problems, require people who are capable of contemplation, insight and only then comes the turn for courage in action. Especially the City of Maribor witnessed the fact that sometimes revolt is important but an even more important part follows – the establishment of the new after the revolt itself! Young people have to be involved in decision-making processes and art is one way of empowering the youth, to enter first into the arena of contemplation and then action. This year’s program is poking the youth. Drugajanje 2014 will be almost like “In-yer-face theatre”, where young people will not only be invited but drawn to participation and contemplation. Engagement is the key word of all performances hosted and they will also be accompanied by artist talks.
Two workshops will be dedicated to acquisition of new knowledge, some from the past and other from the present. This year Drugajanje will be accompanied by the project Theatre Playground, a program focus for primary schools. Thus the Drugajanje tradition will be continued which makes contemporary engaged art accessible to the youth. The invitation to participate in the creating processes, not being merely consumers of art, will hopefully contribute to the acquisition of knowledge, ideas and courage for change.
more about drugajanje
Since 2001 Bunker is organizing Drugajanje festival in Maribor. It started on the initiative of the headmaster of a high school II. gimnazija Maribor Ivan Lorenčič and it grew into a permanent and fruitful partnership between Bunker and the school and also built a very successful bridge between Ljubljana, the capitol of Slovenia and Maribor, the second largest city in Slovenia.
Drugajanje is a concentrated short contemporary arts festival organized in collaboration with secondary school in Maribor at their theatre and at other venues in Maribor. The focus is on performing arts, especially contemporary theatre and dance. The festival was founded with the purpose of bringing the young generation and the whole city some fresh and vibrant performance art. At the same time it enables Slovene performances to spread out from Ljubljana, where most of the national contemporary scene is being produced.
Contrary to the belief that special performances for the youth should be produced for the youth, Drugajanje has always had a strong artistic contemporary profile and the program through the years always consisted of state-of-the-art contemporary theater and dance.
In the last years the festival has developed from a Slovene focused to internationally focused festival in terms of geographical distribution and has also had a shift in the format: from merely presenting finished works of art to youth and other inhabitants of Maribor we have started developing more process oriented festivals that strongly takes into consideration the festival’s home: Maribor.
