Jaša Koceli - First 5 Years

KOCELI director designer

Jaša Koceli is a theatre director based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is known for his innovative creative language and interdisciplinary approach in theatre. Koceli is connecting performing arts with strong visual expression in space and costume design, lighting and screening. Together with his artistic team Koceli never ceases to challenge the conventional theatre forms and enriching them with the voice of the new generation.

In the last five years Jaša Koceli has directed thirteen performances in the most of Slovenian institutional theatres. He has also participated in creation and postproduction of the internationally acclaimed performances, including the last finished masterpiece of Tomaž Pandur - Goethe’s Faust in SNT Drama Ljubljana, which performed all around the world on 3 continents.

His latest performance The Trojan Women (Euripides) at the Slovenian

National Theatre Nova Gorica was selected for the International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama in Cyprus in June 2019. This year Koceli is directing four different performances in Slovenia and Hungary, including The Magic Flute in the Slovenian National Opera Ljubljana, one of the biggest performances of the 2019 repertoires in Slovenia.

This booklet is a short visual introduction to the works that JaĹĄa Koceli created with his artistic team from 2013 to 2018. They have been working together since their formative years at Academy of theatre, radio, film and television in Slovenia. Welcome to their world of theatrical imagery, symbolism and lights.

JaĹĄa Koceli Production Team

Since the beginning of his professional path as a theatre director, Jaša Koceli has been interested in extremely diverse topics and forms of theatre: from devised theatre to contemporary opera, youth theatre and ancient Greek drama. He has staged performances of all genres, based on almost every kind of (dramatic) literature: the classics (The Trojan Women by Euripides), contemporary texts (e.g. Pomona by Alistair McDowall), film scripts, adapted for theatre (Breathless. Now, based on the French New Wave classic À bout de souffle by JeanLuc Godard), devised work. Deriving his stage material from various kinds of source material that often does not belong to what is traditionally considered as dramatic literature, his understanding of theatre is essentially contemporary.

Koceli started his career as a director in the longest-running Slovenian independent theatre Glej with the performance No there is no shore, a devised theatre piece based on the work of Slovenian expressionist poet Miran Jarc. His first institutional performance (opening in 2013 in the Ljubljana City Theatre) is similarly far from traditionally dramatic literature. A leap into the uncertain, exciting abyss of devised theatre, the performance Cafe Dada is based on various texts from the dada avante-garde movement, such as Hugo Ball’s Karawanne, Jean Arp’s Kaspar is dead and Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate. The concept being a combination of performative acts, based on real events and works of the early dada, with the cast stepping into the shoes of Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, Marcel

Janco and Emmy Hennings, Cafe Dada reproduces an evening in the dadaists’ 1916 meeting place, the Zürich nightclub Cabaret Voltaire. A similarly unusual and compelling devised theatre event is Koceli’s 2014 trilogy Silent City, the result of his year as the resident director in the Glej Theatre.

Silent City consists of three separate theatre performances (one of them site-specific), for which the source texts were commissioned by Koceli from young Slovenian, British, German, Spanish, Austrian and French poets, all of the creative team and cast being under the age of thirty. Having brought together works by young writers of different countries of Europe, yet at the same time being an essentially Ljubljana-rooted performance, Silent City remains one of the most internationally ambitious theatre projects in Slovenia of late.

Even when working with traditionally written drama, Koceli’s interest is in adaptation, striving for the greatest possible relevance and modernization without changing the essential qualities and message of the original. As the sole author or coauthor, Koceli has produced several adaptations of works as different as the Slovenian classic, An Event in the Town of Goga by expressionist Slavko Grum, Godard’s Breathless, Euripides’ The Trojan Women and German youth theatre playwright Lutz Hübner’s Nellie Goodbye.

Koceli’s theatre interest lies in the project-oriented, whether this means a new adaptation, translation or brand new plays. Apart from striving to work on and commission new texts of all

genres (e.g. the poetry-based Silent City, Eva Mahkovic’s teenage girly dramedy Little Queens, upcoming Psycho by Slovenian novelist Davorin Lenko, loosely based on Bret Easton Elli’s American Psycho, or Svetlana Slapšak opera libretto Julka and Janez), he is also keen on staging performances based on other performative means: especially dance and movement. In the movement based performances (contemporary ballet performance Heartmeat, poetic dance performance Lesbos, inspired by Sappho’s poetry, or the upcoming dance solo Boys will be boys) the fascination with the human body and its abilities is combined with distinctive visual aesthetics, its most prominent characteristic being complex lighting concepts.

An important aspect of Koceli’s theatre poetics is orientation towards what is relevant in the present, what is relevant in this very moment: for his version of The Trojan Women (premiered in 2018 in the Slovenian National Theatre Nova Gorica) Koceli has commissioned poetry from the contemporary Palestinian poetess Farah Chamma, the poetess (whose work is very much affected by the Middle East war zone) herself also present onstage as a performer. Sometimes the theatre worlds that interest him collide: thus the performance The Trojan Women is a combination of a political play and a poetic performance, the poetess Chamma sharing the stage with professional and amateur chorus and a professional dancer.

In his staging of Slapšak’s contemporary opera Julka and Janez, the two opera soloists are joined onstage by a ballet dancer, complementing the audio performance narrative in movement.

Last but not least, Koceli’s theatre work is also very much the voice of a generation. In addition to often working with young playwrights and poets, Koceli has cooperated with a permanent creative team of the same generation since the very start of his theatre career. In the years of their cooperation, the team has developed a significant and recognisable aesthetics in both theatre form and themes of interest.

Eva Mahkovic Dramaturg at the Ljubljana City Theatre

theatre director 2018 2017

Euripides, THE TROJAN WOMEN, Slovenian National Theatre Nova Gorica Radovan Gobec, THE HOP PRINCESS, ZKŠT Žalec Eva Mahkovic, LITTLE QUEENS, Ljubljana Puppet Theatre Jan Gorjanc, JULKA & JANEZ, Slovenian National Opera Ljubljana

2016

Alistair McDowall, POMONA, Slovenian National Theatre Drama Ljubljana Lutz Hübner, NELLIE GOODBYE, Ljubljana Puppet Theatre

2015 Sappho,

LESBOS, BiTeater

Slavko Grum, AN EVENT IN THE TOWN OF GOGA, Anton Podbevšek Theatre Novo mesto and Bunker Ljubljana

2014

Jaša Koceli & others, BREATHLESS: NOW, Ljubljana City Theatre Jaša Koceli & others, WE ARE COMING!, Glej Theatre Jaša Koceli & others, ME ME ME ME, Glej Theatre

2013

Jaša Koceli & others, CAFÉ DADA, Ljubljana City Theatre Miran Jarc & Jaša Koceli, NO THERE IS NO SHORE, Glej Theatre

THE TROJAN WOMEN

The grief that is unbearable and will never get old.

POMONA

When you fall into the underworld, the city chews you like trash.

JULKA & JANEZ

The time of letters and imagination.

AN EVENT IN THE TOWN OF GOGA

In this city the walls are spinning into nothingness.

NELLIE GOODBYE

With the band crew anything is possible.

LITTLE QUEENS

Girls, we’re going to stay like this forever!

Homecoming should just be fun.

HOP PRINCESS

BREATHLESS: NOW

Jean-Luc Godard is our pop philosophy.

CAFÉ DADA

Welcome to the bar of the crazy!

WE ARE COMING!

There is no generation anymore, they say.

Me, I and myself are looking for some friends.

ME ME ME ME

LESBOS

Love me when I write a poem.

My words are drowning me.

NO THERE IS NO SHORE

light designer 2018 2017

2015

DREAMHUNTERS, Director: Livija Pandur, National Theatre in Belgrade

SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS, Director: Tomaž Pandur, Slovenian National Theatre Ballet Ljubljana

HEARTMEAT, Choreographers: Gregor Luštek & Rosana Hribar, Slovenian National Theatre Ballet Ljubljana

DREAMHUNTERS

SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS

HEARTMEAT

FREQUENT MEMBERS OF JAŠA’S ARTISTIC TEAM: set designer costume designer composer choreographer dramaturg photographer

DARJAN MIHAJLOVIĆ CERAR BRANKA PAVLIČ MIHA PETRIC TAJDA PODOBNIK EVA MAHKOVIC MANKICA KRANJEC

PHOTOS BY: MANKICA KRANJEC The Hop Princess, The Trojan Women, Little Queens, Pomona, An Event In The Town Of Goga, Breathless: Now, We are coming!, Me Me Me Me, Jaša‘s portraits

SUNČAN STONE Lesbos, No There Is No Shore

BARBARA ČEFERIN Café Dada

DARJA ŠTRAVS TISU Julka & Janez, Heartmeat

ALJOŠA REBOLJ Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs, Dreamhunters and Jaša’s portrait

CONTACT: production@jasakoceli.com +386 40 226 046 jasa@jasakoceli.com +386 41 326 298

JAĹ A theatre light

www.jasakoceli.com