With the staging of Shakespeare’s Richard III. in Maribor Drama, director Jan Krmelj continues his research into the functioning of the levers and mechanisms of power. Photo: Peter Uhan, SNG Maribor
About manipulation, violence and truth control
Shakespeare’s historical drama Richard III will be staged for the premiere tonight at Drama SNG Maribor. directed by Jan Krmelj. Together with Jernej Potočan, he is also the author of the stage adaptation.
An early historical drama by William Shakespeare Richard III. was written towards the end of the 16th century as the concluding part of his first tetralogy about English dynastic conflicts: it follows the rise and fall of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, through manipulation, intrigue and violence, gradually removes all rivals and ascends to the throne. At the same time, betrayals, murders and deceptions occur in a fast, very precisely planned sequence, which Rihard himself reveals to the audience – but the moment he reaches power, his complete control over the events begins to crumble… The play, which reveals the mechanisms of power through the staging of the story of an upstart, will come to life tonight at 8 p.m. in Drama SNG Maribor; he directs the play Jan Krmeljwho is together with the playwright Jerne Potočan also the author of the adaptation.
The staging comes from an understanding of power as a process, a construction that takes place before the eyes of the spectators; the stage is no longer a historical palace, but a crumbling space, a kind of sandbox of power, in which reality is constantly edited, edited and reinterpreted – in this sense, Rihard is not just a ruler, but the director of his own story, the one who guides the view and determines the meaning of events. The key element of the performance is the attitude towards the audience: just as in the original, Rihard addresses the audience directly, revealing his plans and approaches to them, similarly to how modern politics works through staging and the public construction of truth – here the violence is no longer hidden, but is spoken, transparent, and in a way therefore more acceptable. “I see this story about the rise to power as a story about how power is created, how it is built, but also about how someone takes control of the description of reality,” emphasizes Krmelj.
Playwright Jernej Potočan adds that Rihard cannot be understood as some kind of error in the system, because in fact he himself is the most consistent expression of the system. The world in which he operates rewards determination, efficiency and readiness for violence, and Rihard succeeds precisely because he understands the rules of the game and adapts to them to the extreme – as such, he grows from a historical character into an archetype of a figure of power, which is established through manipulation and spectacle. The adaptation was created after translations by Milan Jesih and Matej Boro, he designed the scenography Dorian Šilec Petekcostume design Brina Vidicthe composer was Val Fürsthe shaped the light Andrej Hajdinjakand the author of the video is Klara Debeljak. They are performing Petja Labović, Žan Koprivnik, Lorenci coin, Nataša Matjašec Rošker, Gaja Filač, Davor Herga, Ksenija Mišić, Matevž Biber, Nejc Ropret, Viktor Hrvatin Meglič and Gorazd Žilavec.
