Olympia Stadium

Première 2019
Running time 1 hour 40 minutes. No interval.
+ post-perfromance talk
Performance is in Slovenian with English surtitles.

Director Maša Pelko
Dramaturg Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti
Set designer Dorian Šilec Petek
Costume designer Nina Čehovin
Composer Jurij Alič
Lighting designer Mojca Sarjaš

Cast
Lina Akif, Borut Doljšak, Lucija Harum, Anuša Kodelja, Timotej Novaković, Ana Penca, Gregor Podričnik, Blaž Popovski, Beti Strgar, Matic Valič, Lovro Zafred

Mentors
Acting and theatre directing izr. prof. Nataša Barbara Gračner, izr. prof. mag. Sebastijan Horvat
Dramaturgy izr. prof. dr. Tomaž Toporišič
Set design izr. prof. mag. Jasna Vastl
Costume design red. prof. Janja Korun, asist. mag. Tina Kolenik
Language and speech asist. dr. Nina Žavbi, doc. Alojz Svete, izr. prof. mag. Alida Bevk

One of the most successful Croatian playwrights, Dino Pešut (1990) won five Marin Držić Awards from the Croatian Ministry of Culture between 2012 and 2017. Olympia Stadium is a trilogy, a meditation on a classical tragedy that begins with the clash of a Zagreb man with a Berliner, a metaphor for the world in all its payable glitter. / The first part, Erinyes, Girls of Despair takes part in a high school environment where a group of six "friends" are confronted with the news that their friend Marija was raped. / The second part, The Dictatorship of Despair most obviously leans on the legacy of the ancient tragedy. It is written in verse, free and modern, full of pop-culture references, and the first ur-theatre voice appears – the chorus that we can only sense in part one. / The third part Xoxo, Despair is an extensive series of prose fragments. The chorus no longer consists of high-school gossip girls and isn’t a mass character, but is rather us all, according to Pešut, a new generation with no labels, vying for space on the destructed Mount Olympus.