In search of (our) reality

What is reality nowadays: the one we’re living, but also the other one, the theatrical one? By posing this question in the context of this year’s International Small Scene Festival selection, reality takes centre stage. It seems as if we are living in a time when our reality, especially among the younger generations, is forsaking the reality of everyday life (until recently, the only one we knew) for the virtual world of Instagram, TikTok and other social networks which are slowly overtaking real life.

What is reality today and does it even exist? That is what this year’s plays in Rijeka are probing into, without – how befitting a theatre -giving final answers.

The abstract Reality we live is best witnessed by this Festival’s title play, produced by the national theatre in Zagreb. Elusive, warped and experimental, this play addresses the questions about who we are and what kind of lives we are living.

What is Oedipus’ reality today? The effort of finding an answer here clearly leads to an inevitable tragedy, while the dystopian Children, a Slovenian play set in a post-apocalyptic world, tries to determine whether WE (the old) or THEM (the young) are more important and in that attempt predictably fails.

Of course, family is put front and centre when we talk about reality, that smallest social unit determining our life with all its manifestations of reality. The bizarre rendition of the Austrian Višnjik by the Café Fuerte group is certainly not the sad Chekhov we are used to seeing, nor does Đurđica Čilić’s nostalgic Fafarikul, imbued with the melancholy of a hypersensitive child growing up during wartime, provide the reality typical of a theatre.

No matter how much we tend to romanticize the family, theatre sees it as far from ideal. The way Nušić describes it and Kerempuh interprets it, the image of the family becomes a brutal one, one bearing the prevailing motif among people who should be close – the image of greed. In this context, Ionesco’s twisted family in The Bald Soprano suddenly becomes a picture-perfect family life and, for a family living a reality by forever running in circles, isn’t that an apt description?

And finally, in Gidion’s Knot we witness the tragic end of a family whose reality was wasted on misunderstanding and non-acceptance of others.

It feels as if this year we are trying to come up with the clues, together with Calderón, to the life/dream conundrum: are we living a dream or dreaming a life? As always, the Festival raises more questions than it is capable of answering. Well, that is something we learned long ago: good theatre does not provide clear solutions, because art never gives definitive answers.

So, let us all just surrender to this world of elusive life and stage reality.

Jasen Boko