Premiere MICHELANGELO

After Miroslav Krleža’s play Michelangelo Buonarroti

Coproduction: CNT Ivan pl. Zajc and Dubrovnik Summer Festival

Michelangelo Buonarroti is a play by Miroslav Krleža’s Legend cycle written in 1918. It belongs to Krleža’s expressionist phase, having taken him to the very top of European dramatic literature. One of the dominant themes in this early phase, so also in Michelangelo, is the idea of a superhuman being, a giant or a genius capable of recreating the society or giving it a decisive impetus for its opening towards the utopian perspective. It is with this intention and vision that the great Michelangelo, shown in the drama in the time of his painting the Sistine Chapel, encounters the challenges and defeats brought about by the down-to-earth reality. Meeting mice, spiders, nuns, a rose, former lovers, visitors of the Sistine Chapel, teachers and students at school, medical doctors and nurses, chefs, cleaners, soldiers with gas masks, clergy, pageboys, a sailor and others, Michelangelo dives into the world of uttermost diversities, not only of the social but also ontological order, this being possible only within the power of theatre folly that enables us to imagine impossible relations. The director of Krleža’s inventive dramatic insight into the tragedy a genius is Sebastijan Horvat, one of the rare directors in the region not to keep away from Mirosla Krleža – bard of the Croatian literature. Michelangelo, Krleža, Horvat and Rushaidat, the first coproduction ever of the Rijeka CNT and Dubrovnik Summer Festival, promise that the Croatian Drama Company is ready to turn the new page of its contemporaneity.

Partner:

Premiere: Dubrovnik Summer festival: 27 July 2018

Premiere: Ivan pl. Zajc Croatian National Theatre Rijeka: 21 Sept. 2018

RUNNING TIME:
About 2 hours and 15 minutes with no interval

Notice: Strobe lighting is used in this production