Chapter 10 Mladi levi Festival, Reflections and Memories

Abstract

I have always been a little suspicious about people who have never doubted themselves. Perhaps this is because, while I am still in the whirlwind of joy and enthusiasm over a new project, I am already picturing the worst-case scenarios. This state of uncertainty normally lasts until I find something that answers each doubt and at this point I begin to see the idea as realisable. However, even I was not counting on the large number of doubters I met before the beginning of the first Mladi levi Festival in Ljubljana. “Another fes- tival?” I was asked, “But why? Don’t we already have enough? Who needs festivals and who actually attends them? After two or three years they all vanish into thin air anyway...” Not very encouraging. ”There is too much of everything already... and in the middle of the summer? You’re nuts! Nobody’s there then, the theatres are all closed...” “Well, that’s exactly why”, I answered, “because the theatres are all closed, wouldn’t that be the best opportunity? The venues are available and we can maybe borrow equipment; people get back from holidays and want to have somewhere to go, they want to spend some quality time socialising... Our festival will be different, open and not hermetic at all.” They just doubtfully shook their heads. It was by a lucky coincidence that at that time I met Irena Štaudohar. She had just left her editor’s job at Maska magazine, as I had just left the Glej Theatre. We were both disappointed by the cynicism of the Slovenia arts scene and the politics, but at the same time full of ideas about what the theatre, what a festival could be like – a space without any bad feelings, where people meet, share, learn, get to know other cultures, other landscapes, other visions, where there is room for debate, experiment and development. An open space, where making mistakes is a legitimate possibility. After all, errors pave the way to changing ourselves and the world, right? Are we capable of admitting to ourselves that as a society we have gambled and lost? Or of finding new ways of tackling the challenges of the crisis?