Running time: 60 minutes

Just before the end of the Yugoslav wars, two strangers meet in a deserted street. Moments before the city is shelled, they find themselves drawn into an encounter marked by passion, fear and longing. Twenty years later, their paths cross again in a Berlin nightclub, far from the battlefield, where techno music thunders instead of shells, in a world still shaped by the repercussions of the past.

Granatiranje (Air Raid) is a harrowing yet tender story of love, memory and survival. Employing a poetic, intimate and meta-theatrical form, the author weaves personal experience with reflections on war, identity and a generation that came of age in its shadow. At the heart of the play is not the explosion of a shell, but the question of how to maintain hope and closeness in the face of disintegration.

Dino Pešut (born 1990 in Sisak) is a Croatian playwright, dramaturg and novelist. He earned a degree in dramaturgy from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. A six-time recipient of Croatia’s prestigious Marin Držić Award, he has written numerous acclaimed works, including the play Granatiranje (Air Raid), which won first prize in 2019. Pešut’s plays have been staged at numerous theatres in Croatia and internationally. He has participated in the Emerging Playwrights residency programme at London’s Royal Court Theatre. In addition to playwriting, his novels Poderana koljena and Tatin sin have established him as an important voice in contemporary Croatian literature.

Luka Grbić (born 2000 in Belgrade) is one of the most prominent theatre and film actors of his generation, as well as a director and poet. He began his acting career as a teenager, playing Nenad Maraš in the film Južni vetar (South Wind, 2018), for which he received the Best Acting Debut Award at the Niš Film Festival that same year. He graduated in acting from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. On stage, he has taken on a wide range of highly diverse and demanding roles, including Andrej in the acclaimed play Divlje meso (Wild Flesh, 2021, Belgrade Drama Theatre), the title role in Zeller’s The Son (2021, Atelje 212), Prince Myshkin in The Idiot (2022, Belgrade Drama Theatre) and Hamon in Antigone (2022, Belgrade Drama Theatre). He is distinguished by his remarkable ability to bring a wide variety of complex characters to life in both theatre and film. He has received several major acting awards, including the Sterija Award for Best Young Actor, bestowed by the “Dara Darinka Čalenić” Fund (2023). From 2023 to 2025, he was a permanent member of the ensemble at Atelje 212. He subsequently continued his artistic career in Slovenia, pursuing further studies in theatre directing at the University of Ljubljana’s Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT). Grbić’s original project, Ide gas (2025, AGRFT), was created as part of his master’s programme.

Luka Bokšan (born 1991 in Celje) is a theatre and film actor. He graduated from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT) and is a recipient of the Prešeren Student Award (2019). While still a student, he joined the acting ensemble of the Slovenian People’s Theatre Celje (SLG Celje) and has worked as a freelance cultural professional since 2023. As a guest artist, he collaborates with various institutional theatres, and the productions in which he often takes leading roles regularly tour and receive awards at national and international festivals. Notable roles include Henry VI in Pet kraljev: K psihopatologiji neke monarhije (Kings, 2024, SLG Celje), Lawrence Durrell in Beograjski trio (The Belgrade Trio, 2024, Anton Podbevšek Theatre, Cankarjev dom) and Jože in In mnogi drugi … (And Many Others…, 2025, Prešeren Theatre Kranj, SLG Celje). On the independent scene, he works in performance, physical theatre and contemporary dance, while also establishing himself in film and television and as a compelling interpreter of the written word in Radio Slovenia literary programmes. His work is characterised by a systematic and in-depth approach, a strong stage presence, a pronounced sense of ensemble and a distinct flair for interaction with fellow performers.

For audiences aged: 15+

Running time: 50 minutes, without intermission
In Slovenian, without translation.

Matija Solce’s project, a cabaret based on motifs from Alfred Jarry's famous epic, brings together musicians, puppeteers, and actors at the intersection of political theatre, theatre of objects, grotesque merdre-operetta, and Dadaist concert.

King Ubu needs no contemporizing, its resonance is universal as it grotesquely exposes the ever-present immoral, depraved, hypocritical, cowardly, servile, and greedy self-proclaimed "kings". Unlike the controversial drama that caused an outrage in late-19th century France, Teater Matite’s new production employs words as sound impulses, markers, and at the same time deconstructors of the text, which tends to suddenly transmute into barking, music, a fart symphony or a poetic mass execution.

We are drawn into the world of UBU-ism, pataphysics, and ironic social criticism by a quintet of “Dadaismers”—actors, musicians, animators, and idiosyncratic authors—who, with a few toilet brushes, mime puppets, drums, a keyboard, a bass, three butts, and two bellies, verbalize and perform what we all aspire towards today: to be in the service of an idiot.

However, U!-BU? does not let us enjoy the sight of perfectly animated anus. Its further provocations include interactions with other body parts – not to mention the psychological pressures on our status symbols, ideological views, or religion. Just as Ubu tackles all strata of society head-on in his work, the creators of the performance critically reflect on all issues – but refrain from self-criticism, knowing full well that they are the leading experts in their fields.

Join us for an eccentric and dynamic cabaret that will gently and undemocratically persuade the audience of its solely valid point of view.

Making a return to the stage, Carlos Pascual has formed an ensemble with which – in the pre-Columbian tradition of conversing with the dead – he will engage in a dialogue with the poet Srečko Kosovel at the Tomaj cemetery. The event will feature Pascual’s Spanish translations of works by the great poet of the Slovenian Karst, offering both casual readers and connoisseurs of Kosovel’s poetry, as well as international audiences, a portrait of this prodigy.

Meta Fajdiga will perform works by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Scriabin, Mompou and other composers; Neža Bojović, as a telephone operator from the early 20th century, will interweave stories through rap; while Ursula Vratuša will embody the spirit of the Karst landscape and the bora wind through contemporary dance and movement.

The dance-performative research project Exquisite Corpse is part of a series of projects by young (though not necessarily) authors produced by Emanat that explore stage language. The aim of these explorations is to break the concentration of creative processes that focus exclusively on the product and redirect them towards the development of performing language and a reflection on the issues of WHAT and HOW in relation to artistic creation.

In collaboration with Cankarjev dom, a public presentation will be performed using freely the surrealist play principle of the “cadavre exquis” (the exquisite corpse) to reflect on the structure of the presentation, the development of the performative language or the working methodology developed through the research process. Neža Ana Goričar and Maja Vidic will present their movement research. The presentations will be followed by a conversation between the authors and Maša Radi Buh.

Neža Ana Goričar

The author begins this research out of frustration. Frustration with the endless search for reasons. With the need we have, as viewers, to constantly explain, contextualize, and justify what lies before us; to make sense of it, right there and then, before we’ve even processed it. And this response is most raw when a naked body stands before us. She will explore nudity as a performative tool: how it influences the gaze directed at it, and how it challenges the social norms that condemn it. The main tools of her research will be duration and circularity as instruments of the desexualization of the naked body. Imagine a naked body on a rotating platform: there is no perspective that remains unseen, no angle that can be hidden. It is impossible to frame the body in a specific way, because the rotation reveals absolutely everything. And so the naked body slowly becomes nothing more than a mass of muscle and skin. Through the observer’s perspective, she will explore the tension between intimacy and voyeurism, between vulnerability and power, between curiosity and shame. Above all, it will be about defying justification and rationalization; resisting explanation and logic; a simple WHY NOT?

Neža Ana Goričar (2003) is an artist working in the fields of contemporary dance and performance. After graduating from the Secondary Ballet School in Ljubljana, she decided to study contemporary dance at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands, where she will graduate this July. During her studies, she has collaborated with many internationally renowned choreographers, including Anouk van Dijk, Julio Cesar Iglesias Ungo, and Maciej Kuzminski. As a choreographer, she created the solo piece “Lesson no.1” in 2022, which was selected as part of ArtEZ’s annual “Dance Artist Presents” performance and presented alongside works by renowned choreographers such as Ann van den Broek and Mercedes Pedroche. A year later, the site-responsive duet Choo Choo Blue Shoe followed, which she created and performed together with Swedish dancer Olle Arrhenius in the sculpture garden of the Arnhem Museum. Neža was part of the TANZ_KASSEL dance ensemble in Germany last season and is currently collaborating with the interdisciplinary production house KASKO in the Netherlands. As an artist, she is constantly fascinated by the absurdity of everyday life and its parallels with performance. What do we perceive as normal or acceptable—and how do these norms in everyday life differ from those on stage? This is one of the questions currently inspiring her artistic practice.

Movement research, performance: Neža Ana Goričar
Mentoring:
Lighting design: Veronika Hana Grubič

Maja Vidic

This movement-based research is based on an exploration of the character Daisy Hell, whom the author creates and shapes throughout the process. She constructs Daisy’s identity on the basis of defined character traits, inner motivations, psychological factors and impulses, which are reflected in her physical expression. She is interested in the character’s story, which reveals its multi-layered meaning through symbol-laden gestures and the relentless liminal space of her own room. Every internal or external stimulus triggers a physical reaction, a response in the form of a fragmented emphasis on individual parts of the body and limbs. The research focuses on unpredictability and an in-depth analysis of the varying intensities of this emphasis, its resonance or impulse as a concluding action. In this context, the elevation and depression of movement play a significant role, emphasising the contrast between abrupt, constrained movement and the intimacy of the gentle, soft dynamics as the body settles. In her research, the author engages with the concept of society’s devotion to innocence, whereby the obsession with achieving an impossible balance between the body of an ‘innocent young girl’ and that of a ‘fully grown woman’ distorts, distorts and exposes Daisy’s female body, whilst she uncertainly strives to claim autonomy over her own body.

Maja Vidic (2001) is a dancer, choreographer, performer and musician. After studying contemporary dance at the Secondary School of Education, the Grammar School and the Art Grammar School in Ljubljana, she continued her studies at the Fontys Dance Academy (NL) and at the Institute for Dance Art (IDA) at Anton Bruckner University in Austria. Her original solo piece Three Daughters, Two Mothers and One Grandmother (2024) won the award for best choreography and the production award at the OPUS 1 international festival for young dance creators. The work was performed in Prague, Linz and Eisenstadt, where, as part of an artist-in-residence programme, she was a guest at the Burgenland Choreography Centre and took part in the Dance Identity festival. In 2025, as part of the production award from JSKD and the Intakt Dance Studio, she created the vocal-dance performance Psiček nima repa več (a duet in collaboration with Neža Kokalj). In Linz, she also presented the group choreography 3H2M1B and began her research project Daisy Hell.

Movement research, performance: Maja Vidic
Lighting design: Veronika Hana Grubič

Through a personal interpretation of essays from Susan Sontag’s collection On Women, the dance essay id:ENTITETA (id:ENTITY) explores how everyday experience constantly shapes and disciplines our bodies and identities. The flamenco body functions as a medium and amplifier, channelling the flow of voice and sound and thus granting the dancing body the status of the audible – a body with its own voice that resists silence, existing with the express purpose of making itself heard. By interweaving personal experience with the testimonies of (women’s) disembodied voices – which, through their sonic presence, further open up a space for reflection on the search for autonomy within contemporary social frameworks – the essay seeks points of intersection between the vertical layering of social roles and the horizontal passage of time, ultimately fusing them in a cross that each of us bears alone

Peekaboo, an original work exploring the body, the gaze and memory, is the second part of choreographer Bojana Robinson’s imaginary trilogy. Following the contemporary dance performance Mašina (Machine), dedicated to motherhood and caregiving, the artist further explores her role as a woman in society and at home, as well as women’s presence and absence in family and collective memories.

Peekaboo invites us to observe what remains on the verge of the visible – the ways in which bodies and their stories are inscribed in memory. To paraphrase Rebecca Solnit, the utterable can silently both reveal and conceal, prompting the creation of meanings without committing to any specific one. In this elusive field of the gaze, a woman both exists and disappears.

Pogovor z avtorjem
Pred predstavo Konec epohe v petek, 15. maja, ob 18.30 bo potekal pogovor z avtorjem besedila Dinom Pešutom, pogovarjal se bo Darko Ilin.
Bar Idealist (Cankarjev dom), vstop prost
 

A baptismal production

Trilogija po besedilih L.U.Z.E.R.J.I., 2012, H.E.J.T.E.R.J.I., 2018, Dobro življenje, 2025

2012, Zagreb. Sanjin, Mak, Roza and Paško are L.O.S.E.R.S. Sanjin, who lost his leg in an accident and Mak, who might or might not be Sanjin’s boyfriend, are preparing dinner for Roza and Paško. The inseparable friends who, ever since they arrived in the city, have been confronting life and its challenges together. Sanjin doesn’t yet know that Roza is planning to leave for London, Paško for Berlin and Mak for America.

2018, Zagreb. After her lover’s death, Roza says goodbye to Berlin. She returns to Paško and Sanjin, who, with Mak, is enjoying the inferno of a listless relationship. They’re together again, and everything is like it used to be. An island of freedom and happiness at the edge of history – all around them, there are “fascists” on the rise, and the first “victim” of their march is Korana, an art gallery director. Roza, Paško, Sanjin, Mark and Korana are H.A.T.E.R.S.

2025, Zagreb? Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic and seven years after the playwright ended the play with the promise to the director: I’ll write to you again in five years. It will once again be about friendship. In the time when every last human being has grasped that the future isn’t bright, that the world is not turning towards the better and that nothing is clear anymore … Paško, Roza, Mak and Sanjin are here again. Four friends and the playwright who responded to the director’s invitation to write a new text. A round-up of the decade, a signature beneath the end of an era.

Dino Pešut

One of the most prominent and awarded Croatian playwrights. Despite the international success and the reception of the Slovenian translation of his novel Daddy Issues (2022) his only staged work was a student production Stadion Olympia trilogy (2019) directed by Maša Pelko (UL AGRFT and Glej). Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti, himself an author of several plays (e.g. Little Stars, SNT Nova Gorica, 2024), was the dramaturg and translator of the production. At his initiative, Pešut’s two older adapted plays and a new one will come to life as a drama triptych about leaving, returning and coming of age.

Premieres: 
22. in 23. aprila 2026  na malem odru SNG Nova Gorica
13. maja 2026 v Dvorani Duše Počkaj Cankarjevega doma Ljubljana
 

For audiences aged: 15+

Running time: 70 minutes, without intermission
In Slovenian, without translation.

Cankar is a complex and visually rich puppet portrait of one of Slovenia's greatest writers, Ivan Cankar. The show’s director and visual designer Silvan Omerzu delves deep into Cankar's intellectual world. In using puppets from the director’s various creative periods, Cankar also chronicles the development of Omerzu's poetics and aesthetics.

The performance draws on the extraordinarily prolific oeuvre of Ivan Cankar – vignettes, plays, novels, and letters – and focuses on themes running through his writing: longing, guilt, social inequality, eroticism, faith, and death. Cankar is not only a tribute to the writer Ivan Cankar on the 150th anniversary of his birth, but also a witty, moving, and occasionally dark visual study of an artist whose ideas are still alive and inspiringly relevant today. Blending puppetry, stage adaptation, and atmospheric imagery, the show creates its own theatrical language, embodying Cankar's ideas.

The performance combines various puppetry techniques, while drawing on the power of poetic set design, where automatons, masks, light, and shadows incarnate the landscapes of Ivan Cankar's inner worlds and dreams. The central narrative thread is a selection of letters written by Cankar the puppet in different periods of his life: to his mother, Ana Lušin, Etbin Kristan, and Zofka Kveder. The show’s main dramatic block is Cankar's play Pohujšanje v dolini šentflorjanski (Scandal in the Valley of St Florian), the second act of which is performed entirely with Javanese puppets, while the first and third acts employ the formats of shadow and narrative theatre. Silvan Omerzu is one of Slovenia’s most prominent contemporary puppetry artists, working at the intersection of visual and performing arts. Cankar’s director and visual designer, Silvan Omerzu, is Slovenia's leading puppetry artist, known for his unique authorial vision, precise mise-en-scène, and distinctive visual style. 


Silvan Omerzu (1955) is a visual and puppetry artist. After graduating from the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana, Omerzu started working at the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre. In 1983, he completed his specialization in puppet theatre scenography and puppet design in Prague. After returning to Ljubljana, he developed a signature artistic style applied most manifestly to the productions of the Konj theatre, co-founded with the director Jan Zakonjšek. As a freelance artist, he collaborated with the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, the Maribor Puppet Theatre, the Glej Theatre, Cankarjev dom, and the Mladinsko Theatre, as well as with international partners. His shows toured numerous international festivals in Croatia, Italy, the Czech Republic, France, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, and the United States. Omerzu’s collaborations with the Maribor Puppet Theatre include standout, visually stunning productions: Salto mortale (2012), Zlata ptica (2014), Sanje o zvezdi (2016), Zlatolaska in trije medvedi (2019), Besede iz hiše Karlstein (2017) and Želodkova skrivnost (2022). Omerzu is recipient of various international and Slovenian awards for his achievements in the field of visual arts and theatre, most notably the prestigious Prešeren Fund Award (2006). In 2025, he won the Klemenčič Award for Lifetime Achievement (UNIMA Slovenia).

Duration: 50 min

“Two Men in Underwear” is a gentle wrestling match that explores the tension between our inherent need for vulnerability and the barriers that protect us from it. On the stage transformed into a quiet arena, the performers pass through subtle lifts, falls and deconstructed movement patterns, where flying limbs rearrange their intertwined bodies – like a moving pile of flesh eager for collision.  In their desire to taste vulnerability, they seek refuge in a departure from the societal view, where strength is often associated with physical endurance and emotional restraint. Their transformative relationship revolves around the fine line between pain and pleasure, love and hate, where the measure of courage will be the one to draw it.

Presentations of work in progress:
30 January 2026, NEFCD, Härnösand, Sweden
15 February 2026, Zuhause Arnhem, Arnhem, The Netherlands

Burja Podlesnik (2001) is a dancer and choreographer. After graduating from the contemporary dance grammar school SVŠGUGL (Secondary Preschool Education, Grammar School and Performing Arts Grammar School Ljubljana), she continued her studies in Sweden at the NEFCD program (New Education for Contemporary Dance) and in 2025 graduated with a Bachelor of Dance degree from ArtEZ University of the Arts in the Netherlands. Burja was part of IlDance's youth company IlYoung, where she danced the work Self Contained, choreographed by Israel Aloni. She performed the work Addio Unplugged by ICK Amsterdam and worked with choreographers such as Mari Carrasco, Miguel Altunage Verdicie, and Caroline Finn. Burja received the Best Dancer Award at the OPUS 1 International Festival of Young Dance Creators in 2019 for her solo Med borovjem temnim (Among the Dark Pine Trees) and during her bachelor studies delved into choreography with the solo Snippet, group work Leftovers, and the duets In My Room and On the Mat. In critically responding to current reality, Burja seeks to reconfigure the space given to things that have no space and voice things that otherwise remain silent.

Swedish dancer Oscar Magnusson (2001) graduated in dance from ArtEZ University of the Arts with a Bachelor of Dance degree in the Netherlands. Oscar performed the work Addio Unplugged by ICK Amsterdam and worked with the choreographers Mercedes Pedroche, Faizah Grootens, Jelena Kostić, and Anderson Carvalho. With the choreographer Jasper van Luijk, he worked on the solo Pushing Waves and the group piece Krave. He was a choreographic assistant of the work come in but never come back by the choreographer Dalton Jansen.

Dutch-Turkish dancer Koen Kaya Eye (2002) graduated from Codarts University of the Arts with a Bachelor of Dance degree. Shortly after, Koen danced with Introdans and Club Guy & Roni’s Poetic Disasters Club. He has performed works by Martha Graham, Mauro Bigonzetti, Andonis Foniadakis, Ed Wubbe, and Adi Schwarz, among others. Koen was a choreographic assistant for "The Breakable Us" by Olivia Court Mesa, created for Scapino Ballet Rotterdam. From 2025 onward, Koen joined Ultima Vez under the direction of Wim Vandekeybus, reviving "What the Body Does Not Remember" in 2026.
 

Running time: 50 minutes

Dancer and choreographer Kaja Lin and puppeteer Maja Kunšič meet for the first time in a joint exploration of the theme of memory. They use the stage an intimate space where fragments of personal memories emerge from their bodies and objects—fragile, elusive, yet deeply present. What happens when you try to capture a piece of the past? How quickly do points of remembrance transform into vanishing points? In a blend of movement and animation, the body and the object become equivalent narrative mediums.

The title, Vanishing Points, is borrowed from a collection of poems by Lucija Stupica, who was the original inspiration for dancer and choreographer Kaja Lin and puppet designer Maja Kunšič. In the performance, the creators explore various relationships linked to different memories of significant events in their lives. They draw on memories of the body as well as various objects, while also probing into relationships: dancer – object, puppeteer – object, dancer – puppeteer, woman – woman, relationship – relationship.

The multidisciplinary approach (stage acting, puppetry, poetry, and dance) builds upon the artistic background of both creators. The stage thus becomes an intimate space for the performers’ reminiscences, which emerge through the body and various objects that evoke memories of childhood and of people who are no longer with us. 

The performance seeks to raise profound, existential questions about how memory shapes our identity, our perception of reality, and our self-understanding.

The show’s concepts are based on various philosophical writings. The most significant is Plato's metaphor of memory as a wax tablet, mentioned in his dialogue Theaetetus. As something is perceived and experienced, it leaves an impression in wax, just as an image is imprinted on a soft wax surface.

Predstava nas vodi skozi pokrajino spomina, kjer se osebni drobci prepletajo s poetičnimi podobami, filozofskimi odsevi in neizgovorjenim, ki se osvobaja iz telesa. Točke izginjanja tako postanejo prostor vmesnosti – kraj, kamor se vračamo, čeprav ga ni več na nobenem zemljevidu.