The Night Porter – 5th of July 2014 in 21:00

June 4th, 2014 // Performances 2014

The Night Porter
Adaptation by Nona Ciobanu is based on the film Il portiere di notte, texts by Liliana Cavani, Barbara Alberti, Amadeo V. Pagani, Italo Moscati, and quotations from Heiner Müller’s Quartet

Erotic drama

Directed by Nona Ciobanu

Premiere 10 January 2014
Small Stage SNG Maribor

Translator of adaptation Tina Mahkota
Set designers Nona Ciobanu, Peter Košir
Costume designer, lighting designer, music selection Nona Ciobanu
Video designer and animations Peter Košir
Video photographer Matjaž Vencelj
Language designer Janez Bostič
Make-up designer Mirjana Djordjević

Cast
Lucia Nataša Matjašec Rošker
Max Peter Boštjančič

In 1974, an Italian film director Liliana Cavani made a controversial film Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter). Ex-Sturmbannführer Max and ex-prisoner Lucia, a wife of the renowned conductor, coincidentally meet after thirteen years at Hotel Opera in Vienna. »The Vienna story« would have been quite different if the executioner and his victim had not established a kind of masochistic addiction. How could this be possible? Cavani explains that the human nature is much more complex than imagination, therefore the »love story« between the master and his slave is not impossible. Why is Lucia ready to break her marriage because of the »Nazi swine«, and why is Max, who wants to flee from justice, ready to stand in front of the firing wall of his free will? With her decision, Lucia shows that she is not a saint that she has – in a labyrinth and/or laboratory of darkness, fear and horror – been transformed from an angel girl into a woman familiar with the devilish attraction of dark streets, where the unconscious desires yell for realization and materialization. A distorted balance, where black is no more black and white no more white, places a spectator into an uncomfortable presence. As long as the torturers are the »bad guys« and the victims »heroes«, we look at the executioners with disgust while we sympathize with the victims. Nevertheless, when boundaries are blurred and even the heroes cross the fields of the morally and ethically integral classifications, the firm ground under the feet is suddenly displaced. Max and Lucia agree to act »the performance« in a theatre of cruelty. In their relationship they do not talk much or they do not talk at all – their mutual experience of the past talks instead of them. They communicate with eyes and gestures.
The author of the Maribor production is the renowned Romanian theatre director Nona Ciobanu.