Quartet

Heiner Muller: Quartet

Production of the VI semester of SA, TD and DPA UL AGRFT

Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, University of Ljubljana, Maribor Theatre Festival, Moment and GT22

With his first and only stage direction in Quartet, Heiner Müller seems to have summarised a large part of his view of the world and history. The stage direction places a slash between the time before the French Revolution and the time after World War III. One or the other, just before one of the most famous revolutions happens, or after World War III, which today has a ring of the end of the world to it, as it appears to be one and the same thing. Such parallelism of two radical eras negates their own radicalism, rejects change and erases their uniqueness.

When writing Quartet, Heiner Müller started from the only literary work by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos: his epistolary 1782 novel Dangerous Liaisons. The choice of material is interesting and at first sight does not have much in common with Müller’s other usual topics. Between the time frame and the drama situation, the game of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont (the central characters from Dangerous Liaisons), it is through their apparent contradiction that one of the most recognisable relationships of Müller’s drama is established, a radicalised form of the homo homini lupus relationship.// Iva Š. Slosar

The Quartet project is accompanied by the exhibition What a Fruitful Performance: Museum of Our Loves and the workshop How to Tackle this Machine?

Mentors

Theatre acting and directing: doc. Branko Jordan, izr. prof. Jernej Lorenci

Dramaturgy: doc. dr. Blaž Lukan, izr. prof. dr. Tomaž Toporišič

Scene design: izr. prof. mag. Jasna Vastl

Costume design: red. prof. Janja Korun, asist. mag. Tina Kolenik

Language and speech: asist. dr. Nina Žavbi