CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE
“Has anyone ever heard silence? Deep, dead silence?”
Production: MN Dance Company and Slovene National Theatre Nova Gorica
Season: 2016/2017
Premiere: 26 November 2016 at Slovenian National Theatre Nova Gorica
Authors of Concept and Choreographers: Michal Rynia, Nastja Bremec
Authors of texts: Alojz Ihan, Tereza Gregorič, Michal Rynia, Nastja Bremec, Maja Nemec, Tamás Tuza
Dramaturg: Tereza Gregorič
Language Consultant: Srečko Fišer
Costume and Set Designers: Michal Rynia, Nastja Bremec, Ana Špacapan
Composer: Diaphane
Light Designer: Samo Oblokar
Property Designer: Michal Rynia, Nastja Bremec, Ana Zerjal
“What makes human communication and talking so special is imagination. Man is the only living creature that is able to talk about intangible things and believe in them. What is more, he is the only living creature that cannot live without invented truths. He has to believe in something, even when he believes that he does not believe in anything. History has given us many truths and taken away from us just as many of them. Truths that were dead serious in their time are ridiculously funny in another. Nowadays we are living amidst a suffocating abundance of truths that are giving shape and direction to our lives. And it is within this abundance that we, the fragile and scared ones, are fighting for our own, one and only truth. Fighting for meaning and existence has made us deaf to the point that we are screaming and we cannot hear others singing their own truths.”
(Tereza Gregorič)
PERFORMERS








INSPIRATION
One of the inspiration for the performance was poetry from Alojz Ihan.
SUCK
”For a long time the writers and directors have been telling and retelling a story about a provincial boy who arrives in the city and tries to conquer it. And bored, lifeless towns folk observe with a strange hope his wild, incomprehensible desire to reach their level, to become as they are; they observe how, for this, he is ready to sacrifice all, even joy, even goodness, even love; they observe and help him so they can be by his side and observe. And he rises, gains power becomes important and finally realises that he has reached their level, that he’s become, like all of them, cold, calculating, without love, and that soon he’ll have to search for his warm victim and, with his cold, dead vampire desire observe it and suck, suck.”
Alojz Ihan
TUNNEL
”Imagine a tunnel through which people walk every day, a very short tunnel, an ordinary subway under a street or a railway track, one you’ve passed a hundred times without thinking. Then one time you enter and when after a couple of steps you should have been out, you’re still in a tunnel, in a very short tunnel; scores of people pass it in any given moment, you see them how easily they reach the exit, while you walk, walk, run and rest to catch your breath, then walk again, then run again, you call for help, you break things … but you can’t reach the end and although the tunnel is only a step long, half a step, a centimetre, a part of a word, you can spend weeks, months, years, decades in it and if you ever come out of it, exhausted, you learn that you were insane.”
Alojz Ihan
HUMAN FLESH
”I rebelled, everyone in the group rebelled. Than the guide explained to us that cannibalism was in these parts an age-old, disturbing tradition, and that the meal would remain in our fondest memories. As to the flesh, he promised it would be fresh, wholesome, and very young, indeed, a child´s, and that there would be nothing illegal in this as the children had died in natural death; from hunger. Moreover, the agency paid the parents or relatives an exeptionally high price, and thus, with every bite, we would, in effect, be making possible one whole meal for another hungry child and, thus, perhaps, be saving him from death. From that day on, I have been eating human flesh.”
Alojz Ihan
SEED
”When get it, it is alien to all, a tiny, fine seed, and because it is the only one, he starts searching for soil for it, till it, water it, defend it, steal it. Then the seed sprouts and because of it it is necessary to put up fences, poison game, shoot birds; and every day observe the growth and every night in dreams learn to love blindly; because those whose harvest will be bread will love bread and those whose harvest will be stone will love stone; those whose harvest will be poison will love poison and those whose harvest will be hate will have to love hate.”
Alojz Ihan
SPRING
“She pouted and blew her hair off her forehead. This was what most excided him every single time. But he never told her. Perhaps he feared it might then change. That it might become an act. He never showed her, either. Just observed with a pounding heart. At times, she didn’t do it for a whole day. Sometimes he waited for a week. Sultry summers were the sole exception. In winter he made sure that the flat was steaming. He didn’t care for autumn or for spring. He remembered that once he’d waited the whole month of March and half of April.”
Alojz Ihan
PHOTOS
Official photo promotional material from Conspiracy of Silence
Photo: Damir Ipavec, Urska Boljkovac and Davide Blasini
VIDEO
Recording of the performance, interview on Dutch TV and trailer from the performance.
LINKS
Slovenian media responses:
THANKFUL
MN Dance Company is thankful for all the support received for this project.
Special thanks to our performers for their involvement and in-pact on the project. Thank you to Tereza Gregorčič for pushing us. Thank you technical stuff of SNG for all good will. Big thank you to Regis – Diaphane for making inspiring music and to Samo Oblokar for placing us in a good light. Thank you to all off the institutions linked below that in any way supported us. Project was supported by Ministry of Culture of Slovenia.