AGMYSTERIUM (THE THIRD TIME)
Durational performance
1. Your Struggle (at 12 pm)
2. Preparation for the Present
3. Your Songs, Whose Dreams (at approximately 3 pm)
4. Prayer
5. And Suddenly It’s Evening (at approximately 19.15 pm)
The AGMYSTERIUM is the settlement of the author/performer with himself, which unfolds on his body in the form of a durational performance. It brings to the fore the question of the relation between the tangible, earthly, everyday and the sacred, poetic, transcendent. With the desire to transcend his own individuality, he looks autobiographically into the past and lays out memories as an obstacle course for universal questions: coming to oneself as the search for meaning; memory as the bearer of identity, its deceitfulness and simultaneous fatality; solitude as the basis of faith; and the unexpectedness of transcendent feelings in the small moments of existence. We were clearly mistaken when we imagined god greater than us.
It is the wonder of life as a great mystery on the elusive ground between detail and universe, moment and eternity, footstep and journey. It is a liberation from one’s own subjectivity and thus a departure from a rationally guided narrative. It is an approach to the associative, intuitive, dreamlike and also spiritual.
It’s a farewell to the time when “we were loved like children, for no reason, for the very fact that we exist.”*
In terms of forms, it reaches for two theatrical means – durational performance and butoh – and relies on their immanent element : absolute presence. It is precisely and only with this kind of positioning in the here and now that the possibility of a dimension beyond opens up.
Entrance will be possible throughout the performance.
Concept and performance: Klemen Kovačič
Choreography: Klemen Kovačič and Nik Žnidaršič
Text: Klemen Kovačič
Dramaturgy: Nik Žnidaršič
Collaborator for dramaturgy and choreography: Maša Radi Buh
Light design: Bor Ravbar
Sound design and original music: Gašper Lovrec
Mentor: prof. Tanja Zgonc
Produced by: Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television of the University of Ljubljana
Partner: Bunker, Ljubljana
Thanks: red. prof. mag. Alida Bevk, Slavica Janošević, Mateja Dermelj, Blaž Andrašek
Photo: Željko Stevanić IFP/Arhiv CTF UL AGRFT
*Gospodinov, Georgi. Naravni roman (Natural Novel). Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 2005
Duration: 8 hours / Entrance will be possible throughout the performance.
Klemen Kovačič studied Stage Acting at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, University of Ljubljana. AGMYSTERIUM is his Master’s production of studies of the Art of Movement, which was awarded Prešeren Award of University of Ljubljana. Since 2023 he is a member of Mladinsko Theatre, where he has created several roles in productions such as Feast at Trimalchio’s (dir. Bojana Lazić), Crises (dir. Žiga Divjak), Angels in America (dir. Nina Rajić Kranjac) and others. In 2020, he received the Stane Sever Fund Award for Acting Creations of Drama Students and the Prešeren Academy Award for his role as Hamlet in the study production Towards Hamlet Genotype (dir. Dragan Živadinov). As one of the founding members of the Počemučka Collective, he co-created also multiple-award winning performance Under Construction (Glej Theatre). In the theatre, he primarily works as an actor, but within the devised-theatre projects he explores other creative fields too.