About the production
Right after its publishing, Youth without God became one of the most relevant books among anti-war novels which criticize Nazism. Ödön von Horváth managed to show the creation of a man of fascism. Franco "Bifo" Berardi and his work have largely contributed to the creation of the performance as well. The authors have used the open letter he wrote upon leaving the DiEM25 party, renouncing his own European origin, as well as his book Heroes in which he gathers most of the characters from the performance, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Cho Seng Hui, Pekka Auvinen, all the school shooters who ended their bloody rampages in suicides, and Andreas Breivik. In Youth without God, the role of contemporary European youth without god is assumed by those antiheroes. The project by the director Borut Šeparović presents disoriented young people who lack opinion and civic courage, egoistic, indifferent and cruel youth that lives in creepy coldness.
Authors
BORUT ŠEPAROVIĆ was born in 1967 in Zagreb. He has graduated in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, and finished postgraduate studies at DasArts in Amsterdam. His artistic biography as a founder, artistic manager, director and choreographer equals the biography of Montažstroj. He has been its art director since it was founded in 1989, when the company Montažstroj became a symbol of a new and different theatre in Croatia and abroad, maintaining that status to date. He has choreographed and led over 50 projects, performances and performing art exhibitions produced by Montažstroj, but many institutional theatres too. He has an ongoing interest in creation of an engaged theatre and art which, far from an explicit discourse of daily politics, keep problematizing its surroundings.
At 33rd Bitef 1999, Šeparović’s performance Fragile, coproduced by Montažstroj and Intercult from Stockholm won the Audience Award, while at 47th Bitef 2013, the performance produced by Montažstroj and directed by Borut Šeparović, Where’s the Revolution, Scum?, won the Special Award.
From the reviews
Šeparović has created a disturbing image of a youth lost in technology and social system which doesn’t offer any answers but, completely focused on false values provokes resistance in young people which leads to a massacre.
Bojana Radović, Večernji list
Those young people are stimulated by hatred, profit, amorality, scorn for culture and traditional values. They are violent because they are pleading to be noticed.
Nina Ožegović, tportal.hr
In the background of von Horvath’s novel, Nazi system is rising, enthusiastic to use those young people for its evil ends, while nowadays it is about the global “anxiety” caused by globalisation made even more global by the new media which have a devastating effect on the young people’s minds. Even the ones who would never become cruel, now become so.
Tomislav Čadež, jutarnji.hr
In short, this is a performance about a dismal future ahead of us we, about what young people are getting ready to do, because they no longer believe in the deceitful world of endless phrases and political correctness. The key question is whether we are aware of it, and whether we are ready to face that fact today.
Bojan Munjin, Novosti
