SoToSpeak – a Cycle of Theatre Essays
SoToSpeak – a cycle of theatre essays – the term essay is used quite liberally in this context and denotes a text with a theoretical base and a clearly discernible literary dimension, ideally enriched with personal connotations. Such a text, always an original authorial text, was the starting point for a piece performed by the author him_herself. The first such essay was prepared by Boštjan Narat himself as part of the Days of Slovenian Nationalism at Nova pošta, but this time he invited other authors to participate – those who are capable of creating a good text and then staging it, with all the embarrassments and limitations that this might bring. “The point is to listen to and watch the author who is performing his own text. Even singer-songwriters are not necessarily the best interpreters of their songs, but we still want to listen to them,” says Narat.
- Cycle of Theatre Essays
Curator: Boštjan Narat
Co-production: Nova pošta in KUD Moment
Productions
About the Author
Boštjan Narat is a philosopher, musician, essayist, singer-songwriter and author and performer of incidental music. With Katalena, which he founded in 2001, he has released eight studio albums in nineteen years. The albums (Z)godbe , Babje leto, Kmečka ohcet or třetí prispevek k slovenski blaznosti and Cvik cvak! were followed in 2011 by Noč čarovnic then, in 2015, Katalena released the album Enci benci Katalenci, dedicated primarily to children. 2018 saw the release of their seventh album, Človek ni zver, and in the same year an album of incidental music from the ballet Kekec. In 2010, he released his debut album, Fear is superfluous. In spring 2012, in collaboration with Matevž Kolenec, Polona Janežič, Jelena Ždrale and Blaž Celarc, he recorded and released his second singer-songwriter album, The End of the World Always Comes Unannounced. He also collaborates as a singer-songwriter with Neca Falk, with whom he co-wrote and released the album Od daleč in 2014. As a composer of music for theatre, he has collaborated with Janez Janša, Simona Semenič, Ivana Djilas, Edward Clug, Valentina Turcu, Eva Nina Lampič, Tatjana Peršuh, Tomaž Štruclo, Juret Novak and Maret Bulc, among others. He writes and publishes in professional and literary magazines, and is also a columnist for the newspaper Večer. Between 2009 and 2014 he designed and hosted the series of talks Philosophising in Variety at the Union Café in Ljubljana, from 2012 to 2019 he was the host and author of Panoptikum, and in 2014 he hosted the Open Book programme on RTV Slovenia. Since 2016, he has been designing and leading a series of talks entitled The Land of the Hardworking at Mladinsko theatre. At the end of 2013, he published a collection of essays entitled Partíja, for which he received a nomination for the Rožanče Prize. In 2018, he published his second collection of essays, Passing into the Void. It was also nominated for the same prize.
