Rev, vresk a brud

Andrej Bagara Theatre in Nitra presents at the festival the production "Rev, vresk a brud", in which director Ján Luterán transforms Slovak romantic ballads into a theatrical journey through landscapes of fear, guilt, and solitude. In collaboration with dramaturg Daniel Majling, the result is not an illustration of literary sources, but a contemporary stage composition that reveals how the demons of ballads are also the demons of modern humanity.

The frame of the production is an apparently innocent recitation competition in a cultural centre. Beneath the surface of everyday life, dark stories gradually unfold, and an ordinary competition featuring several young women transforms into a space of tragic human fates marked by predestination and loss. The boundary between reality and nightmares becomes increasingly blurred.

Luterán constructs the production on powerful metaphorical stage images, physical expressiveness, and irony that naturally interweave with elements of horror. Martin Štefánik's music does not rely on folkloric nostalgia but creates a modern soundscape full of tension and invisible threat.

The production does not ask what our ancestors feared, but what we fear today - and shows that the stories of ballads do not unfold in dark forests, but within humanity itself.

In Slovak with English subtitles. No intermission.