The Emigrants

Original title Emigranci
Première 13. oktober 2021, Mala Drama
Running time 1 hour 30 minutes. No intermission.

Director Nina Ramšak Marković
Translator Uroš Kraigher
Translation editing Darja Dominkuš
Dramaturg Milan Ramšak Marković
Set designer Igor Vasiljev
Costume designer Ana Janc
Composer Luka Ipavec
Language consultant Klasja Kovačič
Lighting designer Mojca Sarjaš

Cast
AA Nejc Cijan Garlatti
XX Marko Mandić

The Emigrants, a one-act play by Sławomir Mrożek, is a story that takes place on New Year’s Eve in the lives of two migrants – an intellectual (a political, ideological migrant) and a manual worker (an economic migrant). In their dialogue, they confront two radically different worldviews, and the denouement renders the two strangers left to their own devices and bereft of an illusion of a happy ending. The play, which is undeniably based on the author’s personal experience, is very witty and brilliantly written. The characters act as parasites in each other’s lives, although their constant conflict creates a symbiosis. They have opposing views of their situations, but from our perspective (or the perspective of the other), they belong to the same community. They are both excluded from society, which gives them the same symbolic value. They embody the role of a social parasite, renegade, immigrant. It is precisely in these lowest strata of the societal structure where the comic genre thrives. Comedy, using the banalities of concrete bodies in precisely defined actions, provides a clear and complex reading on both the concrete and the abstract level, whereby the concrete action does not remain merely as a metaphorical gesture but can hold a massive political and emancipatory potential.