Animal farm
No one can insult a human being quite the way another human being can. And in doing so, people often compare one another to animals. But George Orwell realized long ago that this is hardly fair to animals. Who is man to place himself above them? In Animal Farm, Orwell showed us that the opposite is true: the most repulsive and treacherous thing an animal can become is a human being. And it becomes one precisely in an environment that brings out the animal instincts in humans and the very worst of humanity in animals.
The animal becomes a political creature — zoon politikon. Some say that this species is gradually dying out in our part of the world. Yet it is an exceptionally resilient and adaptable creature, so it is quite possible that it is not going anywhere.
“We have to face it: our lives are miserable and short!”
Animal Farm is a fable for adults. Orwell originally wrote it as a response to socialist totalitarian structures. But this fable reaches far beyond the time and place of the Soviet Union. In it, Orwell captured a process that has repeated itself for centuries: crowds longing for justice, revolution, and then… totalitarianism?!
Stopping this endless cycle of revolutions followed by new forms of tyranny is not the ambition of this production, subtitled When the Pigs Rule. Its ambition is rather to laugh bitterly at the eternal repetition of history. To that end, two worlds have come together: students of the Academy of Performing Arts and actors from Divadlo Zrakáč. The visually impaired and the visually privileged. Two generations. Two different ways of seeing the world — quite literally. They have joined forces to mock the blindness of the masses.
Please note: In this production, the audience is winked at.
Running time: 1 hour, no intermission.
The production was created in collaboration between Divadlo Zrakáč and the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU).
Creative Team:
Author: George Orwell, Martin Krč
Adaptation: Martin Krč, Veronika Briestenská
Director: Marek Lupták
Dramaturgy and Text Editing: Veronika Briestenská, Martin Krč
Set Design, Costumes, and Lighting Design: Emma Arnold
Production: Katarína Ostatníková
Cast:
Snowball: Zuzana Hrebičíková
Napoleon: Marek Hlina / Peter Kozák
Hen, Moses: Ján Mišľan
Farmer, Boxer: Alex Mihalík
Cow, Revolutionary: Katarína Novotková
Squealer: Adrián Hudák
