SLG Celje - Shocking Shopping

The Grum Award 2011

Matjaž Zupančič is an award-winning director and playwright who has written more than ten plays (Devil Busters, The Delicious Corpse, Restlessness, Fly Killers, Vladimir, The Naked Pianist, The Corridor, A Dick in the Hand is Worth Two Thieves in the Bush, Couples at Stake, The Class, The Fall of Europe, Shocking Shopping). He has won the Grum Award for the best new Slovene play five times (Vladimir in 1998, The Naked Pianist in 2001, The Corridor in 2003, The Class in 2006, and Shocking Shopping in 2011). His plays have been performed or stage read in theatres in Slovenia, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, and Croatia. He has been invited to major European theatre festivals (Bonner Biennale, Festival d‘Avignon…) both as a director and a playwright in his own right. He teaches theatre and radio directing at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana. In 2011 Zupančič won the Grum Award for his latest play Shocking Shopping. According to the jury, Shocking Shopping is »a skillfully written play, which draws a global image of the world using microphysical examples«.

The unsuspecting Joseph Kotnik finds himself in the ‘Shocking Shopping’ mall to buy bread and a chicken-half, and is by pure chance nominated to be the fifty-thousandth visitor of the mall. Being promised significant benefits, discounts, special offers, membership cards and application forms, Joseph gets a view into the backstage of the mall, where things become increasingly bizarre, horrifying and cruel. The dazzling Mecca of shopping pleasures unveils its dark and thrilling side and sucks Kotnik into a brutal swirl with no escape.

According to Zupančič, the author and director, »Shocking Shopping is a play about violence, generated by stifled social frustration. Essentially, I wanted to write something that would be brutally concrete and utterly abstract at the same time. The ‘Shocking Shopping’ mall is dazzling, yet it has its darker side: once you’re in it, there is no way out. When dead bodies crop up, they have to be hidden and cleared away, so that people can continue shopping at ease. Freedom and choice have their price: when violence breaks out, we have to hold tight to the trolley and look away. There is, however, one problem − there is no one there to help you when it’s your turn. The SS mall is not only a system – it is a civilization. A passion play. A destiny.«

Director Matjaž Zupančič
Dramaturg Tina Kosi
Set Designer Sanja Jurca Avci
Costume Designer Bjanka Adžić Ursulov
Music selected by Vanja Novak
Fight Scenes Choreographer Sebastjan Starič
Language Consultant Jože Volk
Lighting Designer Andrej Hajdinjak

Cast
Jožef Kotnik Renato Jenček
Administrator Barbara Medvešček
Folker Tarek Rashid
Deputy Chairman Andrej Murenc
Chairman Vojko Belšak
Man in Socks Damjan M. Trbovc

Opening 21 September 2012
Performance duration: 90 minutes. No interval.