"We don't know you."

Jean-Luc Lagarce's autobiographical authorial testimony. Hypnorealism. 

The 1990s. Successful, single and childless thirty-something Parisian Louis visits his family in the country. His visits are becoming less and less frequent and a long time has passed since the last time he came. Cultural differences divide families, too. Louis returns home to confide a great and weighty secret and is welcome by his mother living in the past and memories of his dead father, his brother who stayed to take care of their mother, his brother’s wife and his youngest sister who looks up to her older brother living in the city. Silence and awkwardness. Tension grows as they all try not to reopen old wounds that still hurt.

Everyone is trying to keep their emotions under control, to play their parts, but who defined those parts? Is self-repression the only way to be together? Where are the limits of selfishness in family relationships and how important is it to protect the illusions about others? Career ambitions and claims of freedom clash with the requirement to look after our loved ones. It's as if succeeding at anything were impossible. Omnipresent guilt permeates the entire house. Who creates who in this family and who owes who what? How often should we return home? What is home, anyway?

A production between reality and a model. Theatre and a PC game. A family simulator.

The play by today’s most staged French playwright explores the autobiographical motive of a complicated relationship between a liberal intellectual from the city and his family in the country. Desire for intimacy against the background of motives of returning home, leaving our loved ones behind, changing place and identity, changing our social class, and our relationship towards life and life values are an important theme in French literature. It can be found in the work of Didier Eribon, Annie Ernaux, Michel Houellebecq or Édouard Louis, whose pseudonym was inspired by Louis, the main protagonist of It's Only the End of the World. We see the play as a prologue to our Season 49: End of illusions, as it depicts the clash of different values between the city and the countryside, a breeding ground for today's culture wars, and the erosion of traditional family.

Season 49: End of Illusions

Ivan Buraj
Director and co-author of theatre texts, Ivan Buraj was born in Bratislava in 1988. In 2015, he became HaDivadlo’s artistic director and authored a series of interpretations of classic plays by Chekhov, Ibsen, Gorky (the Divadelni noviny Award in 2019) or Havel and adaptations of complex novels such as The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch (project of the year according to the ...pristi vlna/next wave festival… in 2017), I’m not Stiller by Max Frisch in Studio Hrdinů, Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz at the New Stage of the National Theatre or Gianna Molinari’s Everything Is Still Possible Here at the Drama Theater of Usti nad Labem. Humanism 2022 is his latest production in HaDivadlo he co-wrote with Bohdan Karásek. His artistic direction of HaDivadlo can be characterised by long-term development of engaged and overlapping repertoire that led for example to the creation of film remediations (Provincials, Eyolf) or collaboration with CET’s platform called Terén.

Debora Štysová
Interdisciplinary artist active in the Czech performing scene since 2019. She studied architecture at the Czech Technical University and alternative theatre at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). She had a stage design internship at Institut del Teatre in Barcelona. She has had a long-time interest in public space, communication and possibilities and limits of the body. She engages in movement theatre, paratheatre events and site-specific projects. She is usually active in international creative collectives. She collaborated with director Ran Jiao (CNú, Miřenka Čechová and the Tantehorse company (CZ), costume designer Friedrich Floen (NO) or dancer Michaela Stará (CZ). In 2020, she graduated from DAMU with authorial production 30 DNÍ / 30 days using the devised theatre method together with Tinka Avramova (BG/US). The production was presented in the Czech Republic (Studio Alta, Moving Station, Cross Attic) and at many prestigious festivals (Zero Point Festival, Summer Film School Uherské Hradiště, Divadlo International Theatre Festival, Žižkov Night Festival). In co-production with Studio Alta, she is now working on her second authorial work called Traces of Human Presence.

Matúš Kobolka
Programmer, composer and performer of electronic music who has been linked to Bratislava music label LOM since 2011 creates under the name of Bolka. After graduating from the Institute of Sonology in The Hague, Matúš shifted his focus from sound improvisation to a more subversive approach to sound material and technology. His solo work oscillates on the border between hedonistic humour and seriousness, connecting playful performance with the culture of academic electroacoustic music. Since 2016, he has also worked on music and sound design for theatre, performance, contemporary dance and border projects. He collaborated with Lucie Repašská and the D'epog collective, Rastislav Ballek, Ivan Buraj, Peter Gonda, Yuri Korec and others.

Sofia Plaskonisová
Designer and costume designer. She graduated in fashion design in 2022. Her authorial collections deal with culture and social issues. She is interested in dystopia, sexuality, escapism and fast maturing of children. Her debut collection came out during Bratislava fashion days in 2022. The collection is called Cyberpunk and reflects the issue of technological progress and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Sofia likes to use storytelling centered on subcultures and specific people who either identify themselves as or are subculture members. Sofia rejects consumerism and fast fashion practices.