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11 Mandić seeks the core of the actor that transcends the part. In this he is merciless, sucking out the essence from the role. He hardly stops to pause at transitions, which makes the performance seem less an overview of the various roles than an uncontrolled source of Mandics creative energies as an actor. Tanja Lesničar- Pučko, Ljubljanski dnevnik

Marko Mandić is an actor of extremes, fanatically devoted to the principle of “all or nothing”, never half-hearted, or affording himself any leeway, also by way of transposing the function of the body to a merely symbolic level. His performative statement is always absolute, pure, psychophysically all-encompassing, and compact. Already in the two earlier performances of Viva Mandić and Mandić Extract (within the Via nova series), Mandics body became an embodied phenomenon of surpassing its own potentials always totally devoted to the moment on the stage and condensed into a vortex of a performative surplus. Patricija Maličev, SiOL.net

MARKO MANDIĆ is an actor and a performer, an established presence in his native Slovenia and an emerging theatre star in the international arena. This was confirmed by the selection of his work by Shooting Stars at the 2007 Berlinale and by numerous awards he has received for his work. He graduated from Ljubljana Academy of Theatre and then supplemented his studies at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and the HB Studio in New York for two years. He is a permanent member of the repertory ensemble cast at Slovene National Theatre Drama. In Via Negativa projects he collaborates with convincing stage power and his search for actor’s truth on stage, aware of its representational functions. The only moment that has nothing to do with acting is ejaculation, I can’t act that.” (Marko Mandić, from the performance Would Would Not, 2005)

BOJAN JABLANOVEC is a theatre director, founder and artistic director of the Via Negative project. He graduated at Ljubljana Academy of Theater. From 1993 to 1999, he directed in most Slovenian theatres. From 1997 to 1999, he lectured as an assistant/trainee at Academy of Theatre Ljubljana. In 1999, he stopped directing in Slovenian repertory theatres and dedicated himself to theatre research. In 2002 he founded Via Negative, an international contemporary performing arts project. Together with his cocreators he created more than AO Via Negative projects, grouped into three bigger cycles: Seven Deadly Sins (2002-2008), Via Nova (20092012) and Irresolvable (from 2011). Jablanovec is above all interested in theatre as a medium of communication rather than aestheticization. Using a reduction as working method, he focuses on the relationship between the performer and the viewer, and on the question of the real in this relationship.

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HARD TO BE