BETONTANC & UMKA.LV: SHOW YOUR FACE! (2006)
Theatre play
Produced by Bunker Productions & The New Theatre Institute Of Latvia
Directed by Matjaz Pograjc
Opening night: May 25th 2006
More info:
www.theatre.lv (in English)
www.bunker.si (in Slovene and English)

"One of Betontanc's three best performances." Rok Vevar, Delo
"Slovenian company Betontanc and Latvian object theatre Umka.lv ... have compacted almost all the horror and absurdity of our time. Dark in contents and black in form, the performance has incredibly emotional (live!) music and admiringly healthy irony towards their own story." Dita Eglite, Delfi

Show Your Face!, a multimedia performance created by Slovene and Latvian artists from the Betontanc and Umka companies, utilises the techniques of physical and object theatre. The play's protagonist, Little Branko (a masterly animated babygrow) is a small, unimportant person - a man without a face - travelling through the 20th century. On his way, Branko meets various people - people who were, like him, unable to change the world because they were either too courageous or not brave enough.

Silence wrote the soundtrack in collaboration with Ugis Vitins, a prominent Latvian musician. The music, performed live during the show by Hladnik (upright piano), Benko (voice, toy synthesizers, xylophone and percussion) and Vitins (saxophone and percussion), combines various genres: classic, cabaret, musical...

In 2007, Show Your Face! was awarded for collective artistic achievement at the central Slovene theatre festival, the 42nd Borstnik Meeting. The jury wrote: "In Show Your Face!, a play about the contemporary everyman without identity, standpoint and face, Betontanc, Umka.lv and Silence create a touching and vulnerable tale about life in a world without utopia and hope utilising their diverse and suggestive artistic skills. The central figure, a kind of postmodern Woyzeck, fleeing a world he is unable to intervene in from his existential position, attracts dramaturgic connotations - as well as the desires of the audience - due to the virtuosic animation, acting, choreography and music of the aforementioned collectives. It is the sinergy between the performances and the audience that turns the play into genuine theatre magic."

01. Talkshow
02. Hypnotic
03. The Bus
04. The Chase
05. The Party
06. The Priest
07. The Death Of Rosa Luxemburg
08. Torture Chamber
09. The Birth
10. Sign!
11. In Your Face
12. Silkskin
13. Ascension

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