Poverty

While the production Kukura tackles the theme of cultural and moral crisis in Slovakia, the production Poverty by the Pôtoň Theatre deals with material crisis. Unemployment, the absence of social policy and insufficient material provision for families in the remote corners of Slovakia were the object of the field research by the authors who have created an independent author production based on this authentic material. Not many theatres in Slovakia would choose this way. The tandem Ditte – Jurčová, in close cooperation with their creative team, has designed an impressive, powerful work bordering between theatre and document. They did not limit themselves to the pure depiction of reality, misery and poverty of people living on the outskirts of society. The staging balances on the borders of genres. The documentary, realistic and authentic bits are outweighed by a vivid visual art stage stylization and gradual casting of doubts on the reality happening on the stage, bringing in almost horror elements combined with sci-fi.

What will the generation of children growing up in material misery all their lives without any positive behavioural models be like? This topic touches us all, in fact, it is not only about poverty culture but rather about the general culture as such. The lack of culture, illiteracy, intolerance, aggression, racism, homophobia can, and most probably will, mushroom in a society that is indifferent to everything. This work raises the question of guilt as well.
Marián Amsler

“However, authentic materials obtained from field research were not included in the performance straightforwardly. Under the supervision of director Iveta Ditte-Jurčová and dramaturgist Róbert Mankovecký, interviews, encounters with poverty in its most dramatic and purest form, took the form of a typical drama. Those who were expecting an utterly documentary piece, an insight into the real world that had been successfully caught on a several-hour tape, had to do with what the author of the text, Michal Ditte, extracted into a drama story. That – after all – turned out to be a saturated concentrate of all minor stories that the team of authors came across in their work.”
Martina Mašlárová, The kød Journal, April 2012