Closing of Love

Mini teater Ljubljana, City Theatre Ptuj, Novo kazalište theatre and Zadar snova International Festival of Contemporary Theatre

Première: 23 August 2013, Mini teater Ljubljana
Running time 2 hours. One interval.

Original title Clôture de l’amour

Translator Suzana Koncut
Director Ivica Buljan
Dramaturg and assistant director Robert Waltl
Costume designer Ana Savić Gecan
Space and sound design son:DA

Cast
Pia Pia Zemljič
Marko Marko Mandić

A love story rarely has a peaceful ending. When a woman and a man mark the beginning of the end, an outburst is almost sure to follow. In The Closing of Love, sublime theoretical motives live like parasites on the perverse love kitsch created by a man and a woman: two monologues that develop the identical discourse on a life lived together, on the drastic breakup and on the terror of the unknown future. Both heroes are full of scorn, aloofness and cruelty. In this duel between a man and a woman speech is the single weapon, words are shots and bayonet strokes. Borders between actors and real characters are completely erased. Hence the spectator is truly involved and engaged in the story.
What is the secret of the seductive attractiveness of The Closing of Love? It is a pure love story at a time in which pure love stories – the way we remember them as lost remnants of the past – are no longer possible. The collective dream of Western men is that it is possible to die when love dies. In life however we realise that we all survive this death. It is not easy to "love forever and ever” as in great stories. Only heroes are capable of that, whereas we ordinary mortals strive to recall over and again the intensity of "true love” and that is why we ceaselessly multiply it.

Photo: Nikola Predović