Slovenia's prodigal son Tomaz Pandur comes home

The Slovene theatre director and author Tomaz Pandur is back home. Slovenia's prodigal son has found success in some of the worlds best theatres but many people are convinced that his 7 most creative years were in Slovenia at the beginning of the 90s. His latest play is called One hundred minutes and is based on Dostojevski's novel The Brothers Karamazof.

What do you feel Europe wants to hear from theatre right now?

"If I am a little bit naive I would say the truth, but especially right now no-one wants to hear the truth, not about himself, not about the theatre, not about the time we are living in. It's a battle, actually, with what people want to see and what they like to see, so these are two categories. But I think we should really attack all the senses so what I am trying to do is build a multi-sensoric which even attacks the subconscious, so people are reacting on our action, and that's beautiful. That's a really beautiful experience and that brings me back my belief in the theatre, that the theatre is a powerful force, it's an energy, but you have to deal with it really carefully, because it can cause a lot of good and on the other hand a lot of bad as well. I really like to play with those levels because I like to think there is really no border between, as Einstein put it, between time and space. But it is the most beautiful thing for me in the theatre that I can dream awake. So with eyes wide open."

Your performance is in many languages, in three or four languages...

"I think for the first time I found the key of how to deal with different languages and how to deal with the energy of the languages. And of course everything comes out of the dramaturgical concept that, all four brothers from the novel, they are meeting again after eighteen years living abroad, and even for brothers, in our production they all speak of course the four different languages. And that was for me the starting point of starting to create those four wanderers in the time and the space they have to establish their own language to understand each other. And I think it's a global metaphor for the world right now, for Europe and for the illusion of new Europe as it seems to be... Our reality in the future."

In which language are you dreaming?

"It depends, if it's a nightmare I am dreaming in Hungarian for example, but of course I am dreaming more or less in Slovenian because it's in the dreams that actually, roots are coming back to you, so it's in Slovenian and in colours."