Fjodor Mihajlovič Dostojevski, Goran Ferčec
Demons
In Demons, Dostoevsky presents life in the Russian Empire in the 1860s and describes the rise of the movements that led to the Bolshevik Revolution. In a fictional Russian city, an extremist revolutionary group seeks to overthrow the government, undermine the church and rise to power. Its members, educated and intelligent but insensitive, do not care in the least about the distinction between good and evil. They, therefore, don’t choose their means to achieve their ends.
The group is led by Stavrogin, the charismatic aristocratic figure, and the incendiary upstart Verkhovensky. Stavrogin is entangled in several love webs, but he hides a dark secret – he once humiliated and plunged to death the most innocent of humans – a child. Verkhovensky, on the other hand, ominously orchestrates a revolution from the background. Gradually but surely, the events of the novel descend into general chaos. We witness suicides, visions of God, arson, lynching, murder, mistrust, friction between revolutionaries and the collective and exemplary sacrifice of a comrade from one’s own ranks. The end is tragic, as the revolution shows its true face and turns into its cruel opposite.
Dostoyevsky is regarded as a relentless interrogator of the conscience of society, of man, and especially of himself, and as the most comprehensive psychologist in world literature to date. In Demons he draws on his own life experience, as he was active in the 1840s as a member of the utopian-anarchist Petrashevsky Circle, for which he was arrested by the authorities and sentenced to death. He was already on the gallows when a pardon arrived, after which he served his sentence with forced labour in Siberia.
This time, Demons come before the Slovenian audience in a new dramatisation by Goran Ferčec, directed by Janusz Kica. According to Borut Kraševec, the third Slovenian translator of the novel after Vladimir Levstik and Janko Moder, it is high-time for the novel’s re-reading (and staging), as the world is bending under populist leaders or people who simply make noise on the political floor. The fact that Dostoyevsky did not describe specific events, but rather captured their essence and described the patterns and mechanisms used by man in the struggle for power, contributes to the novel’s renewed relevance.
Бесы, 1873
Dramatisation of the novel
World premiere of dramatisation
Premiere: 30. January 2026
Performance length is 3 hours and 15 minutes and has 1 pause.
Creators
Author of dramatization
Goran Ferčec
Translator
Seta Knop
Director
Janusz Kica
DRAMATURG
Luna Pentek
Set designer
Karin Fritz
Costume designer
Bjanka Adžić Urslov
Composer
Darja Hlavka Godina
Language consultant
Maja Cerar
Lighting designer
Andrej Koležnik
Sound designer
Sašo Dragaš
Assistant to dramaturg
Nejka Jevšek AGRFT
Assistant to set designer
Katarina Majcen
Actors
Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin
Branko Jordan
Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky
Matej Puc
VARVARA PETROVNA STAVROGINA
Judita Zidar
Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky
Jožef Ropoša
Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina
Jana Zupančič
Darya (Dasha) Petrovna Shatova
Diana Kolenc as guest
Lizaveta (Lis) Nikolaevna Tushina
Tina Potočnik Vrhovnik
Praskovya Ivanovna Drozdov
Tanja Dimitrievska
Mavriky Nikolaevitch
Tomo Tomšič
Alexei Kirillov
Primož Pirnat
Ivan Shatov
Jernej Gašperin
Ignaty Lebyadkin
Boris Ostan
Fedka
Gaber K. Trseglav
Maria Shatova
Nika Manevski as guest
Shigalyev
Tjaša Železnik
Virginsky
Jaka Lah
Lyamshin
Peter Alojz Marn as guest
Male Student
Female Student
Ajda Kostevc as guest
Tikhon
Sebastian Cavazza
Boris Kerč
Opening in January 2026
