Salome

Oscar Wilde—a highly educated, witty, and notorious London dandy who was vocal about championing for decadence, a "causeur" who used irony to mock the hypocrisy of Victorian society, and who was, for this very reason, a highly sought-after guest in all of London’s salons – experienced, during his lifetime, a fall from the constellation of international fame into the depths of public disgrace, which brought him to prison and hard labour, and finally, when he was already sick and mentally broken, into orchestrated oblivion. All this simply because he was homosexual. In the name of propriety, Victorian society ruthlessly cancelled all other forms of love, worshipped patriarchal family, and imposed sexual abstinence and modesty primarily on women. That is why Herodias’s daughter Salome is the most rebellious, headstrong, and unpredictable of all Wilde’s heroines.

Salome flees from the banquet table, where her stepfather Herod Antipas is entertaining the nobles, to escape his lustful glances. Outside, by the old well where the prophet Iokanaan (John the Baptist) is imprisoned, she meets the servant Narraboth, who is secretly in love with her. It is he who grants Salome’s wish to meet the mysterious prisoner. When Salome sees the prophet, who tirelessly calls down God’s wrath and anger upon the debauched sinners, she is so captivated by him that she falls in love with him and wants to kiss him. Disgusted, Iokanaan rejects her and retreats back into the well.

Meanwhile, Herod misses his beautiful stepdaughter in the palace and, despite the warning of his new wife Herodias, goes in search of her. The banquet moves from indoors under the night sky, where Herod, amid the prophet’s loud curses, sees and hears only bad omens, yet this does not deter him from asking Salome to perform her famous Dance of the Seven Veils, promising her whatever she desires as a reward. After the dance, Salome demands the prophet’s head, and with this wish—arising from the intersection of Eros and Thanatos—she disturbs the social order and, by extension, the very structure of the world.

The play will be directed by Serbian director Miloš Lolić, who, after completing his studies in Belgrade, quickly made a name for himself both in the South-Slavic theatre region and in the German-speaking world. In Slovenia and abroad, he has created a series of acclaimed productions, including Ionesco’s comedy Jack, or The Submission and Krleža’s drama Adam and Eve at the Ljubljana City Theatre. Lolić is known for his contemporary, highly interpretive approaches to dramatic texts, in which he meticulously analyses and reveals the hidden disintegration of the ideological foundations of our existence. He has received a number of international awards for his work—from the Borštnik Award to the Austrian national Nestroy Theatre Prize and the Dorothea-Neff-Award.