Run, Maša, Run

Nothing is as it seems in the family of magnate Konrad Maček, even though everything looks fine at first sight.

Suzana, Konrad's wife, knows that their love has long since faded away. She drowns her despair in alcohol, trapped in a dead marriage, because Konrad will not agree to a divorce. He is aware that if they were to break up, he would most likely lose his beloved daughter Flora, the only person that still makes him happy. Arne, Suzana‘s son from her first marriage, a journalist by profession, is tirelessly digging into Konrad's past to uncover his stepfather's dirty deeds. Konrad is one of the heroes of the War of Independence who put his ten days of patriotism to good use, transforming himself from a political magnate into a ruthless tycoon. At his side is his loyal lawyer Milošič and his political party, which has its supporters in the police, the prosecutor's office, the courts, ministries and government services.

Run, Maša, Run, 2019

Criminal drama

World premiere

Premiere: 25. April 2024

Performance length is 1 hour and 0 minutes and has no pause.

Creators

Director

Nina Šorak

We meet Konrad on the fateful night when he runs over and kills an elderly lady at a pedestrian crossing and flees from the scene of the accident. At first, he does not realise that his daughter Maša and her boyfriend Jernej were by the lady's side, and Jernej was the one who called the paramedics. Jernej is detained by the police and brutally interrogated on Konrad's instructions, while Maša flees away, because her mother, in her dying breath, whispers to her to run away. Her mother is Marija Rakovska, the widow of Saša Rakovski, a Yougoslav national army officer who worked with Konrad for the Slovenian army. Saša Rakovski died in unexplained circumstances and Konrad Maček prevented the investigation, which made Saša Rakovski a traitor. Since childhood, Maša had watched Marija's persistent struggle to rehabilitate her husband, who had no hope of victory, as the implacable Konrad stood in her way. A few hours after the accident, Maša turns to Arne at Konrad's family home to take a picture of the car in blood and finally expose the powerful Konrad. But even Konrad, who is in the middle of fabricating the circumstances of the accident, knows that she is the only remaining eyewitness in his house.

Run, Maša, Run is conceived as a crime drama with time and space jumps backwards and forwards. Dragica Potočnjak, the playwright, who is surely remembered by the Ljubljana City Theatre audiences for her shocking play For Our Young Ladies, for which she won the Grum Award, follows the play's characters from the present to the past and back again in order to reveal all the hidden threads that connect people and events. In doing so, the tragic arises precisely from the collision of the intimate and the political. Dragica Potočnjak is one of the authors who, in drama and in life, actively focuses on underprivileged people from the margins of society, because she knows that every realised dream also has its victims who live in nightmare.

Premiere in April 2024 on Small Stage