Special event for Midsummer Scene 2024
in collaboration with Wax Factory and
Marin Držić Theatre
LULU XX
7 July at 8.00 p.m.
Marin Držić Theatre
co-creators | Ivan Talijančić + Erika Latta
performed by | Erika Latta
directed and designed by | Ivan Talijančić
costumes | Miodrag Guberinić
sound | Yiannis Christofides
video | Irfan Brković
lights | Paul Hudson
production stage manager | Els Collins
stage magicians | Kestrel Leah, Jay Owen Eisenberg
photography by Tasja Keetman
At the turn of the 20th century, German playwright Frank Wedekind imagined Lulu, an elusive heroine as puzzling and indestructible as his relentless search for quintessence of the “other” sex. As complex as the pandemonium of female archetypes invented throughout history, she manifested herself as the definitive embodiment of the eternal strife to reconcile the worlds of opposite genders. At the turn of the 21st century – in 1999 – having just co-founded WaxFactory, Ivan Talijancic and Erika Latta turned their attention to LULU, as their first formal collaboration. And in 2000, the company presented LULU on KMD stage as part of Karantena Festival.
WaxFactory celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2019 by reinventing this work as LULU XX, a new cross-media performance, devised by the company’s co-founders. Our production, inspired by Wedekind’s timeless female protagonist, challenges the dominance of the male gaze in artistic representation of women. Inspired by the momentum of feminist protest, we revisit the unapologetic heroine, asking new questions about agency, representation and violence in our contemporary world.
Directed and designed by Talijancic, LULU XX unfolds over nine climatic scenes using WaxFactory’s signature multidisciplinary approach to storytelling. In a virtuosic performance, Latta undergoes multiple radical transformations to embody each avatar of Lulu. Aided by an immersive video environment that includes a kaleidoscopic, forced-perspective box set with projections covering each wall in its entirety, LULU XX finds WaxFactory working at the pinnacle of their theatrical vision.
WaxFactory is an international multidisciplinary performance group founded in 1998 in New York City. Dubbed as “mesmerizing theatre for the 21st century” by Flavorpill, the company has developed a track record of producing boundary-breaking performance, site-based, immersive and cinematic works, developed for unconventional sites, from an intimate basement of an ancient Roman palace (QUARTET v2.0 in Split, Croatia,) an abandoned industrial site occupying an entire city block (LADYFROMTHESEA at the Old American Can Factory in Brooklyn, New York) to works unfolding over a two-week period throughout an entire city (39 FRAMES in Salzburg, Austria.) The company has presented work at some of the foremost venues and festivals on four continents, such as Centre Pompidou (Paris, France,) Lincoln Center (New York City,) Adelaide Festival (Australia,) ICA (London, UK,) Zürcher Theaterspektakel (Zurich, Switzerland,) Centro Julio Le Parc (Mendoza, Argentina,) MES Festival (Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina,) Cankarjev Dom (Ljubljana, Slovenia) and many others.
This performance of LULU XX has been made possible through generous support from the Heathcote Foundation / FACE Croatia (USA,) the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (USA,) Canada Council for the Arts and WaxFactory’s Individual Donors. This engagement is supported in part by Mid Atlantic Arts through USArtists International, a program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding (USA.)