Ivano-Frankivsk Drama Theater

Does our life experience disappear after death, or does it continue to exist in our descendants?

The play 1975 by the Slovenian director Tomi Janežić is a documentary fiction of several generations of a family from Ivano-Frankivsk, based on real stories from the lives of the actors and the director. The events of 1975 are the doorway to a labyrinth in which the fates of family members intertwine throughout the 20th century, unexpectedly connecting the regions of Ukrainian Ivano-Frankivsk, Slovenian Nova Gorica and Italian Gorizia, which were once part of Austria-Hungary. Since the First World War and decades later, the life paths of this family continued to lead to the other side of the former empire.

Each of us is a carrier of fragments of ancestral history. We are the threads of an endless family fabric woven from ups and downs, great achievements and lowly crimes, extremely banal and incomprehensibly unique.

And this performance is a fictional and at the same time undeniably true myth passed down from generation to generation of a large family that is so similar to each of us.

‘1975’ is part of a theatre dodecalogy, i.e. a cycle of twelve performances covering the period from 1972 to 1983, as part of the Destin(y)ation project, which involves theatres from several countries, created specifically for the European Capital of Culture GO25! programme, as in 2025 this title will be awarded to Toma Janežić’s hometown, Nova Gorica/Gorizia (Slovenia/Italy).

The place where we spent our childhood and its connection to other places along the way form the basis of this dodecalogy, which addresses, among other things, intergenerationalism, borders, socio-political and ideological change, and war.

A tour of the 1975 production is planned for 2025 in Nova Gorica in cooperation with the Slovenian National Theatre.