MARIJS BOULOGNE: Večna Medikacija (Endless Medication)

Saturday, 10th of March and Sunday, 11th of March 2007 at 8.30 pm, Klub Gromka

City of Women festival intervention
Slovenian adaptation of the theatre play Endless Medication (in Slovene language)

Direction and adaptation: Simona Semenič (Slovenia) & Marijs Boulogne (Belgium)
Performers: Barbara Krajnc and Jelena Rusjan
Text: Marijs Boulogne, translation into Slovene: Tanja Lesničar Pučko
Dramaturgy: Jerneja Kušar, light design: Janko Oven; costumes: Nina Holc; accordion mentor: Maja Vujović; flyer design: Alma Dlakić; photography: Nada Žgank;
Production: City of Women Association; producer: Sabina Potočki; in collaboration with: KUD Channel Zero, AKC Metelkova mesto; with the help of: Društvo ŠKUC-LL, Club Monokel, AKC Metelkova mesto and with the support of: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the City Council of Ljubljana, Department of Culture

Price: 4 EUR (Tickets can be obtained 1 hour before the beginning of the performance at the venue entrance.)

Endless Medication is a theatre event created in 2003 by the Flemish performance artist Marijs Boulogne in collaboration with the Walloon actress Manah Depauw. In English version of performance presented at City of Women Festival 2005 the role of Rosa was interpreted by Flemish actress Sara De Bosschere (De Roovers collective). In 2006 City of Women decided to produce Slovene adaptation of the performance.

Endless Medicationtells the story of Rosa, a girl who cannot weep. She is made pregnant by the JesusChristMachine - possibly a reference to Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine - and is soon to give birth - through her intestines - to God's grandson. God appears in the form of a talking bulb and the pregnancy takes on the form of a watermelon growing under Rosa's skirt. Because the child is developing in Rosa's intestines it encumbers her metabolism: the watermelon must be cut / aborted. With God's help Rosa finally gives birth (from her leg) to a little boy who never cries. The story ends with Rosa's incarceration in a madhouse, an infanticide, and a trial in which Rosa is condemned to endless medication.

The performance is realised in the basic inventive style of fairground theatre. Marijs Boulogne treats the tricks of theatre in a childlike, lucid, but also perverse manner. A scatologic potence is hidden behind the apparent innocence of these two energetic, jolly, carefree girls. As a result of its subject - the conception and birth of the grandson of God, as well as the unforced, self-evident way in which they handle obscenity and violence, engenders a form of religiously-tinted pornography.

The name of the girl - Rosa - derives from the Saint Rosa of Lima (1586-1617), and similarly to the experiences of many female mystics from that period, religious ecstasy all too easily turns into highly sexually charged delirium. The sacral and blasphemous go hand in hand. As with Boulogne's later projects, Endless Medication is dominated by a radical, female corporality with particular focus on the interior of the body. Rather than the breasts or the belly she is interested in the cunt and the intestines, shit, menstruation and bodily fluids in general. The disorder that Rosa's pregnancy causes her body finds its antithesis in the chaos, filth and dirt left behind on the stage at the end of the performance. At the same time this workcan also be seen within the context of Flemish historical sensitivity for the grotesque, the macabre and the vital. 

Marianne Van Kerkhoven

Premiere of the Slovene performance Večna Medikacija / Endless Medication took place on 14th of May, 2006 at Club Channel Zero, AKC Metelkova mesto

Links:

Photos from the performance  (by Nada Žgank)