AniMak

“Everyone carries their double cross!” AniMak was created by a collective work on the theme “identity search in the present-day consumer and multicultural society”. Who are we? Where do our roots reach? Does the human nature change over time? Can we talk about national identity at the present time?
The source material for answering the questions raised was the novel Jozef Mak by J.C. Hronsky and his idea of a human being as one out of a million. The archetype of ‘another person in the crowd’ is identified as the most distinctive feature (not only) of the Slovak nation. The story is analogous with what we find in the contemporary society as a ‘crisis’ of identity, where blending of national cultures brings many economic advantages, on the other had though, the rituals and traditions of different nations are shaken. Are traditional rituals in our society still necessary? The disintegration of traditions and rituals in the family and consequently in social life requires us to ask ourselves the questions that the main hero of the novel himself poses: Who am I?

AniMak will first try to show typical situations from the current life of the contemporary society, which does force us to do automated tasks with empty meaning repeatedly. By spreading the story into the introspection of the characters themselves, it attempts to capture the essence: “How do we perceive our traditions or rituals and in what form do they appear in the (post)postmodern society?” The production was created by methods typical for the devised theater and is a collective statement of students, who reflect the issue from their perspective.

The main motivation of the creators was to create a performance that will respond to the current state of the identity of man and society: “Do we live in the world of empty meanings?”