Last night, 15 August, art collective BADco. performed The Stranger project at the Revelin Fort Terrace. This was the first time that this highly esteemed Croatian collective, which deals with contemporary performing practices and has already built respectable reputation abroad, performed at Dubrovnik Summer Festival.

First performed in June 2015 as part of the Perforations Festival, The Stranger is inspired by the novel written by Albert Camus, French writer and philosopher. Departing from the problem of the absence of (com)passion and expected emotional reactions, the Stranger project, using Camus’s antihero Meursault, provides a view of the social and systemic hypocrisies that are hidden behind relationships based on transparency. This stage reading of the Stranger focuses on three dominant images borrowed from the novel: the situation of confession, prison, and the moment of the murder itself as the point where all of the novel’s forces accumulate. The reconfiguration of the relations established between the performance and audience, the challenging perspectival givens, the architectonics of the performance and the problematizing of communicational structures – are the elements that define BADco. an internationally significant artistic phenomenon and one of the most differentiated performance experiences in which Festival audience could enjoy for the first time.

The Stranger is directed by Goran Sergej Pristaš according to Goran Ferčec's text and dramaturgy. Choreography and performance is done by Nikolina Pristaš, Zrinka Užbinec, Ana Kreitmeyer and Petar Milat. Brothers Alan and Nenad Sinkauz are music authors and they perform live music on stage. Siniša Ilić is the author of drawings and set design, while Silvio Vujičić is the costume designer. Light designer is Alan Vukelić, Jasmin Dasović is a sound designer and Iva Dežmar is mask designer. Project producer is Lovro Rumiha.