Sex Education II: Fight

Director TJAŠA ČRNIGOJ

Tjaša Črnigoj graduated in theatre directing from Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television and also studied philosophy and comparative literature at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. She is currently in education to become a psychodrama psychotherapist at the Slovenian Society for Psychodrama. As a theatre director and author, she works in both institutional and independent scenes. In 2021, she spent five months in residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where she led a transdisciplinary laboratory Through the Eyes of Others. She received a scholarship from the In the Field program at the Wiener Festwochen festival in 2022 and was part of the European Theatre Academy 2024 (European Theatre Convention), which took place during the Festival d’Avignon. One of her most notable theater projects in the recent years is Sex Education II (The New Post Office and City of Women, 2022/2023), a series of five lecture-performances on women’s sexual pleasure, which was awarded in the Week of Slovenian Drama, and at the Maribor Theatre Festival as well as from the Association of Theatre Critics and Researchers of Slovenia and the BITEF festival in Belgrade. In 2024 Tjaša Črnigoj received the Župančič Award, the highest recognition from the City of Ljubljana for achievements in the arts, and the Women on Women Award from City of Women, which ‘highlights and unveils invisible work, stories, courage, and determination of engaged groups and individuals striving for a better, more just world’.

As an event, the fight constantly oscillates between the cruelty of violence against women, blood-stained hands and underwear, and the optimistic future announced by the diaphragm as a sign of a bright future for contraceptive potentials. Zala Dobovšek, Neodvisni, Oct. 23, 2023

The series of lecture-performances entitled Sex Education II confronts and reminds us of the importance of acquired rights and the advancement of medical science. Fight is a journey through time and space: from the initial stage in Unity Square we journey into 1940 and into the body of a model woman somewhere in former Yugoslavia—a woman without education and rights, living as an object used to satisfy male sexual urges, perhaps even pleasure. Petra Tanko, Radio Slovenija, Program Ars, June 5, 2023

In lines with the feminist principle, the theatre narrative constantly intertwines the personal and the political, reminding us how we take the rights which are the result of the long and persistent fight of our sisters for granted. …  We can lose everything we have gained in a heartbeat. This is why it is necessary to remember those times, but also to gain an awareness of the current situation. … With its format, Sex Education II reminds us of the activist extent of theatre [...], which finds it function mainly in its ability to change society through aesthetics. All those of us who followed Sex Education II all the way to the end certainly found ourselves at least a tiny bit changed by this feminist school. Ana Lorger, Sigledal, June 5, 2023

Text + Staging Tjaša Črnigoj Co-Direction + Performance: Lina Akif, Vanda Velagić Co-Direction, Decor + Costume Tijana Todorović Co-Direction + Decor Lene Lekše Consulting Dr. MajVoice of the grandmother Nina Skrbinšek Voice of the Narrator Sara Horžen Music Selection Ensemble Language Consulting Mateja Dermelj Editing + Sound Editing Jure Vlahovič, Silvo Zupančič Production Nastja Kotnik Minik Video + Camera Hana Vodeb Technical Direction Igor Remeta Ligting Design Tjaša Črnigoj,  Igor Remeta, Manca Vukelič, Tijana Todorović, Lene Lekše, Demijan Pintarič Stage Management Klemen Švikart Collaboration Kolektiv Igralke German Surtitle Panthea / Tina Malič

Production The New Post Office (Maska Ljubljana und Mladinsko Theater) Support City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. Sex education II is part of the project Testing Ground: Reparative Practices for New Cultural Ecosystem, supported by EU Creative Europe.

Guest Performance Support Slowenisches Kulturzentrum Berlin

Creation The New Post Office, Ljubljana: 1 June 2023