“Youth Without God;” Unkind, Realistic Reminder

TESZT 2024 brings, from Zagreb Youth Theatre, Borut Šeparović’s production Youth Without God, on a text written by the director and Ivana Vuković. Technology, violence, Nazism, looking up to figures detrimental to the development of the kids add up to an unhealthy level of realism, credibility, and recognisability that develops from funny, to familiar, and, eventually, to scary, even terrifying.

Taking place at a school and university age, the whole technological construction of the show is so well integrated in the reality depicted on stage that it feels more like a necessity in depicting younger generations, than a delimiter of the plot’s planes. It makes sense and is relatable in a way that makes the audience want (increasingly more) to have a plot twist towards the positive side, to not be held accountable for the Reality of the (European and not only) socio-political situation.

“Without God”, but with questionable heroes, the young characters have the teacher (named professor, as well, as the Croatian language allows for this overlapping of terms), whose ideas unfortunately do not support any positive cause. He acts like a counter-God, not only as a counterexample, discreetly emphasizing the youth’s need for, if not a role model, at least a supporter of their beliefs, a means of understanding the concept and feeling of Belonging. Here the question of capacity of discerning comes into play – in a society and world where the trend follows a certain path, a likeable authority figure with messed-up opinions is the infallible recipe for… failure…

Youth Without God, directed by Borut Šeparović, written by Borut Šeparović and Ivana Vuković, Zagreb Youth Theatre (Croatia), at TESZT 2024.

The pills, steroids, antidepressants don’t act as excuses, but rather as mere details of the characters’ construction, as the actors (Rakan Rushaidat, Ugo Korani, Toma Medvešek, Bernard Tomić, with the exception of Ivan Pašalić), exhibit a bloodthirst that exceeds anything that can be generated by meds. They are “born killers”, the video games having not caused any damage to their identity, but having rather supported it and, in turn, having been supported by the ideas spread and cultivated by the teacher.

Who are, then, the zombies? The ones with a so-called “herd mentality” or the characters, themselves unsurprisingly exhibiting a herd mentality? Who do we trust? How do we trust them when the blindfold is sold to us like an eye-opening medicine?

Technology, strongly integrated, since a couple of years ago, into the lives of students to help them deal better with this ever-developing society is, for Borut Šeparović and his team, twisted to the core – no emails, kind reminders, online classes or e-books, but meaningless facial filters on social media, violent games, radicalistic (and radicalizing) propaganda, and live-cam girls…

Youth Without God, directed by Borut Šeparović, written by Borut Šeparović and Ivana Vuković, Zagreb Youth Theatre (Croatia), at TESZT 2024.

After the sex worker (Nikolina Prkačin) contours a very broad image of financially struggling young women, who resort to socially-suicidal methods to make a living, after most of the characters’ identities are revealed and they tell the real story behind them, naming the people in the photos, there comes the real terrifying moment of the production. The actress Lucija Dujmović, whose presence was a delicate addition to most of the performance, with barely any interventions in the slaughter-planning apart from a short self-introduction, but always gravitating in the background with an observant glance, delivers the ending speech. Holding onto the papers, with tears running down her face. Slightly breaking character, her presence screams a “Get me out of here!” to which we, the spectators, perfectly relate, but the tirade doesn’t stop. She looks at the audience as if nailed to the stage, with hands trembling onto the pages… Do you remember Anders Breivik? The one who challenged the European perspective on terrorism? Not connected to any outside organisation, not sponsored by anyone, simply maniacal and degenerate… Well, Youth without God reminds us, in a room so silent you can hear the stage wood crack under the weight of the set, that he’s almost out of jail, almost free again, in a world where Humanity’s limits are pushed back every single day, where “political motivations” and pure hatred flood social media, where it seems that history does like repeating itself…

There are seven of godless young adults on stage, but here Theatre makes a bold move – it is just a play, just a show, just a performance. Nothing’s real. Nothing’s real… right?