After a long break, on September 17 and 18, Iliauni Theatre will premiere a new production.
As part of the Tbilisi International Theatre Festival, Iliauni Theatre will stage The Banality of Love, a play by contemporary Israeli playwright Savyon Liebrecht. This famous love story is being brought to the Georgian stage for the first time, directed by Mamuka Tsertsvadze.
The play tells the story of the deeply unplatonic relationship between two major 20th-century philosophers, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.
This is not a classic love story between an 18-year-old girl and a 35-year-old married man where trust and a sense of obligation are cynically abused. Beyond the romantic and teacher-student dynamics, the secret affair between Jewish Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger—a temporary member of the Nazi Party—is both fascinating and deeply disturbing.
Theatre, by its nature, is a political art form. However, the political aspects of human life are also transformed into artistically compelling narratives. The central subject of theatre is the human being: defining what it means to be human and answering questions about how and in what forms human nature reveals itself.
Exploring and analyzing these questions becomes especially important in the context of the totalitarian and violent regimes of the 20th century. Moreover, it is crucial to note that politics, technological progress, and globalization play a significant role in our everyday lives—raising questions about the scope and space for individual freedom and self-expression.
