Studio for the Research on the Art of Acting is celebrating its 30th anniversary and Krušče Creative Center is marking its 20th year.
At its founding in 1996, the Studio for the Research on the Art of Acting was one of the few spaces for actor training that emphasized the need for artistic research and experimentation. The founders of the Studio were Tomi Janežič, Barbara Krajnc, and Sebastijan Cavazza. Soon afterwards, Primož Ekart also became active in the Studio, followed later by many others.
Artistic research—today a widely established concept in the performing arts and other artistic fields—was still relatively uncommon at that time, as were theatre laboratories dedicated to creative experimentation with new theatrical methods.
During its first years, the Studio focused primarily on the study of acting techniques. Over the years, it hosted numerous distinguished experts in the field of acting in Slovenia. Later, its work expanded to the exploration of the “principles of acting” — a syncretic approach that sought to connect seemingly opposing methods and practices.
Following the Studio’s first production in 1996, theatre professionals wrote about a “new treatment of acting and the actor in the Slovenian context” and described its work as being “focused exclusively on the actor and their complete creation of non-acting” within a theatre practice that was “methodological and anthropological.” Even a decade later, in 2006, Professor Ognjenka Milićević, in a monograph marking the 50th anniversary of Atelje 212, identified Tomi Janežič as one of the few researchers of acting in Europe.
As early as 2000, the Studio organized its first psychodrama workshop. At the time, psychodrama was virtually unknown in Slovenia, except among a small number of individuals who had encountered it through clinical practice.
In 2006, the Studio entered a new chapter with the establishment of Krušče Creative Centre. Alongside its artistic, educational, and research activities, the Studio also developed a residency program.
At that time, residency centres were still quite rare in Slovenia. The European Commission’s Culture Programme began actively promoting mobility during the 2007–2013 period, and only then did artistic residencies start to receive broader attention in the country.
Today, the Studio carries out many of its activities within Krušče Creative Centre, located near Cerknica. In 2018, the Association Studio for the Research on the Art of Acting – Association for Artistic Research, Creation, Residency, and Education Krušče was also established there.
Since the beginning of the Centre’s restoration in 2006, Krušče has hosted artists from around the world working in the performing arts, film, music, visual arts, and literature. A special place within its activities is occupied by research and educational work in the fields of psychodrama and psychotherapy.
Krušče Creative Centre, co-directed artistically by Katja Legin and Tomi Janežič, has organized regular psychodrama workshops since 2008 and, since 2010, regular psychodrama groups. With the aim of connecting the fields of art and psychotherapy, the first little festival of psychodrama was organized in 2018. Three years later, it was joined by the little festivals- Bodies, Spaces, Currents, and Worlds, bringing together dozens of artists, psychotherapists, and guests from various other fields.
Over the years, the Institute and the Association Studio for the Research on the Art of Acting, which manage Krušče Creative Centre, have realized numerous national and international projects, theatre co-productions, research and educational programs, artistic exchanges and residencies, small festivals featuring workshops, performances, exhibitions, concerts, and film screenings, as well as meetings, discussions, and publications.
The 30th anniversary of the Studio for the Research on the Art of Acting coincides with the 30th anniversary of Tomi Janežič’s first professional directing work. Janežič has led the Studio since 1996, and the anniversary also marks 35 years since he began directing, having staged his first theatre production during the 1991/1992 season.