"...this one-man show doesn't so much explore evil as creep up on it from behind, dagger in hand." - Cameron Woodhead, The Age

"...startling poetic beauty and sardonic comedy ...it attains moments of surprising feeling and power." - Alison Croggon, Theatre Notes / The Australian

"...powerfully redefine(s) notions of dramatic structure, character and identity ...a profoundly intriguing work" - John Bailey, Real Time

 

VILLANUS will be presented as part of the The Age Melbourne Fringe Festival 2008 September 30 - October 5. 

If you are reading this now, it means that I have been murdered.
This is a story of how it happened.
This is an actual person.
This is the softest I can whisper.
This is a diagram of the scars and wounds I have on my body.
This is the loudest I can scream.
This is the longest I can hold my breath.
This is villain written in Cyrillic characters.
And it goes for one hour, seven minutes and thirty-six seconds.

This is a lie.


Fresh from captivating audiences at this year’s Brisbane Festival, Welcome Stranger returns to Melbourne with a reworking of their acclaimed production of Villanus. From his new hovel at an abandoned high school in North Fitzroy, Vladimir Mijic fumbles his way through a mess of a set constructed from Hessian and packing tape in a misguided attempt to understand the nature of villainy.

An Australian artist of Serbian descent, Mijic plays out the paranoia and hysteria inherent in vilification. Vlad exploits high and low-tech gadgetry on a stage that is seemingly out to get him. Disturbing, dangerous and darkly comic, Villanus is an attempt to examine the division between good and evil through a mind itself divided; to reveal the causes and effects of such concepts. How do you view yourself if you are constantly told you are a villain?

For lovers of all things villainous – murder, mayhem and Eurovison.

"I’m finally learning how to disappear. How to leave a permanent record. How to leave no trace. Anonymous and omnipotent. I am burning my shadow into your retinas."


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