The play Euphoria, an authorial project by Ksenija Zec, brings to life the world of the so-called Generation Z through the acting technique of animals on stage. This generation of young people who have grown up with digital technology, considering it a way of life without which they cannot function. Their knowledge and life experience are almost exclusively derived from digital sources, and they interpret Andy Warhol's dictum "Everyone has the right to 15 minutes of fame" quite literally. In the play Euphoria, high school students get the opportunity to be momentarily famous by organizing and performing their graduation party, a moment in which they prove their maturity to parents and teachers, thus being initiated into adulthood. The play explores how young people identify themselves by recognizing skills, values, and influence that socially initiatory moments, such as graduation parties, offer, at least momentarily.

Journeying from realism to absurdity, Euphoria describes the everyday life of young people who have grown up in a world that promises eternal adolescence. Simultaneously, our globalized world is rapidly changing in ways no one could have imagined, with increasing wars, catastrophic climate changes, the coronavirus pandemic, and economic crises occurring at breakneck speed. Global chaos has become so pervasive that it dangerously suffocates the individual's inner universe. The social backdrop of our small generational psychodramas becomes increasingly bizarre. We all become those high school students, navigating a traumatizing path through a senseless society that even our best intentions struggle to save. However, in Euphoria, we can still laugh about it.

Euphoria seeks to decipher the moments of happiness and ecstasy we crave and at what cost we attain them. Based on exploring different aspects of the animal technique, the play creates a narrative that detects, transforms, and imagines theater as a space for play, dialogue, and social critique.

ANIMAL TECHNIQUE (NON-HUMANS)

The animal technique belongs to the so-called pre-genre techniques, and Ksenija Zec established its specific version at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. This technique allows actors to shift their bodily center to achieve a rich range of different characters. The "animal technique" is common in the practices of many world drama and film schools, from the International Theatre School of Jacques Lecoq to the Theatre and Film Institute of Lee Strasberg. The animal technique serves the imagination and understanding of other and different bodies from one's own. Analyzing the behavior of animals and their role in human imagination is the foundation for creating characters. This technique is acquired through a system of exercises that enable the analysis and observation of natural phenomena. By continuously developing the technique and imagination and working on acting positions, situations, and relationships with partners or groups, more advanced and demanding elements are discovered and adopted, leading to the development of character masks or characters in reverse. The emphasis is placed on anatomical research into the possibilities of changing the body's architecture. In addition to working on the anatomical settings of the animal by moving into imaginary centers, actors begin to draw imagination from the instinctual world and sensory stimuli and delve into their unconscious and archetypes as ways of producing stage beings. This process creates a performance text, often resulting in the ensemble's co-authored expressions.

Saša Božić