Anno Domini 2026

One of the defining features of the International Theatre Festival PUF, which explores and promotes contemporary theatrical trends with a particular focus on non-verbal, movement-based, and environmental theatre, is the annual international project Anno Domini, which traditionally opens the festival. Created each year in co-production with an international theatre company, Anno Domini is generally conceived as a site-specific performance.

By its very nature, Anno Domini is a unique theatrical project within the Croatian performing arts landscape. It is a one-time theatrical event, created and performed exclusively for a specific occasion. The first Anno Domini was staged in 1995, the inaugural year of the PUF Festival. Directed and conceived by Branko Sušac as a “theatre in a quarry” project and inspired by Antonin Artaud’s idea of theatre as a “consecrated” event, it led audiences into the Vinkuran Quarry, where an environmental choreographic performance was staged. Its poetic language reflected the consciousness of hope amid the dislocated realities of everyday life during wartime.

As Branko Sušac explains:

“The aim of the annual international project Anno Domini is to distil the experience of the past year, documenting the increasingly rapid changes and shifts taking place both in the arts and in political and social life, as well as transformations in consciousness and awareness. This is achieved through collaborative work, encounters, cooperation, international exchanges of experience and knowledge, and the interaction of artistic forces among theatre makers from different European countries within specific spaces.”

Anno Domini is conceived as a site-specific production, closely connected to a particular location and created in situ. Venues such as the Stoja Quarry, the former Karlo Rojc military barracks, the Vinkuran Quarry, the City Market and public squares of Pula are just some of the locations where Anno Domini has reinterpreted traditional spaces by imbuing them with new meanings.

Anno Domini 2026 will take place in Zerostrasse as a Brazilian-Croatian co-production, directed by Daniel Passi and produced by Branko Sušac.