WaxFactory celebrated its 20th anniversary as an independent, forward-thinking theater group making original productions in New York and around the globe in 2019. In 2020, Ivan Talijancic will direct a brand-new multidisciplinary ensemble piece under the working title the DEMOCRACY PROJECT.

At present, our country finds itself in the midst of a deeply divisive political climate and highly polarized reporting in the mass media. With WaxFactory, Ivan is choosing to investigate these topical issues through the lens of drama from Ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy. Inspired by Sophocles' Women of Trachis, the newly devised play concerns a decorated Army general sequestered in a foreign land, who finds himself involved in a controversy. Stateside, his wife faces the contentious landscape of her husband’s media coverage, navigating her way through bias and "alternative facts" in her fight to discover the truth. In terms of production and staging, Talijancic will deploy his trademark cross-media approach: choreographed on a set resembling a TV soundstage, a twenty-foot screen will be suspended above, displaying cinematic close-ups of live actors and will be edited and projected in real time.

Ivan Valentin Talijancic is a time-based artist and cultural producer who works at the intersection of theater, dance, film, installation art, new media, journalism, curatorial work and education in New York and around the globe. As a co-founder of WaxFactory, a New York based international multidisciplinary art group, he has created over 20 works works to date, presented at many preeminent venues on four continents. His works have been shown throughout the New York City (Lincoln Center, PS122, Abrons Art Center, etc.) and at preeminent international venues such as the ICA/Institute for Contemporary Art (London, UK,) Sónar (Barcelona, Spain,) Centre Pompidou (Paris, France,) Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon, Portugal,) Zürcher Theaterspektakel (Zurich, Switzerland,) Cankarjev Dom (Ljubljana, Slovenia.,) etc. In addition to his creative work, Ivan has lectured at many prestigious universities in the United States and abroad: New York University, Barnard College at Columbia University, Princeton University, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (Germany,) among others; and recently became the artistic director of Contemporary Performance Practices, an international summer training program.

Public performances of the DEMOCRACY PROJECT are slated to be presented in 2021. In order to remove economic obstacles, all performances will be presented to general audiences free of charge, including a series of public engagement initiatives leading up to and during the run of the show, including open rehearsals, meet-the-artists sessions, and post-performance Q+A’s

For more information on Ivan’s work, please visit WaxFactory’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and website for more information.