Co-Production of the Prešeren Theatre Kranj, the Mladinsko Theatre, the Ptuj City Theatre, and the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb
The performance Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day is based on the eponymous television series Acht Stunden sind kein Tag, created in the 1970s from a screenplay by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The series follows the everyday life of a working-class family, whose private relationships are inseparably intertwined with labour in a factory producing machine parts. At its centre stands the love story between Jochen, a factory worker, and Marion, an employee in the newspaper classifieds department, alongside a series of situations generated by the rhythms and tensions of industrial production.
In Fassbinder’s work, people are capable of transforming the world around them through solidarity, directness and an uncompromising confrontation with reality. Their struggle is not heroic, nor is it an all-or-nothing battle in which life is sacrificed for convictions. Change becomes possible precisely through everyday persistence, courage and the refusal to submit to rigid institutions or inherited social habits.
The performance is divided into two parts. The first unfolds within the realistic and familiar space of the family home, while the second shifts to the factory floor, opening up questions of labour, exploitation and collective responsibility, where private intimacy inevitably collides with production.
Premiere at Prešeren Theatre Kranj: 12 September 2026
Premiere at the Mladinsko Theatre (Ljubljana): 18 September 2026
Premiere at the Ptuj City Theatre: 3 February 2027
Premiere at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb: 19 February 2027, HNK2
Koprodukcija Prešernova gledališča Kranj, Slovenskoga mladinskog gledališča, Mestnoga gledališča Ptuj i Hrvatskoga narodnog kazališta u Zagrebu
