Why are we wasting our time discussing time? Couldn't we waste it on a problem more useful from the mysterious and so far unsuccessful thinking about the very essence of time? Is this because we're not totally certain that we are wasting time, or are we, at this very moment, maybe gathering it? If time is limited, finite and determined, then it is certainly wasted. If not, then we are merely wasting our uncertain belief of the certainty of the clock ticking time away somewhere in the room, why we are contemplating time. But even this watch we invented it, long before we knew about time what we know now. And what we know now is essentially the realisation that we know nothing about time. Thousands of years of the history of the human thought, science and philosophy, and no less of art, were "wasted" on trying to understand the world around us, and the understanding of ourselves in the world.

From Heraclites to Hawking, millennia of our civilisation have tried to unveil the hidden face of time. Millions of answers have already been written, but every single one of them opens thousands of new questions. So, why do we ask about time in a place like theatre? Maybe because it is indeed the only place, where there are as many parallel "times" as there are people in the audience and performers on the stage, and also the creators of the performance in the backstage and those waiting – or not waiting – for them after the show. However, all this is framed into a notion of the exact time; each performance has the exact time of the beginning, its duration and the end. But still, in every second of this illusion, hours, even years of the individual subjective times, and the performance may – if it so desires – stage a thousand years. Indeed, only in theatre are we confronted thus confronted with our own ignorance about time, with the terrible 
arbitrariness of time and the fascinating beauty of its mystery. Here, in the theatre, a century might unfold in front of our eyes, and yet a watch on our wrist may only register a lapse of one hour, and nobody finds this fact strange or worrying. How many hours has the watch on our wrist measured between the moment we first heard an exciting line and the moment when we stopped thinking about it forever? How many years have the calendars counted since the author, whose words – so alive – are we listening to at the moment, has died? It seems that the theatre, in every single bit of its existence, offers only the challenges of time, and questions about time, yet we think about it at least  when we say "theatre" – and we do not even consider the possibility that this fascinating secret of time could be the very centre of a theatre event. Tomažz Pandur, quite uninterested in the challenges that are not extreme an extremely dangerous, is convinced that it is time for the theatre about time. Or maybe the theatre of time. He claims that the time has come for the theatre to study time itself. It is perfectly clear that for such an experiment no play has ever been written. Not even a novel, and maybe several complete libraries. There are neither guidelines for such a theatre event, nor limits. Rather like the time itself.

Nevertheless, some key points for consideration appear in the very nature of the theme, so very challenging for the “dream-chasers”. There we have Stephen Hawking, a wonder creature whose misfortunes have detached him from the physical abilities of the human beings and at the same time allowed his mind to outcross all the boundaries imaginable so it could understand and solve some of the greatest conundrums of the universe and light the way to its deepest secrets. The questions, millions of light-years away from us, billions of years away in time; questions that started almost the minute when the Creator signed under her the miraculous creation: the Universe. Like an arch of light and energy, Hawking’s mind closes the 20th century in order to pave for the 21st century the path to the tasks of human spirit and mind that the past centuries could not even dream about. One of these tasks is also to solve the riddle of the miraculous secret of Time. Tomaz Pandur and Ronald Savkovic decided to contribute his part and incentive to the solution of this task.

„Von Heraklit bis Stephen Hawking, tausendfach wurde in unserer Zivilisation versucht, dem verborgenen Gesicht der Zeit auf den Grund zu gehen. Millionen von Antworten wurden bereits formuliert, aber jede einzelne von ihnen eröffnet zugleich tausende neuer Fragen. Warum also fragen wir ausgerechnet an einem Ort wie dem Theater nun auch nach der Zeit? Tatsächlich sind wir vor allem im Theater mit ihrer schrecklichen Willkür konfrontiert und mit der faszinierenden Schönheit ihres Geheimnisses“, so formuliert Tomaz Pandur sein Anliegen. Mit seinen zahlreichen preisgekrönten, intensiv bildmächtigen Inszenierungen, deren inhaltlicher Unterbau stets mehr als nur eine einzige Rezeptionsebene anstrebt, hat der slowenische Theaterregisseur Tomaz Pandur inzwischen europaweit Furore gemacht. Seine Produktionen, die er überwiegend mit seinem eigenen Ensemble erarbeitet, werden weltweit zur Aufführung gebracht. In Deutschland hat er bereits überaus erfolgreich für das Thalia-Theater in Hamburg gearbeitet, in die Welt des Tanzes strahlte vor allem die Begegnung mit dem spanischen Choreographen Nacho Duato und dessen Ensemble aus.  

SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS ist ein Auftragswerk, das Tomaz Pandur mit dem Staatsballett Berlin erarbeitete, choreographische Unterstützung fand er in Ronald Savkovic. Der langjährige Erste Solotänzer des Staatsballetts Berlin, der inzwischen als freischaffender Choreograph Erfolge feiert, hat bereits mehrfach mit Tomaz Pandur zusammengearbeitet.