Dad for Dinner

What would a dinner with one’s father look like – not just one’s own, but with every possible father, with the very idea of the father as the head of the family, the primary heir, and the bearer of patterns of masculinity? What would a dinner with masculinity itself look like, and what would a trans woman have to say at that table? If the answer to these questions is this performance by Brazilian artist Gaya de Medeiros, the dinner would be a poetic reckoning with the archetype of the father, his mythology, as well as his performativity; it would be a confrontation with the idea of being a man (or belonging to any gender), but spiced with humour. And instead of food on stage, her guests – the audience – would witness bodily transformations, a constant shifting between identities, and an intimate critique of masculinity and the pressure of its ideals.
And her guests—the audience—would witness, rather than food, physical transformations on stage, a constant shifting between identities, and an intimate critique of masculinity and the pressure of its ideals, to which they are expected to conform.
Ljubljana audiences got to know Gaya de Medeiros at the City of Women festival, where she performed in 2023 with Atlas of the Mouth, co-created with Ary Zara. This time, she’s coming to the Mladi levi festival in tandem with drummer Pedro Melo Alves.

Mladi Levi Festival 

International festival Mladi Levi is one of the more prominent annual events of the Bunker Institute, bringing the most current stage performers from all over the world to Ljubljana every end of the summer, since 1998. It bears a mark of a demanding artistic profile, placed within the arena of contemporary progressive theatre and takes pride in its reputation for discovering young talents. The Festival has a distinctive atmosphere, marked with creativity and vibrant spirit, curious audience and social nature. Festival Mladi Levi inhabits a place of encounters and surprises, continuously opening up to foreign artists and guests, who take pleasure in art and spread contemporary artistic or social topics in front of one another. It is a place of exchange as well as a cradle of new ideas, friendships and co-operations, which frequently extend beyond the local concepts or borders in the process of their growth.

From 22 to 29 August 2026