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STERIJINO POZORJE
55th Sterijino Pozorje Festival
National Drama Selection
Novi Sad, March 15th, 2010.
Selector:
Ana TASIĆ
The national drama selection of the 55th Pozorje is comprised of seven plays, most
of them productions of contemporary Serbian texts. Only one was made after a classic,
even though it is a contemporary classic (Banović Strahinja by Borislav Mihajlović –
Mihiz). The specificity of this year’s selection is that there are three plays from abroad
(Zagreb, Ljubljana, Istanbul) while, among the participants from Serbia, there are two
Hungarian-language theatres, which means that (only) two plays are played in Serbian.
This oddity of the national drama selection is, among other things, the result of an
extremely poor production in Serbia, in respect to the artistic achievement, i.e. the
quality of stage expression, innovativeness of directorial poetics, thoughtfulness of
national drama interpretation. This, of course, is a general conclusion not pertaining to
the plays that have made the wider selection.
In determining general, mutual parameters of the national drama selection at the
th
Pozorje,
it is clear that, in formal aspect, all plays, without exception, are
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characterized by fragmentariness, lack of a linear narrative, and often of stable
characters. On the ruins of the traditional, Aristotelian definitions of the plot, structure,
characters, all the authors are looking for a more adequate expression, contemporary
and adapted to the change in the environment. This formal particularity of the plays is
important in the conceptual sense, i.e. the form, to a certain extent, serves the content
of the plays – expressing complete disorientation, schizoid nature of the contemporary
man, as well as attempting to find meanings, structure, a new value system. So, its
thematic determination is related to that formal particularity – all of them deal, very
critically and analytically, with different aspects of living in a contemporary world,
locally/concretely or globally/universally determined. Also, authors present the sociopolitical, i.e. intimate/universal/philosophical aspects of today’s life. And problems these
plays explore are the reality of societal transition, i.e. the adaptation to the new,
(post)capitalist premises of the functioning of a society, which assumes a number of
insecurities and fears, from losing one’s job to the destruction of the family (Dress
Rehearsal for Suicide, Barbello, The Waiting Room), further, conditions and
consequences of life in a faceless consumer society (Orange Peel, Barbello, The Waiting
Room), nationalism, pseudo-patriotism, manipulation of religious feelings, digging out
myths and tradition (Banović Strahinja, Doll Ship, Sardinia). In this year’s national drama
programme there is no escapism and light themes, all the plays confront very directly the
viewer with the truth, raw and brutal, but also, later perhaps, liberating and cathartic.
The plays that are not from Serbian theatres, Barbello, about Dogs and Children,
Dress Rehearsal for Suicide and Doll Ship, are marked by unique, highly estheticised
directorial approaches, to a large extent more provocative in relationship to their
previous interpretations on our stages. For this year’s national drama selection, it is
characteristic that four plays from Serbia are not the so-called big productions, made on
big stages of the most established theatres (Belgrade and Novi Sad). Two are multimedia
productions of Hungarian-language theatres, The Novi Sad Theatre and Dezso Kostolanyi
Theatre (Orange Peel and Sardinia), one comes from the small stage of Atelier 212 (The
Waiting Room), and one from the National Theatre in Subotica (Banović Strahinja).
Apropos, the plays from Serbia are not expensive productions, on the contrary, they are
very modest in terms of financial expenditures. The Waiting Room and Banović Strahinja
follow the concept of the poor theatre, in the sense of Grotowski or Brook, produced
almost without stage design, with minimal material requirements. This fact should be an
encouragement to authors, demonstrating that great expenses are not needed for
creating artistically valuable works, which is unusually important in these transitional,
financially critical times.
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BARBELLO, ABOUT DOGS AND CHILDREN, text by Biljana Srbljanović, directed
by Paolo Magelli, City Drama Theatre "Gavella" Zagreb (Croatia)
Magelli’s stage reading of the play by Biljana Srbljanović is marked by
extraordinary lyricism, elegance, purity of directorial procedure, reduction of signs and a
focus on the actors’ expressive play, atomised, yet penetrating, freed from superfluous
gestures. With simple changes in lighting, using video beam that effectively serve the
expression of the characters’ subconscious, minimalist, functional, emotional music, as
wells as a very suggestive actors’ play, an authenticity of the stage reading has been
achieved. The play has undergone significant dramaturgical interventions compared to
the text and the first performance by Dejan Mijač, which resulted in greater coherence
and conciseness of the plot. Magelli has clearly, articulately and poetically potently shown
the philosophic/anthropologic, as well as the socio-political issues treated by Srbljanović
in the play.
DOLL SHIP, text by Milena Marković, directed by Aleksandar Popovski,
Slovenian National Theatre Ljubljana (Slovenia)
This interpretation of perhaps the best play by Milena Marković is defined by a
relaxed stylisation, moving towards a fiercer caricature of characters and plot, reduction
of the tragic and emotions, and highlighting the grotesque aspects of the plot. Popovski
found a number of particularly imaginative solutions, lucidly used the set design by
fluently flirting with the possibilities of its transformation. Demystification of fairy tales,
its other side and the eternal, inerasable need for love were shown unusually accurately
and purely, and the credit goes to all the actors, whose play is mesmerizingly convincing,
homogeneous, simple, natural.
DRESS REHEARSAL FOR SUICIDE, text Dušan Kovačević, directed by Nurullah
Tuncer, City Theatre Istanbul (Turkey)
The reading of Dress Rehearsal for Suicide by the director Nurullah Tuncer is
significantly different from the directorial interpretation by Dušan Kovačević – the first
performance of this text in the Belgrade Zvezdara Theatre. The Istanbul play is
characterised by a particular visual elegance, a simple, yet effective lyricism created by
an exciting combination of a minimal set design, use of videos, subtle choreography,
sensual music. Flies and lights are the basic elements of the set design, there is a large
canvas in the background where lyrical, tender sequences of night seascapes are shown,
as well as different associative drawings, which all contributes to a particular excitement
of the atmosphere. This kind of stage concept is a rich source of interesting stage
solutions, and it is deeply integrated into the meaning of the plot which, among other
things, problematises the relationship between theatre and life. Kovačević’s tragicomic
view of the man’s effort to survive in the system that is breaking him is written in a
lyrical, artistically potent manner, offering a different, more lyrical view of the latest text
by this writer.
BANOVIĆ STRAHINJA, text by Borislav Mihajlović – Mihiz, directed by Andras
Urban, National Theatre/Narodno kazalište/Népszínház Subotica
Urban’s reading of Mihiz’s psychological/existential/pseudohistorical drama is
stripped and direct, emotionally penetrating, powerful, stylistically homegeneous and
coherent, thematically topical and made topical even further, having in mind our eternal
problem
of
passionate
nationalism,
xenophobia,
pseudo-patriotism,
political
manipulation, national history, myths, religion. Clearly following currents of the author’s
ideas, the director throws the characters of the play into a hole, space recalling a fighting
ring, whereby the fact of destruction is effectively, symbolically determined, but also the
importance of combat, wars, aggression in the lives of actors. The viewers are placed
very close to the performers, a little above the stage, they surround them on all sides,
and are therefore drawn into the action, their passivity is reduced, and their emotional
perception increased. The play is defined by the presence of a number of motifs,
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meaningful rendering of the play more contemporary, references to contemporary forms
of social aggression, a special focus on the manipulation of religious feelings etc.
ORANGE PEEL, text by Maja Pelević, directed by Kokan Mladenović, Novi Sad
Theatre / Újvidéki színház
Mladenović’s reading of Orange Peel, as Magelli’s Barbello, includes significant
dramaturgical, structural changes in relationship to the text (also in relationship to the
first performance of the text directed by Goran Marković). Repetition, as a determining
form of dramaturgical/directorial procedure, is a stage-effective, symbolically potent
manner of expressing the importance of the issues the play deals with – obsession with
physical appearance, different fears from failure in society, breaking the stability of
family relations, a general loneliness, alienation etc. Extraordinary accuracy, dedication
and huge energy of the actors’ play deserve credit for a complete success of this
multimedia, radically stylised play.
THE WAITING ROOM, text by Boris Liješević and Branko Dimitrijević, directed
by Boris Liješević, Atelier 212 Theatre Belgrade
The text, whose authors are Boris Liješević and Branko Dimitrijević, is the first
official case in Serbia of a verbatim play, as a base for verbatim theatre. It is a form of a
documentary, a text made by adapting a series of conversation by the authors with real
people, who revealed their real, authentic experience in facing the consequences of social
transition (loss of a job, remembering the 1990s, yearning for a more secure life). The
concept of the play is specific, it does not have classical, Aristotelian characters, nor a
linear story, only fragments that form a lively mosaic of existence in today’s Serbia. The
stage in the play is completely bare and desolate, illusion is expelled, even the chairs on
which the actors sit or lie are theatre chairs on which the audience is placed. This is a
complete stripping of the play, abolition of illusion and direct confrontation of the viewer
with the important questions posed in the play, which assume a socio-political
significance because they directly problematise the post-October 2000 society in an
artistically valuable manner.
SARDINIA, text by Istvan Beszedes, directed by Andras Urban, Theatre “Dezso
Kostolanyi” / Színház Kosztolányi Dezsö Subotica
The play was made after the contemporary text by Istvan Beszedes (an author
from Senta), a fragmentary, absurd, philosophical drama with elements of an extremely
grotesque, surrealist humor. The story takes place in a prison, and a few stories are
interwoven: arrival of the president is awaited, there is an appearance of Unknown whom
everyone considers a Messiah (but it turns out he is a drunken helmsman), a theatre play
is prepared etc. These narrative currents provide a frame for different discussions –
about the meaning of existence, innocence, sin, guilt, passage of time, corporality and
spirituality, punishment, the function and esthetics of theatre, power etc. The directorial
reading of Beszedes’s text is rather specific, the form of the play is complex and unusual,
and, therefore, significant for the development of stage language in our theatre.
Technology is used for multiple purposes in the play (video broadcast, microphones),
which has numerous meanings on the formal and conceptual level. That sort of radical
technologisation and theatralisation dissolves the theatrical mechanism and indirectly
poses questions about the relationship between the live and mediated play, nature of live
as well as media-translated performance. On the level of meaning, this is how questions
about societal supervision and control are initiated, also about the alienation of a human
being, in circumstances of a huge influence of technology and new media in society. For
this type of contemporary theatre, about which one could say it belongs to a postdramatic expression (as Hans Thies Lehmann defined it), it is common for viewers to be
exposed to multiple, simultaneous images and actions in different media. This creates a
diffusion of their focus, requires a more serious, more active, more dedicated
interpretation of the play. This type of expression destroys the foundations of the theatric
approach that assumes the creation of illusion and identification with characters. Changes
in the use of media, genre and style of performance in Sardinia require from the
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audience an interpretation based on understanding the connection between different
sources and materials, and not an emotional reaction. This de-hierarchisation of
theatrical means contradicts the tradition that aspired to abolish the confusion and to
establish harmony and understanding. It also means abolishing the classical esthetic
ideal of an organic connection between elements, and it leads to the attention to the
individual and the whole at the same time. The audience is supposed to be left (partly)
confused, so they would interpret and create their own structures of meaning more
actively. Because of the requirement for an increased audience activity in the process of
interpreting actions on the stage, this radical break with the traditional dramatic linearity
includes a certain socio-political engagement, no matter how debatable and porous that
term might be in these times of various (post) post-isms.
Selection criteria, production survey
In the selection of plays, priority was given to provocative staged realities,
conceptually rich directorial interpretations of texts. The quality of the text was not
sufficient in itself, if its stage reading was not authentically realised. In that sense, plays
that were realised on the basis of truly valuable, contemporary and classic texts, which
should certainly be promoted by Sterijino Pozorje, but are not artistically significant in
their stage interpretation did not make the selection. On the other hand, plays of
artistically superior directorial poetics, where the performance is particularly creative in
the formal, stylistic, dramaturgical aspect were included in the programme.
Out of the fifty-nine seen performance, from March 15th of last year to March 15th
of this year, first a wider selection of around twenty plays was made, which included
Therapy by Atelier 212, Bullet for Everyone by HKD theatre from Rijeka, then Electra by
National Theatre Niš, Gamma Cas by National Theatre Zrenjanin, Safe House by National
Theatre Subotica, Stone Balloon and Ženidba i udadba by National Theatre Banja Luka,
Bizarre by Bosnian National Theatre Zenica.
Three segments in the production of national drama can be singled out. The first
is a group of plays made in Serbia after a contemporary Serbian text. One of the basic
postulates of Pozorje is stimulation and support of contemporary drama production, so
this segment is probably the most significant. In a one-year period, on the professional
stages of Serbia a rather large number of texts by our contemporary authors was
performed, and most of them for the first time. On Serbian stages there were 33 first
performances of plays written by contemporary Serbian authors (maybe even more, if we
haven’t registered all of them)! Simultaneously, younger authors dominate in this group.
Here we have texts by Stevan Koprivica, Goran Marković, Branko Dimitrijević, Nebojša
Romčević, Bratislav Petković, Istvan Beszedes (middle-aged authors), then Dušan
Spasojević, Filip Vujošević, Milena Bogavac, Maja Pelević, Aleksandar Radivojević, Jordan
Cvetanović, Milica Piletić, Željko Hubač, Ana Lasić, Igor Marojević, Đorđe Milosavljević,
Radmila Smiljanić, Zoltan Mezei, Ljubinka Stojanović, Jelena Đorđević, Miloš Jakovljević,
Jelena Paligorić, Olga Dimitrijević. When one keeps in mind the drastic minimalisation of
the production this season because of the general financial crisis, this number is
particularly impressive.
The second segment is comprised of plays made in Serbia after our classical
plays. In this group, fourteen plays were seen. It is clear that a much larger number of
plays was made after contemporary Serbian texts than after Serbian classics – about
three times more plays after contemporary texts. In this group Nušić’s texts are most
numerous: Miss Minister, The Deceased, Suspicious Person, Rent, Ujež. Apart from Nušić,
there were plays made after pieces by Sterija Popović, Aca Popović, Đorđe Lebović and
Aleksandar Obrenović, Danilo Kiš, Ljubomir Simović, Mihiz. In the selection of plays
written after classical texts, priority was given to contemporary readings of classics, i.e.
their modernisation, directorial innovativeness, reading of tradition in a challenging and
creative way that communicates with our time.
In the third group, there are plays performed on the stages outside Serbia,
contemporary and classic. We have seen twelve of these plays, and the majority is from
the former Yugoslavia, but also from elsewhere. Apart from the plays that have made
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this year’s selection, we have seen the following plays: The Traveling Theatre Šopalović
in Tokyo by the French director Prospero Dis (Black Tent Theatre), The Professional by
National Turkish Theatre from Istanbul, then Bačka-Balkan, the play from Vienna made
after texts by Otto Tolnai (Teatro Capile, director Andreas Kosek), The Tomb for Boris
Davidovič by the Theatre from Prijedor. There were three plays performed on the stage
of the National Theatre Banja Luka after Serbian texts, two contemporary – the musical
The Star is Born by Branislav Pipović and Miloš Paunović and Stone Balloon—My
Souvenirs by Radmila Smiljanić, as well as one classic – Sterija’s Ženidba i udadba. In
this review, one should single out two important first performances of Serbian texts
outside Serbia, on the territory of the former Yugoslavia: the text Bizarre by Željko
Hubač in Bosnian National Theatre Zenica (directed by Petar Kaukov from Bulgaria), as
well as the text by Dušan Spasojević, Bullet for Everyone (HKD Theatre Rijeka, directed
by Nemanja Ranković).
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STERIJINO POZORJE
55th Sterijino Pozorje Festival
National Theatre Selection
Novi Sad, March 15th 2010.
Selector:
Aleksandra GLOVACKI
Examination and provocation of experiencing reality are the only constant
I am able to detect when art is concerned. Therefore the determinant that I was in
charge for the selection of “the best plays from Serbian theatres made after texts by
foreign playwrights,” as well as any other manual, was not useful, because I do not know
the criteria which make a play be the best. A festival selection implies a certain level of
quality in all segments of a play, but does Ibsen’s Nora provoke on a deeper level than
Dundo Maroje (deeper than who, how much deeper), or whose examination is wiser and
whose more passionate… those are still questions without a possible rational answer.
My five favourites (according to the premiere dates):
DUNDO MAROJE, text by Marin Držić, directed by Kokan Mladenović, Kruševac
Theatre
This comedy about the arrogant son, whose return under his father's wing is far
from a pious repentance, and it only testifies about general hypocrisy nothing can thwart,
examines the biblical myth about the return of the prodigal son. All the messed up
brethren that make up this story are sent by the author to Rome so he would confront
them there, where their natures and characters “outside of their natural habitat” seem
even more grotesque. The director, nevertheless, places them in a prison right away,
because this Dundo is a comedy performed by the wards of a correctional institution.
Having marked them rather powerfully with the lattices within which they are placed, the
director agrees to deal with deception as the central theme, so he translates Držić's mix
of a comedy of natures and types into a type recognised already by the Greeks as
separate, the one that is funny because of the absurdities of its pretensions, and this is
exactly the result when the Držić's excellent style and language are performed by
convicts, uneducated and uninclined to any sort of spirituality, and gathered from all
sides of our thieving homeland.
HAIR, authors Ragni, Rado, MacDermot, director Kokan Mladenović, Theatre
Atelier 212 Belgrade
This is not a happy and pumped-up hippy tribe of the naive '68ers, here we are
mostly talking about enlightened intellectuals, whose leader is the reason-bound, albeit
bold, philosophy professor Berger. And a reasonable intellectual of the 21st century is
inclined towards dialogue and debate much more than action, because he knows action
leads to burning and destruction he is disgusted with. Thus this Hair, in accordance with
the time it reflects, is a call for a dialogue and programmatic confrontation, a list of
themes that have to be initiated if one has conscience, a digested edition of a guide
through a list of global lies and deceptions: the influence of corporations, world wars with
the focus on the one in Iraq, a look back at ’68 and its participants, school and church,
family, the relationship god-fate and god-church, flag, world tourist conspiracy…
THE PLAY ABOUT MIRJANA AND THESE AROUND HER, text by Ivor Martinić,
directed by Iva Milošević, Yugoslav Drama Theatre Belgrade
The play about Mirjana is in fact a collection of images from the life of a divorced
woman with a pubescent daughter and some people from the surroundings. Everyday life
is completely empty, but purified from banality by being magnified to absurdity. The
circumstances of their lives are nothing but lack of love. Mirjana shares that life without
love with everyone around her. The author does not examine who is guilty. His story
implies that there cannot be any love after a certain age, which might be the
consequence of his extreme youth, in part of the impression offered by life.
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THE BACCHANTES, text by Euripides, directed by Staffan Valdemar Holm,
National Theatre Belgrade
There are no guidelines and no signposts in Euripides, he just recognises two
basic powers in life, Dionysian and Apollonian; the reign of reason and the reign of
appetite. And man is condemned to try to balance them all his life, using the power of
one in the battle against the other, without a permission to let one prevail. For
consequences are fatal. The entire second part is a horrible sobering after a crime; after
a blessed sleep the nightmare of reality came. There are no sentiments in Euripides, only
the cold drawing of lines between causes and effects. So, who wants to see will see; who
wants to hear will hear.
NORA, text by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Predrag Štrbac, National Theatre
Sombor
The chains of female slavery can be golden, they can be branded, sealed with
jeeps, summer and winter vacations, but they still remain chains. When the owner of the
account and the useress of the card find themselves together – who manipulates whom,
who is in prison, who is exploiting whom, and who wants emancipation... This is the
question Ibsen posed exactly 130 years ago, it concerns the freedom of choice in
marriage, and it is therefore not only a female question. Regardless, it has not received a
definite answer to this day.
The three mentioned classic titles, THE BACCHANTES, DUNDO MAROJE
and NORA, are taken out of their time, the first two from the place of their setting,
thus thematising the artistic procedure and additionally problematising the experience of
reality. They all, on the level of content, underline some of the acute problems of our
local everyday life: (non)confrontation with horrible consequences of collective euphoria,
the loss of a border between mercantilism and deception, general thievery, as well as the
confrontation with the still open “female question” in this male world.
HAIR is a direct, most literal criticism of the contemporary society, uninterested
in its limited nature for esthetisation. At the same time, it is an examination of the
modern myth, and the witnesses of its inception are mostly still alive.
THE PLAY ABOUT MIRJANA AND THESE AROUND HER is in a way especially
dear to me, as a representative of the new sensibility, based on simultaneous perception,
which I believe announces a new perception of the world, the world seen as a sum of
different images, therefore stories, therefore truths. On the other hand, “the happening”
is not interpreted here, as it would suit a contemporary discourse, as “activity,” so
Mirjana stands as some kind of anti-myth opposed to two myths in this selection, at the
same time directly opposed to Nora, who, in contrast, acts.
Only nuances have determined that two plays did not find themselves in the
selection: Winterber/Rukov, Celebration, directed by Iva Milošević, Atelier 212 and the
play by Tena Štivičić, Firebugs, directed by Tanja Mandić-Rigonat, also Atelier 212.
The following plays did not make the last cut: Playing the Victim by the
Presnyakov brothers, directed by Nikola Zavišić, National Theatre Belgrade; Myrrh and
Cinnamon by Guy Weizmann and Roni Haver, Bitef Theatre, Richard on the Slide after
Shakespeare, directed by Žanko Tomić, Evening Stage ’Radović’.
After a few dozen plays seen on the stages across Serbia, it is encouraging to see
a decent number of important creations in more or less all the places outside theatre
centres. I feel a need to mention two: Snake's Nest by Vasily Sigarev, directed by Nenad
Todorović, a coproduction of the National Theatre in Kosovska Mitrovica and National
Theatre Leskovac, and Romania 21 by Peko Stefan, directed by Goran Golovko, National
Theatre Užice.
If we add to all of this the extraordinary financial crisis and the inability to work as
usual because of this, we can conclude that theatre here has been courageously dealing
with adversities.
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STERIJINO POZORJE
55th Sterijino Pozorje Festival
International Selection „Drugo Vi“
Novi Sad, March 15th 2010.
Selector:
Nikola ZAVIŠIĆ
My task was to meaningfully select plays belonging to the international
programme at the Sterijino Pozorje Festival for the year 2010. The Programme “Drugovi”
entered its second year, and I named this second phase “Drugo Vi” 1 .
Theatre is supposed to be the mirror of reality surrounding us. Sometimes
ordinary, sometimes deformed, sometimes magnifying, but it certainly has to offer our
reflections in it. I tried to make my programme just that, to represent that other image,
the other side of ourselves. Something that does not concern us. To be, therefore, “Other
We,” i.e. in the case of the audience to whom it is shown – “Other You.” I hope the plays
I have chosen will find their way to the audience in different ways.
My idea was to deal with our closest surroundings and the fresh, creative energy
in the theatre of our “region.” I tried to bring young theatric forces in full swing of their
talent, be they authors, directors or actors, but those who have already been recognised
in their environments as stable artistic values.
The common element of the selection “Drugo Vi,” (apart from the regional) is a
boldly expressed authorial stamp at making the art procedure of the story told unusual:
be it a formal transformation of the classics (Phoedra Fitness by Istvan Tasnadi of
Hungary or The House of Bernard Alba by Diego de Brea of Slovenia) or the fairy-tale
treatment of a cruel political reality (Will You Ever Be Happy Again by Sanja Mitrović who
comes from The Netherlands, Germany and Serbia. The Zagreb Pentagram by Paolo
Magelli of Croatia and 20/20 by Gianina Carbunariu of Romania).
I am especially glad that all five plays really form a whole which, from the
perspective of our theatre reality, brings a fresh and interesting theatre language,
exciting and diverse, multi-ethical and multi-lingual (in many plays a few languages are
spoken), but which really concerns us in one way or another.
THE ZAGREB PENTAGRAM, Igor Rajki (Robbery), Filip Šovagović (Dream Zone),
Nina Mitrović (Javier), Damir Karakaš (We Almost Never Lock), Ivan Vidić
(ZOO), directed by Paolo Magelli, The Zagreb Youth Theatre (Croatia)
A new, interesting view of contemporary Croatian reality in an omnibus made of
five short stories. For the first time, five texts from different contermporary Croatian
authors are connected into one play. Every story handles a different theme and it deals
with poverty, deformed relationships, confrontation between desires and possibilties of
the protagonists, but in a very specific, witty and fairy-tale like manner. Zagreb and its
inhabitants (of different social layers and political profiles) represent the basic trend of
the story and the audience jumps from one situation to the next led by a really skillful
hand of the celebrated director Paolo Magelli.
THE HOUSE OF BERNARD ALBA (Hiša Bernarde Albe), text by Federico Garcia
Lorca, directed by Diego de Brea, Slovenian National Theatre Celje (Slovenia)
Powerful and suggestive, almost entirely ascetic, the young director Diego de
Brea, with the brilliant ensemble of Slovenian National Theatre in Celje, has succeeded in
bringing in front of the audience a well known Lorca tragedy in a completely new and
exciting manner, filled with dramatic tension and emotions. Even though the text is
radically omitted (the play is almost unverbal!), the director and the ensemble have
1
Drugovi in Serbian means both friends and comrades, but the selector explained last year that it is a pun that
also means Second 6, meaning “sixth group of the second class.” Now these two words are separated giving the
expression a new meaning: “Other You.”
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managed to show the full tragedy of women from the house of Bernard Alba in an
unusual manner, and a play full of passion that always stays accurately focused and
almost choreographically precise, and thus it penetrates deeper into the consciousness of
the audience than it would in a textual interpretation.
20 per 20, author and director Gianina Carbunariu, Yorick Stúdió, Targu-Mures
& dramAcum, Bucurest (Romania)
Gianina Cărbunariu is a well known author and director of younger generation,
and this is the first time she is presenting herself to the Serbian audience, with a very
interesting play that speaks trilingually about an event unknown to us in the Romanian
town Targu Mures, mainly inhabited by ethnic Hungarians. In March 1990, an interethnic
conflict between Romanians and Hungarians broke out, known as “The Black March.”
There were victims on both sides, and there was never an official version of the event,
the cause was never explained. The entire situation falls in the time of the interregnum
after the fall of the Nicolae Ceausescu government, and this makes the story harder and
crueler. The author of the text started from interviewing the real participants in the
event, and then working with Romanian and Hungarian actors, in a very impressive and
original manner, making a reconstruction of the story about the conflict that recalls what
we experienced in the last twenty years with consequences we still feel today.
PHAEDRA FITNESS (Fedra Fitnes), author and director Istvan Tasnadi, KoMa &
ALKA.T Companies Budapest (Hungary)
A shocking story about Phaedra and Hippolytus, unrequited love, slander and
jealousy in the concept of the Hungarian author and director of the younger generation
Istvan Tasnadi, is placed in a real fitness centre, where the actors and the audience are
confronted with a completely un-theatrical environment that is supposed to symbolise
the eternal human aspiration towards youth and strength (opposite from aging and
decline). In a very witty and at the same time shocking manner, this talented author has
succeeded, with the help of a fantastic actors ensemble (a few prominent members of
Arpad Schilling’s troupe, Kretakor) led by the sensational Esther Czakanyi, in connecting
the unconnectable and making a bold play the audience at many European festivals liked
very much.
WILL YOU EVER BE HAPPY AGAIN, author and director Sanja Mitrović, Centre for
Cultural Decomtamination Belgrade & Hetveem Theatre Amsterdam & Stand Up
Tall Productions Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Serbian Dutch woman, performer, actress, a complete theatre author of
increasingly prominent reputation in European theatre frames – Sanja Mitrović, together
with the German performer Johann Stehmann, made a touching, intimate, deeply
personal story that concerns all of us who grew up in the former Yugoslavia and still
remember that country once existed. Through the ID of the author on the one, and the
young German on the other side, transferred through a children’s play and a situation of
growing up in Yugoslavia and Germany in the 1980s, an incredible mix of emotions and
humour, with which the audience often does not know what to do, is acquired. For the
story is so truly simple and tragic and interwoven with such facility and skill, the viewer
can hardly decide between laughing and crying. That is why only silence remains at the
end. But luckily, Sanja Mitrović is sufficiently skillful to offer the audience vast pleasure
and joy of life through positive vibration her directorial stamp bears, which was proven at
numerous festivals across Europe where she has performed this fantastic play.
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