Sreten Asanović, Nomina, Plima, Ulcinj, 2011
By: Ivana Ančić
English version will be available soon.
Miroslav Krleža’s Gospoda Glembajevi (The Glembays), directed by Jagoš Marković, Atelje 212, Belgrade
By: Sandro Siljan
After it hasn’t been played in Belgrade theatres for forty years, Miroslav Krleža’s Gospoda Glembajevi (The Glembays) was put to stage during previous theatre season at Atelje 212 under the direction of Jagoš Marković. During the presentation of the theatre’s program, for the season named nEXt YU, the theater manager Kokan Mladenović said that he had chosen this author because “in the times of tabloid cultural values, in the times of demise of any criteria, it is very important to stage Miroslav Krleža not only because of his creative opus, but also because of all of his intellectual and social engagement that can serve as a reference we should look up to.” When the season’s theme is in question, The Glembays present an interesting choice because they, thanks to their presence in school reading lists and Antun Vrdoljak’s film adaptation, have become sort of a common point, and the theme of decadence of the petty bourgeois who got rich by stealing and taking advantage of the society is more than present in all countries of the region.
However, offering a Serbian director to stage a play written by the “most Croatian” writer is not enough to satisfy the concept and provide an answer to all the questions the theme such as nEXt YU opens. This presents a set of new problems out of which the most interesting is the stance the Belgrade production will take towards Krleža as a theatre classic. A new establishment of the “common cultural space”, which was one of the intentions of Mladenović’s program, also purports establishing a new relation towards once common values in culture and arts.
It is particularly interesting how today, in the period of tycoonization, a director is going to position himself towards former social-deterministic reading of the Glembay’s demise. Namely, in Krleža’s play we follow two parallel stories. First is a love-incestuous tragedy on the conflict between a father and a son over a woman who is a wife to the first one and a stepmother to the other while at the same time we follow a story about the downfall of their business empire and social status. And while Krleža meticulously builds his characters’ love-sexual motivation, the story of their social and business breakdown takes place only in the background, almost as if a consequence of the first story. Such dramaturgy, by leaving out the serious social, economic and political argumentation, offers the following interpretation, dominant in Yugoslavia: civil capitalism that is condemned to fall onto itself because of its own moral and intellectual decadence. However, today, twenty years after the breakup of Yugoslavia and the appearance of some new Glembays, how are we supposed to position ourselves toward such social-deterministic reading?
Already from the first scene in the play, it is visible that Marković’s direction does not move away from the well-known stage realism with the additional insistence on psychological motivation of the characters. From such a concept, which is actually already inscribed in Krleža’s play – and minimal interventions in the text in the form of craftily done shortening – it is evident that Marković will not offer some new reading of The Glembays. By using such a procedure the director avoided any polemic with Krleža’s dramaturgy as described above all the while allowing himself the luxury of criticizing the society and creating allusions to present day reality without questioning economic or historic contemporaneity of the dramaturgy he employs.
In this love-erotic drama, Leone Glembay is a neurotic whose cynicism is not destructive towards the petty bourgeois that surrounds him, but is destructive in an infantile way, and Nikola Ristanovski underlines this more than once by illustrating fear, inability to fit in and anxiety in the situations when this is not dramaturgically justified. This is most obvious in Leone’s relationship to Silberbrandt and Fabriczy, when he responds mildly and fearfully, almost self-destructively, to their empty prattle. Ignjat Glembay, that pragmatic banker, is in no way cunning and calculated, but polite and naively infatuated gentleman, whose authority Boris Cavazza builds on his own stature, voice and diction. Anita Mančić as Baroness Castelli, usually played by Anica Dobra, will bring an ample dose of feminine eros and sensibility to the stage to get the action going. However, within such concept, her performance only adds to the reading of The Glembays as a love-erotic drama.
The only ones taking a step away and giving a commentary on the characters they play are Svetozar Cvetković as Father Silberbrandt, the Baroness’ confessor, and Tanasije Uzunović as Doctor Altman. Their caricatural performances actually hide the director’s only commentary of the Glembays’ demise as a social phenomenon, although that humor is actually so benign that it provokes sympathy and acts counterproductively in an attempt of any kind of serious social criticism.
The most innovative element of the play is Miodrag Tabački’s functional and minimalist stage design, which brings Krleža’s detailed descriptions of the interior to movable plexi-glass panels that respond to light, however, it in no way steps away from the concept of space as a bourgeois salon. On the other hand, the very mise-en-scène does not follow the conventions of the bourgeois drama space, and the central scenes are played in the downstage, less important scenes in the center of the stage, while the upstage is reserved for static images. Costume designs done by Zora Mojsilović follow the director’s realistic concept although they vary from historical illustration in the case of Ballocsanszki’s uniform to allegory of present day in the case of Oliver Glembay’s modern suit.
Unlike Leone Glembay who returns home and fails to avoid getting in conflict with his own origins, the Belgrade theatre goes back to Krleža failing to establish any kind of relationship with him. At that, Krleža’s drama, as a social critique, turned out to be more engaged and dangerous that Marković’s play. Perhaps thus it would be better to replace the bombastic title nEXt YU with a more shy NEXT=EX YU. The extent to which is this simple equation socially relevant, artistically intriguing and in sync with our complicated reality does not show the need for any commentary.
Sreten Asanović, Nomina, Plima, Ulcinj, 2011
By: Ivana Ančić
English version will be available soon.
OSMI I SEDMI PUTNIK, Aleksandar Bjelogrlić, Citadela, Agora, Zrenjanin, 201
By: Dalibor Plečić
English version will be available soon.
Stjepan Gulin, Paz’te sad, paz’te sad (Meandarmedia, Zagreb, 2011.)
Authors: Ivana Ančić
Igor Marojević, Kroz glavu (Dosije, Beograd, 2012.)
Author: Dalibor Plečić
Damir Miloš, Pisa. Povratak (Meandarmedia, Zagreb, 2011.)
Author: Morena Livaković
POLITIČKE I DRUŠTVENE KONSTRUKCIJE IDENTITETA U VIDEO-PERFORMANSIMA NA BEOGRADSKOJ SCENI 1970-ih
Esej Vladimira Bjeličića
Esej u celini možete pročitati na portalu SEEcult.org
Esej Tihane Bertek
Od promatrača do sudionika
GALERIJA KAPELICA I POST-JUGOSLAVENSKI BODY ART (1995–2010)
Esej – Bojan Krištofić
Esej o radovima Šejle Kamerić, Maje Bajević i Nebojše Šerića Shobe
Piše: Slađana Golijanin
ESEJ – Razvaline socijalizma kao inspiracija za muzejske eksponate Mrđana Bajića i skulpturalne dosetke Ivana Fijolića
By: Milena Milojević
Piše: Nino Kovačić
Gostujuća izvedba šibenskog HNK, Pir malograđana, prema tekstu mladog Bertolda Brechta (napisan 1919.) izvedena je po sljedećoj formuli: na Danima satire u satiričkom kazalištu Kerempuh gledamo satiričan komad. Prema reakcijama publike, bila je uspješna, ali teško se oteti dojmu da je smijeh bio formulaično zagarantiran, jer bi takav instruirani moment humora trebao zauzdati spontani smijeh. Je li se možda radilo o “malograđanskom” humoru?
Glumice i to, KNAP, Zagreb, premijera 12.5.2012.
Piše: Nino Kovačić
Glumice i to, nova predstava u zagrebačkom KNAP-u, neobičan su kazališni ‘slučaj’. Naime, predstavu su, dramaturški i režijski osmislile te, naravno, glumački ostvarile četiri mlade glumice. U trenutačnoj opće-društvenoj, pa tako i kazališnoj situaciji, kojom prijete olovni pojmovi poput recesije, prekarijata i outsourcinga (nedavno su najavljena i otpuštanja “hladnopogonskih” glumaca), one su, kako piše u najavi “nezaposlene i pune entuzijazma, odlučile su preuzeti stvar u svoje ruke i napraviti hit!”. Očito sklone postdramskom pristupu izvedbi koji se, između ostalog, bazira na ekipnoj work-in-progress metodi, izvedbenoj anti-iluziji i autoreferencijalnosti, glumice/autorice su se “trgnule” i napravile parodiju o tome kako rade predstavu, po ironičnom ključu: kad ne ide pravljenje predstave treba napraviti predstavu o tome kako se ne može raditi predstava.
“Nije život biciklo”, Biljana Srbljanović, režija: Anselm Veber, Produkcija: Šaušpilhaus Bohum, Nemačka; Sterijino pozorje 2012, selekcija Nacionalne drame i pozorišta
By: Tamara Baračkov
English version will be available soon.
„Grebanje, ili kako se ubila moja baka“, Tanja Šljivar, režija: Selma Spahić, Bosansko narodno pozorište Zenica/Bitef teatar-Hartefakt (Beograd), premijera: 7. septembar 2012. (Zenica), 11. oktobar 2012. (Beograd)
By: Tamara Baračkov
English version will be available soon.
„Sluga dvaju gospodara“, Karlo Goldoni, režija: Boris Liješević, Grad teatar Budva/Srpsko narodno pozorište Novi Sad/Narodno pozorište „Toša Jovanović“ Zrenjanin, premijera: 27. jul 2012.
By: Tamara Baračkov
English version will be available soon.