Sreten Asanović, Nomina, Plima, Ulcinj, 2011
By: Ivana Ančić
English version will be available soon.
Igor Štiks: Elijah’s Chair, directed by Boris Liješević, produced by Jugoslov Drama Theatre and MESS
By: Vanja Nikolić
Elijahova stolica (Elijah’s Chair) premiered exactly one year ago. Created in co-production of Yugoslav Drama Theatre and Sarajevo-based MESS Festival, it lived its modest life on Yugoslav Drama Theater’s small scene. It wasn’t much written about, it was not “the hit of the season”, it wasn’t even listed for this year’s Sterijino Pozorje Festival. And then it was selected for Bitef Festival as part of the Region in Focus Program, as yet another play dealing with the heritage of history and the understanding of one’s own identity. To the surprise of many, it was exactly Elijah’s Chair that won Mira Trailović Grand Prix Award and thus earned all the attention. And so it happened that in only three years, Bitef’s main prize was twice awarded to Yugoslav Drama Theatre and its directors. First to Miloš Lolić for Sanjari (Dreamers) and now to Boris Liješević, the author of Čekaonica (The Waiting Room) produced by Atelier 212, which two years ago won the Sterijino Pozorje Special Award, and the collaborator on several projects by Tomi Janežič whose influence is visible in several plays directed in Novi Sad.
As the initial point of his play, Boris Liješević, the director, took Igor Štiks’s novel and approached it in a classical way. The dramatization, which follows the idea and narrative line of the novel completely, was done by Darko Lukić. It even attempts to follow the several narrators that appear in the novel and it tries to establish a relationship with the audience similar to the one between the reader and the book. Thus this play rests on the word and the need to tell the story and allow the audience to experience the story in its own way. The audience thus becomes one of the authors of the play because, as the director claims, his main goal was that the play inscribes in itself what the readers do when they approach a novel, except that here this inscription happens in the theater, in front of the actors who play the story we are “reading.”
The story is filmic, in the Hollywood sense of the word. After the discovery of a letter that is of key importance for the revelation of his identity, a writer from Austria goes to the war-torn Sarajevo in search for his father. During this pursuit he meets a young actress with whom he starts an intimate relationship, full of gentleness and love. The moment he finds his father, the hero realizes that his relationship with the actress is impossible because she is his – sister. Impossible soon becomes his relationship with his father who is killed on the same day they meet, and for the hero himself life becomes impossible too so he soon puts an end to it. This story hides some great and important topics. A search for one’s identity, a confrontation with personal, national and religious origins, history and roots; all of these make a theme that initiates a question: who am I, where I come from? It is both intimate and social and political, and the possible (self) realization, in this case, is reached through the relationship between a father and a son. And this relationship is most powerfully shown through the figure of a father who is actually an imaginary character, an apparition, a figure of the omnipresent and always present, even when he is not really em-bodied.
The value of the director’s work in this play is reflected in finely attuned procedure. The scenography is made of several chairs, Elijah’s among them, a carpet and a burned curtain. All of this gives an impression of bourgeoisie salons and apartments not much has left of, just as there is very little left of the time and people who lived in them. The essence of the play is in working with actors. They managed to deliver this fine-attunedness, which was obviously in the basis of Boris Liješević’s concept and intention that painful topics should be spoken about calmly. Actors’ performances are thus emptied of overstatement and self-complacency. On the contrary, Svetozar Cvetković carries his role with visible ease and, most important, with a different presence in every new situation, which creates the feeling of authenticity. Vlastimir Đuza Stoiljković, on the other hand, skillfully goes through three different roles all the while holding the line that brings them together and thus emphasizing the unbreakable figure of a father who constantly follows and haunts the main character. Feeling well in her role, the young Sarajevo actress Maja Izetbegović is riveting with her naturalness and spontaneity which are always difficult to achieve and her contribution is something without which this play would not, to the measure it did, direct the emotion and energy towards the audience.
One of the elements producing this emotion is most certainly the music. It is brought down exclusively to the sound of a piano drawn to the deep end of the scene. Every actors at one moment or another plays music. This is one of the elements that creates the feeling of intimacy and puts even more emphasis on emotion as an important building block of the play. All of these finely attuned emotions and the way they are realized on the stage would be completely effective were it not for the feeling that this is a dramaturgically nicely set story whose melodramatic climax is simply too banal. This banality destroys the possibility of a serious talk about identity, if nothing because of the very fact that the question of identity is manifold. And precisely because of this it is impossible that it is determined only by the question of paternity and it is hardly possible that such a dilemma of personal identity befalls a middle-aged man.
The protagonist is portrayed as a melancholic to such an extent that it seems he goes to Sarajevo in order to satisfy his curiosity, ready to abandon himself to various pleasures, in the place where people die at every step. Underlying his search for identity there is a suicide that could be explained as an internal dilemma that haunted him on some subconscious level his whole life and that he suddenly became aware of at the moment when he realized who he was. But it could also be explained as a decision made because of the impossibility of realizing his affection, which only adds to the melodramatic tone of the story. Or because the destiny arranged that, at the moment when he finds his father, he had to die. Whatever the reasons for his suicide, they only take us away from serious thinking about identity. This draws us into a personal drama, which, because of the way the story is developed and because of the characters’ motivation, is not powerful enough and for that reason it is not capable to seriously and from all entry points deal with the identity as a topic.
Even with the excellent acting, well-thought-through and precise direction, this play cannot become much more than what it already is in the book, a melodramatic story with a pretentious climax, which does not allow the themes that are picked out as central to the play to show themselves in their full seriousness and importance.
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.