Sreten Asanović, Nomina, Plima, Ulcinj, 2011
By: Ivana Ančić
English version will be available soon.
Singles, directed by Matija Ferlin, Istrian National Theatre, Pula, Croatia
By: Ivana Anić
In the director’s note on his new play Samice (Singles), Matija Ferlin in the program booklet says: “Singles is an original project in which I wish to transfer my choreographic knowledge and experience into the domain of spoken language. The concept I start from is extremely simple: set up a dramatic performance that respects the conventions of dramatic theatre, but in which all sentences are written and spoken backwards. Thus deformed and emptied of their original meaning, they become a challenge for the actor who is nevertheless required to pronounce them with intention, motivation, and sense they had in their original form.”
This is the conceptual framework within which one of the most exciting visual experiences in the Croatian theatre in the past two years takes place. The space of the Istrian National Theatre in Pula, where the show premiered, or Jedinstvo Hall in Zagreb in which it was shown not even a month later as part of the Perforacije Performing Arts Festival, thus for a moment became the Wonderland and the viewers attentive Alices trying to determine the coordinates of meaning this show is trying to engage. Paradoxically, Mauricio Ferlin’s fascinating stage design draws inspiration from minimalism and baroque: the floor turned into a chessboard resembling Dutch genre scenes from the 17th century, a few wooden frames representing four doors and one window of the interior in which the characters move, two lavish glass chandeliers, and one wooden crate are the only markings of a huge space. Desanka Janković and Matija Ferlin’s costumes are just as fascinating because stylized folk costume worn by nine actors is at the same time very rich and colorful as well as oblivious of sex and gender given that both actresses and actors wear the same costumes.
Stage movement, mime and speech make a carefully devised game between the theatre, to which the actors belong, and modern dance, to whose world the director belongs, by education a choreographer and thus primarily expected to put up a dance performance. Namely, the actors are deprived of the ‘right’ to the main tool of dramatic theatre – intelligible speech – and the director consciously minimized the language of dance and brought it down to a rigid, schematic walk of the actors with their shoulders bent, and to expressive faces where each characters carries an expression brought down to a particular emotion or state. For example, Ana Vilenica’s character is responsible for dull bewilderment, the character played by the excellent Jadranka Đokić for the dominant self-confidence of the alpha-female running the pack, and Lana Gojak’s character for Lana Gojak. She, namely, either does not act at all or her character is imagined in such a way that she, as the youngest, is not susceptible to the structured expressive communication of the other members of the ensemble who all speak in the same way: in fragments, in a cramp, with difficulty, isolating, almost, spilling words out. Here it is necessary to ask whether all these singles are characters or mere outlines i.e. the mechanisms of conveying ideas that exist in the text and/or around the text, and whether the acting can rest on the expression that is verbally ‘crippled’ yet uniform when it comes to body language. Yes, it can, but only if we accept the singles as holders of basic building units of the show: the words.
The words are actually the main characters of this performance, but they are at the same time the objects of “exploration of performative and communicative potential of language.” This leads us to certain problems that come out of this concept. If we focus of the performative potential of language, we can conclude that the exchanges, whose basic characteristic is altered syntax so the words in a sentence are said from the last to the first one, lack choreography. In other words, they lack rhythm and melody, poetic meter, or, more vividly, movement on the stage of language. On the other hand, if we look at the communicative potential of the language, it is important to mention two aspects of the show. One is very problematic and concerns the relationship between semantics and syntax. In other words, it is questionable if the words in the sentence spoken in a reverse manner are truly “deprived of their original meaning” because syntax is the question of order, and not meaning, which falls in the domain of semantics. At least in the Croatian language, where cases have the role of determining the status of a word as a subject, object, etc., so Croatian viewers had no problems understanding what was said. Our brains are incredibly adaptable mechanisms, which is evident from: 1N 7H3 B361NN1NG 17 W45 H4RD BU7 N0W, 0N 7H15 L1N3 Y0UR M1ND 15 R34D1N6 17 4U70M471C411Y W17H0UT 3V3N 7H1NK1N6 4B0U7 17. In this spirit, the ‘new’ syntax can be decoded after only a few sentences, but we still have to admit that with every new line the viewer truly had to make a conscious effort to comprehend the language, which was one of the choreographer-director’s intentions.
The next aspect that needs to be looked into is the relationship between semantics and the relevancy of the text in context. How is the narrative here connected to the basic concept of “the exploration of the potential of language”? As an enactment of a text that draws its origins from Beckett’s absurdity, in a very interesting way! The plot is very simple: nine women of different age are isolated from civilization, they have obviously been living together for a while and the routine shapes their lives. After they have endured the lack of water for a couple of days, the water finally comes and they, one by one, learn the good news. What follows is a series of banal exchanges on making tea and coffee, on making radishes for lunch, on beauty, on mortality, and on losing their hedge shears, and the leitmotif constantly appearing in the play is a She who has gone somewhere and whom everyone waits to return. The first thing that disrupts the stable structure or the well-known coordinates of their lives is the discovery of a dead deer in their backyard, and the second is a moment when one of them suddenly confesses that she “dreamt this (…) the deer both and the shears and the waiting and have I dreamed.” The dead deer as a disruptive factor of a stable structure – or relatively stable structure because the whole time they are waiting for Her, regardless of who/what ever she might be – only announces the arrival of Hunter. In the last part of the show, Hunter tirelessly repeats the scene of entrance into the space of characters and each times performs a new action in almost fifteen (15!) different scenes, indicating the countless number of possible actions and breaking the illusion on what surrounds them, the illusion that the characters, but also the viewers themselves, keep alive. Hunter shows the characters that there are no doors, no windows, that all of that is just an illusion and stage design, and he shows the audience that, instead at the floor tiles, all the while they were looking at pieces of A3 paper, which, under Hunter’s feet, suddenly start flying all over the place.
The structure is exposed as an illusion, the detachment is established, and that’s exactly what, as Ferlin wants to show, applies to language as well.
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.