Sreten Asanović, Nomina, Plima, Ulcinj, 2011
By: Ivana Ančić
English version will be available soon.
Saloma, directed by Branko Brezovec; produktion: KotorArt (Montenegro) / EUROKAZ / MSU Zagreb / ZKM / Dom Kulture KKV (Dance studio) Sisak
By: Nikola Skojačić
Oscar Wilde subjected Salome of the Biblical chronotope to ideology. Miroslav Krleža, acting from similar ideological position, saves Salome from Wilde’s interpretation of social justice and turns such generic ideals to cynicism. Not only with its intertextuality but also with the form of his early one-act play, Krleža creates a basis for a modern reading. Branko Brezovec recognizes the post-dramatic potential of the text and gives Salome’s discourse even more supremacy than Krleža and places other characters that threaten to start a conflict into the second plane.
Let’s assume that Brezovec, who signs both the dramaturgy and direction, gave the key for reading this version of Salome by placing it in Avenue Mall, a shopping center in Novi Zagreb. Somewhat different Salome premiered in Kotor’s Old Town, where the radicalism of intervention was considerably lessened by the archaic setting, so one could think that Brezovec very loosely corresponds to the site-specific concept of artistic performance. Here, it seems, this is not the case of the transfer of theatre into the quasi-public space; instead, the public space is put in the context of theatre in order to meet specific needs, or, in Brezovec’s words: “This is an attempt to place the world of shopping into a different discourse.” On the semantic level, Salome probably functions more clearly in the basement of a shopping center – however, a thesis that each permitted content is necessarily censured tells us also that the audience favors one type of interpretation more than the other. To all of those who were confused by what seems a banal criticism of consumerism in which we see Salome (played by Katarina Bistrović Darvaš who ends the show almost completely exhausted) lost among the crates of Ožujsko beer and at the same time exposed to less that forty people that can fit into the cage from which the play is seen, Brezovec gives a clear answer in an interview published in Nacional Weekly on June 20, 2011. Instead of struggling with the problem of dichotomy in which such extremely expensive criticism of consumerism is set (a cage, a railway, an ensemble larger than the audience, etc.), the audience reads the director’s programmatic lecture from the said interview. And easily draws conclusions from the interpretation. Brezovec emphasizes that: “Salome is not a subversive, quasi-leftist intervention into the world of consumerism, nor is it a cynical stance towards it. The sooner we understand that consumerism does nothing bad to our human essence, the easier it will be to unearth our existentialist themes in the agora of today.”
If Brezovec negates any kind of cynicism towards Konzum Supermarket whose cash registers serve as the final stage for the play, what is then its purpose – what is the purpose of both Konzum and Ožujsko – and what is cynicism directed at? It would be difficult to believe that cynicism is absent from the operatic treatment of Salome (music by Marjan Nećak), which forces us to believe that Brezovec took himself seriously. The audience is placed in a cage that moves about the shopping center’s basement on rails. This audience could hardly be expected to take the choir of young people who wear artificial beards on their faces, who stare at the audience crammed in a currency exchange office, who ride up and down the escalators, and who mistake plastic oleanders for real ones, for granted. Given that this foolish audience, when they see a supermarket in the theatre, is accustomed to immediately recognizing the criticism of this same supermarket, it could be said that then Brezovec’s cynicism is also directed towards audience. Another question that immediately arises is – towards what audience? At an improvised entrance into the place where Salome was played at this year’s edition of Perforacije Performing Arts Festival, several unorganized groups, shopping center’s visitors who just happened there thinking that thirty or so of us with tickets gathered because of a sale or something similar, tried to get in to see the show. They would most likely be allowed to see the show was it made for two hundred people and not forty. In the spirit of support of consumerism as such this production could be seen as an extension of shopping i.e. as a naturalization and not intervention of culture into the sphere of public. But in the same way in which Brezovac’s culture refuses to intervene, it also refuses to allow into itself an audience that could potentially misinterpret it. So, in this production, an audience cannot exist as a sample. If this were not a showcase performance, intended for the selectors of foreign theatre festivals, who are the people that would make it into the chosen forty?
On Level -2, i.e. in the shopping centre’s basement, something that is evidently not for everyone’s eyes takes place. Members of a dance studio from Sisak are dressed as shop assistants and cashiers – for the picky ones, they are not all women, there’s also a younger male shop assistant – and here they wait for the unknown elite in order to show themselves to it in an exceedingly rudimentary choreography and slow motion, in the context clearly defined by Brezovec. Did the production of Salome receive support from Ožujsko and Konzum, and what were the terms and conditions under which the play was allowed to take place in Konzum? If it did (and then in its dependence, it would definitely be site-specific and not meant or made for Kotor), besides a completely worthless advertisement that cannot be seen by wide masses of people, what did the sponsor get in return? With this project Brezovec most certainly enters into a conflict with a dominant discourse that institutionalizes criticism and annuls its subversive potential by simply allowing it. He understands that such criticism is something that is implied and he rightfully positions himself above it. However, Salome is not an anti-positivistic polemic over a predetermined topic. In the best case, it is made in order to provoke the usual agitators, and as such it understands siding with the opposite camp and cannot pretend to act from a superior position. “Ephemeral things such as red shoes with high heels on shaved legs make a parallel essence of our life, along our existential topics, sympathy and responsibility towards those closest to us.” By saying this, it seems that Brezovec, in his post-existentialist powerlessness, by interpreting Krleža among the shoes and by sacrificing the members of his own family on the altar of theatre, makes a first-class pornography for Ivica Todorić.
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.