Sreten Asanović, Nomina, Plima, Ulcinj, 2011
By: Ivana Ančić
English version will be available soon.
Our Beautiflu, directed by Miran Kurspahić, produced by Theatre &TD, premiere: April 4th, 2011
By Ivana Anić
The word homeland is of the feminine gender in the Croatian language and her primary role, as that of any other Croatian woman and a Catholic, is the role of the Mother, a provider and a juggler who keeps the house from falling apart. It is important to state that she is also called ‘’Our Beautiful Raped One’’ by its disappointed citizens.
The Croatian bad boy Miran Kurspahić, as the director, and Rona Žulj as the playwright, with actors Csilla Barath-Bastaić, Marijana Mikulić, Petra Dugandžić and Ivana Horvat, Our Beautiful unfolds twenty years of Our Beautiful’s career as a singer of easy-breezy pop songs and speaks metaphorically of Croatian reality from the early 90’s till today.
Why did the playwright choose a singer as her main character? Maybe because the Singer is a symbol of our time: a person that can not control their own career or their own image and body and all their strings are being pulled by everyone else – from their manager to the European Union, from their sponsors that produce underwear to the International Monetary Fund – others that give them meaning and significance. She is The Other One, which is also a topic for feministic and post-colonial criticism which we will come back to a bit later.
In the meantime, it is important to state that Our Beautiful is an attempt to create a satirical, almost imaginary post-modernistic play that implements different mechanisms of representation to achieve a trashy gesamkunstwerk. There is also hope that the so called ‘’progressive’’ space of the &TD Theatre, that is well known for its love of experimenting, will give the play a legitimate and a much needed push forward. Hence, the projection screen with photos of Sophie Loren and George Clooney, to name a few, with an interview with Alka Vuica and with a text that announces every new chapter in the Singer’s career, just like in classical novels. The music, from pop singers like Kasandra and Alanis Morissette, all the way to folklore melodies, always has the role of a funny-trashy comment on the action. Recorded voice of the presenter announces each appearance of Our Beautiful as an ultimate Eurovision experience. The physical space of the stage is used in two ways: as a scene for the character but also as the space of the audience. Those that watch are at the same time those that perform and vice versa. Each of the actresses plays the role of the Singer in one period of her career and they also play all the characters that she encounters in her life. Generalissimus – Tuđman! – is the first one to take her under his wing as her father figure. He readily sends the young people of his own choosing and dressed in black, to the front of the show business to cheerfully sing ‘’Hey ho, all of our sons/will die for us’’ while waving the flag of national pride. The Church comes like a cherry on top. Here, Kurspahić vents it all out when directing a blasphemous scene easy to enjoy and in which sexual illusions on a love affair between the Church, Petra Dugandžić and Our Beautiful, Ivana Horvat, are followed by springing of Holy water from a plastic figure of the Virgin Mary in an uncontrollable rhythm, with Madonna playing in the back. The time after Generalissimus, who left the State in debts, is marked by cosmetical changes, bad leadership of the slow and inefficient Komesar – Račan – and with a chant of a siren by the Doctor of Theatre Science – the iceberg that sank the Croatian Titanic. The story of Sanader is a story of found and then lost again hope, and the only solution offered by his heiress – Kosor – is dressing-up, that what ‘’every woman needs when she hits bottom.’’ This is how the play ends: dimming the strong lights so that the wrinkles on the Singer’s face can not be seen, because now she is, after all, ‘’an older woman’’.
What now? The only thing that seems likely is sinking deeper into darkness, the one in the theatre and the symbolic one.
Although it does not deserve to sink into darkness, this play has a problem that is impossible to overlook. The story about Croatia is a story about abuse, bad leadership and, most importantly, about merciless sell-outs of the State, which is presented by a passive and limited women figure. She is lead by her desire for success, which is achieved by exposing her body, with underwear and high-heals as her work clothes, which is sometimes ‘’upgraded’’ by a short dress. When playing male characters, they wear stylish suits or uniforms. As criticism of the culture of commodity where everything is on sale – from needles to people and States – the play loses its meaning, because although they present the State, the actors’ physical presence on the stage is impossible to ignore and to see only their character. Marshall McLuhan, a media theoretician in the 60’s, said that ‘’the medium is the message’’ and if a woman’s body is the ultimate commodity object today, than what kind of attitude does this play take? Let us not stop at the body, let us expand the domain to the overall classical stereotyping of a woman, from passivity and subordination, naivety and lack of rationality, all the way to seductive sexuality and obsession with growing old. As if the Woman has become a Victorian bastard-like creature with virtues of ‘’the angel in the house’’ and with flaws of ‘’the lunatic in the attic’’.
Even though the play, by its definition, should have been critical towards the freakshow of show business it speaks of, it remains that over-strained mixture of show business, politics and theatre circus. It does not manage to get out of its skin, not matching its potential moment of transcendence of spirit over matter, and poor acting, apart from Csilla Barath-Bastaić, does not help.
Can the solution be found somewhere else? Maybe in the space, whose frames were defined by setting the sitting rows for the audience on both sides of the stage, opposite each other, so that the audience can, at the same time, see on to the stage and at the other half. Is this the answer, that we – both those on stage and in the audience – constantly reflect each other, mutually directing this farce which we can not leave, and in the end, we are the State led by incapable leaders because we allow them to lead us and because we are as equally incapable?
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.