The new program of the 59th Bitef was published. Performances are coming from Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, Turkey, Tunisia, Serbia and Russia. He will start with the "Merchant of Venice" of KPGT, which until recently was led by Ljubiša Ristić, in "Atelje 212" of which he is now the acting director.
Although six of the seven planned performances canceled participation, this year's 59th edition will still be held from September 13 to 20 as planned, with a new selection - it was announced on September 1.
Spasoje Z. Milovanović, the selector of the new as well as the previous program, again chose seven performances. He also kept the old slogan - "Dare to find out".
Only the play remained from the previous version - Crno zlato Belgrade Drama Theater directed by Oliver Frljić. Everything else is new.
Circumstances
Spasoje Z. Milovanović chose plays from Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, Turkey, Tunisia and Serbia and a play from Russia for the accompanying program of the Festival.
In the words of the selector, he explained that "the selection was shaped in circumstances in which even the holding of the festival became the subject of public and political scrutiny. That's why this selection does not start from a pre-set theme, poetics or attitude. The different performances are linked above all by the willingness not to replace the complexity of the world with a simple answer and a prepared explanation".
Venetian merchant the performance of KPGT, whose director until recently was Ljubiša Ristić, will open the 59th Bitef in "Atelje 212", whose acting director is Ljubiša Ristić.
The selector wrote about this play that the director Strahinja Padežanin "sets the action in Venice in 1938, at a time when the Fascist regime in Italy took away citizenship, the right to public service and mixed marriages from Jews through racial laws - all in the name of homogeneity, which the regime presented as the defense of the nation. But the play is not only about history. It is about how an enemy is created. Shylock is a stranger in the community to which he belongs. His diversity is not only a fact of his origin and religion. It becomes the reason for which the majority can humiliate him, and then, when he retaliates, society faces the consequences of its own violence. It is much more difficult to see a world in which such a demand has become possible."
Multiple versions of society
Then there are the performances:
lbion Bartlett's Mother, directed by Zafir Radjab and produced by the "Nikolaj Binev" Youth Theater from Sofia (Bulgaria), opens a different question. What does it mean to try to bring back what has passed, and what happens when the desire to return from a private memory grows into a wider social need?
Chisinau at night Mihaj Fusu, produced by Chişinău's Teatrul Fără Nume - Theater Without a Name (Moldova), is a documentary play created from real stories of city residents - taxi drivers, receptionists, doctors, night club workers, dancers, ex-addicts... Fusu uses these stories to create a show in which the boundary between document and theater is constantly shifting. The city here is not a backdrop, but a dramatic character - one fate leads to another, one experience opens the next, and Chisinau appears before us as a multitude of different cities, as a society that does not have only one version of itself.
U Stalker Avtandil Varsimashvili, a production of the Tbilisi Theater Center Liberty Theater (Georgia), takes the journey to a completely different space. The performance is based on Andrei Tarkovsky's film of the same name, but it is not an illustration of it, but an independent theatrical research. Varsimashvili uses Tarkovsky's world as a starting point for thinking about faith, doubt and the limits of human knowledge, in a time when the boundaries between truth and lies have become so blurred that they are increasingly difficult to discern.
Law and the individual
Crno zlato Dejan Dukovsky, directed by Oliver Frljić and performed by the ensemble of the Belgrade Drama Theater (Serbia), opens the space of the family. Frljić calls the applied mechanism "tragic ignorance". Here, politics does not only happen on the street and in the parliament, but also at the kitchen table, in the words that are spoken and those that are kept silent. Identity is not something solid and determined once and for all.
Sophocles Antigone, produced by the Karma Sahne theater from Samsun (Turkey) and directed by Hakan Alkan, brings us back to one of the oldest conflicts of European theater: the individual against the law, the conscience against the order, the family against the state. Alkan places this old tragedy in a space where the question of the law directly collides with the question of individual responsibility.
Runaways Wafe Taboubi, produced by the National Theater of Tunisia (Tunisia), is a play about people who are waiting - waiting to escape, for something to change, for life to move on. But the wait here is not a gap between two events. It becomes just an event. Waiting in this way grows into a new type of prison.
Good ending
In the accompanying program, Russian Blues Sofije Gorlova and Anton Šmakov opens up the question of the meeting of different individualities and the possibility of finding closeness, freedom and belonging in a shared space. Starting from the experience of Russia and the Urals, the play translates those questions into a universal story about the relationship to others and the search for a place we can call home.
Apart from the already mentioned "Atelier 212", plays will also be shown in the National Theatre, Bitef Theatre, Terazije Theater and the Belgrade Drama Theatre.
It could be said - all's well that ends well. Because, the fact that after everything that happened to it, apart from the cancellation of six performances, there was also a small budget and a negative attitude of the public, the 59th Bitef was not canceled is a good ending.
Real journalism costs money, and we will not be bought by tycoons and corporations. Support us with a one-time or monthly donation. The time for it is now!
The play "Professional" is performed for the 50th time. "It is incredible that in forty years - since writing about the then government and communism, little has changed," says its author, Dušan Kovačević.
The world-famous "Aesthetics of Film", memoirs by Srećko Džamonja, books by Aleksandar Dimitrijević, award-winning novels and other new Clio publications that will not be at the Book Fair
The performance of "Balkan Spy" was canceled last night just before the meeting of the Student List at Slavija - due to the indisposition of the actors. "I am not indisposed," says the director of the play, Tatjana Mandić Rigonat
The members of the legendary German avant-garde rock group "Faust" recorded four exciting solo albums and released them on the same day. The exceptionality of this event is contained in the fact that the group has not existed for a long time, but all four founders, after a long break, worked together again, extending the duration of their visionary work deep into the XXI century.
There is, literally, no difference between the one who claims it is day in the middle of the night, or the one who claims to be a giraffe, from the claims we read on billboards: that Vučić is working to unify Serbs and that Serbia is doing better and better day by day.
The pre-election arrests due to the alleged "overthrow of the state" testify to the regime's panic. The bad news for them is - they can't arrest the whole people who decided to defend themselves from progressive beatings and election theft
The ring that tightens around Ćaciland Student list is getting narrower. Because there are more and more spoiled people who see the false prophet for what he is: a street obscener who is fighting Serbia
The archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
See all
