Theater criticism is usually written immediately after the premiere, except when this is not the case (the critic does not get to see the play, for example), and unwatched performances remain without text. However, it is never too late for good theatre. For The stars shine on the ceiling. Small theater "Duško Radović", for example.
The play was based on the novel of the same name by Juhana Tidel. For the basis of the novel The stars shine on the ceiling. the writer used her life drama - her mother died of cancer when she was a teenager. The novel is about the complexity of growing up. Eros awakens - the body changes (the girl gets feminine curves) and the opposite sex begins to interest her. Also, the attitude towards friendship changes and the attitude towards authorities is examined. But growing up is not only about falling in love and conflict with peers and authorities. As a counterpoint to the heroine's sexual growth, there is thanatos, the drama of her mother, whose body is getting weaker every day due to illness and chemotherapy. Mom's illness is described from the daughter's perspective and the author delicately and convincingly gives us a picture of a serious illness as it looks in the eyes of a child. There is disgust and fear and denial and tenderness and loyalty and great love. A child cannot separate its own existence from that of its mother. Therefore, at the beginning, the main character, gripped by fear, secretly writes that she will kill herself if her mother dies. The difficult and glorious path of growing up is crowned by the fact that in the end, when the mother actually dies, the girl decides to continue living because her mom lives inside her. Thanks to the discovery of love and the confrontation with death, the main character really becomes a mature, adult person.
Playwright Tijana Grumić and director Damjan Kecojević in the dramatization kept the spirit of storytelling that naturally belongs to the novel. The main character is both the narrator and the actor of the novel. Tijana Grumić "splits" the main character into several characters, keeping in mind the character's function in the dramatic story: Jena the narrator (Julija Petković), Jena the actress in the plot (Mina Nenadović) and Jena the child - a witness of key events (Drina Kecojević). From a theatrical point of view, this procedure is justified because it allows the team of the play to make the acting tasks clearer and more specific and to create a theatrically inspiring interaction between the different Jenas. The dramatic and the narrative intertwine and complement each other, which successfully preserves the narrative quality of the novel and gives us an insight into the main character's introspection. The whole story of the novel is told as the protagonist's memory of her childhood, which was indeed sad because of the death of her mother, but it also contained extremely beautiful and important memories.
The solution of the stage space follows the basic idea of the play. The scene simultaneously represents the main character's home and a space of memory in which real spaces merge and connect as our emotions connect them. Set designer (Zoran Petrov) and director Damjan Kecojević came up with a witty way for the characters from the memory of the main character to rush onto the stage suddenly and strangely, as well as the memory in our consciousness. The scenography is composed of movable, yellow panels similar to closets. In the depth of the central part of the scene, there is a space that combines the children's room of the main character (the bed above which the stars are attached to the ceiling) and the sick bed of the seriously ill mother. In this way, the space of complete happiness and bliss and the space of greatest suffering are combined. This dreamlike merging of spaces contributes to the dramatic playing out of the relationship between the characters - the heroine can "see" an important scene from her mother's life that she did not witness. Also, the heroine can relive a scene from her own life and come to a new understanding of a familiar situation. In a play about growing up, this is a very good procedure because evaluating and revaluing one's own experience is an important part of any growing up.
Since the play intertwines the main character's memory of growing up, the experience of the world of her childhood and real life events, the director Damjan Kecojević and the actors consistently implemented all this through the way of acting - the actors "enter" and "exit" the characters, and the characters exit and enter the situations. To make the transitions clear and effective, the actors and the director found gestures typical for the boys Zaha (Mladen Lero) and Stefan (Filip Stankovski) and the girls/friends Suzana (Anđela Alavirević) and Ulis (Nevena Kočović). The adult characters, Jena's mom (Sunčica Milanović), Jena's grandmother (Jovana Cvetković), Razredna (Jelena Ćuruvija Đurica) and Ulisa's mom (Jelena Ilić), are shown in the way young people see them, that is, as the main character remembers them.
It is interesting to observe this theatrical picture of growing up a modern girl in Europe. No matter how much society prides itself that the welfare of the youngest is the most important thing to it, it is not quite so in practice. Growing up is not at all simple or easy because children have to live with the choices of their own parents, and parents are "only human", that is, weak beings in many unexpected ways. The mother-daughter bond is further strengthened because the two of them live alone (dad abandoned them) and are very close to each other. Grandma (mother's mother) is only there as a helper, with whom the daughter and main character Jena clashes because she perceives her as an intruder and proof that something is seriously wrong in her small family. In addition to her mother and grandmother, important figures for the girl's upbringing are her best friend Susan, "favorite opponent" Ulis (a girl who highlights her "feminine" curves and enters into relationships with boys). Where are the fathers in modern families? The author does not deal with that. In a world created by women, boys are a mystery that arouses great curiosity of the main character - a kiss with her first love will make her dreams come true.
The stars shine on the ceiling. should be watched because it is at the same time a serious, cheerful, sad and tender play about modern growing up. It combines melodrama, comedy and children's theater in a very fine way, and it is a whole that the whole family can watch together. One can imagine a situation in which grandmother, father, mother, son and daughter go to the theater together, watch a play, and then talk about it, but also about themselves, about life, love and death. After all, this is a play that reminds us that even in the most difficult situations in life, one should remain human and love one's neighbor as he is.
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