Two weeks after the sixth was canceled seven plays selected for this year's Bitef, and ten days before its start, the new program of this year's festival was announced.
This means that there are selector 59. Bitefa Spasoje Z. Milovanovic in that short period he chose (earlier, when the cancellations of performances started, he said that he always had performances in reserve), that the Bitef Board approved them (perhaps this was unnecessary considering that Milovanović, in addition to being a selector, is also the chairman of the Board), that all the necessary conditions were agreed with the theaters, contracts were signed, venues were found and agreed upon where the performances would be performed, that plane tickets and accommodation were provided and three hundred other organizational details.
The questions that inevitably arise in this context are: what are these new performances like, do they, given that they are from the reserve, correspond to Bitef's reputation, why is Bitef insisted on when the public's arguments against him seem well-founded...
About the term – briefly
Spasoje Z. Milovanović tells "Vreme" that he does not see "any reasonable reason to give up institutions and what they exist for, due to political exasperation, from any of the, according to the last census of the RZ, without KiM, 6.549.901 possible parties. In the case of Bitef, that means the theater."
Perhaps the most intriguing question is how he managed to provide practically an entire new festival program in an incredibly short time, from which the following follows: Does this indicate that an international festival does not have to be prepared for a year?
Spasoje Z. Milovanović answered the first part of the question with the sentence "plays are seen much earlier, and relations with artists and theaters are built over years", and he did not answer the second part.
The slogan is the same.
Due to the new selection, he did not change the original slogan "Dare to find out", and he sees no room for doubt that the plays he subsequently selected correspond to that message.
"The Merchant of Venice" asks us how the Second came to be, Albion how much we know our own past, Chisinau at night how much we really know the city and the society in which we live, stalker do we know what we really want Crno zlato how well we know our own and other people's identity, Antigone is it even possible to have a simple answer in the conflict between law and conscience, a Runaways what freedom actually means.
That's why the slogan had no reason to be changed. 'Dare to find out' is not a message that we know the answers, but an invitation to check what we think we know."
Spasoje Z. Milovanović says that, apart from two performances from Serbia, all the other performances that will be at the 59th Bitef have already been at other festivals and won awards, which speaks of their quality.
Performances are not selected by passport
"Except Black gold Belgrade Drama Theater, all other performances were at other festivals, and all others, except Venetian merchant KPGT performances have been awarded. Crno zlato i Venetian merchant are the latest plays in the selection. However, awards and festival experience were not the criteria of my choice. The plays were chosen because they are artistically exceptional."
Apart from Serbia, Spasoje Ž. Milovanović also banned plays from Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, Turkey, Tunisia, Serbia and a play from Russia for the Supporting Program of the Festival, but none from Western Europe.
"When choosing, I did not make a geographical quota," he says. "I did not have the task that Bitef must have a certain number of plays from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia or any other part of the world. Bitef is an international festival, but international does not mean geographically proportional. If I were to choose a play because it comes from a certain political or cultural bloc, and not because it is artistically exciting, I would give up the basic selection criterion. You don't come to Bitef for the performance's passport, but for what happens on stage," said Spasoje Ž. Milovanović about his new selection.
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!
