Bitef's traditional and best-known accompanying program, Polyphony, started this year with a project that could have an impact on our cultural scene - it depends on its ability to recognize its importance.
It is a project of the Goethe Institute "New Stages South East", which follows young playwrights from Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia for two years. The local partner is the association OK - Education and Culture
The final workshop of that project, "Writing is Performance", was held at Bitef Polyphony. Five authors presented excerpts in performative form, in different performing formats. The common denominator for these texts for a young audience is loneliness, which occurs at the border between online and physical reality, and as a consequence of the impossibility of establishing longer-term and deeper interpersonal relationships.
Gerhild Steinbuch from Austria, one of the authors of the project (with Tanja Šljivar the playwright and Ana Konstantinović the director) tells the portal "Vremena" that a topic that is very present and current among young people was chosen, so that the theater, as a communicative medium, would bring it closer to explained.
"The theater talks about the present even when it doesn't talk about it directly. Being a theater live media with bodies that momentarily meet other bodies, there is a special potential not only to reproduce themes but to really respond to the present and act together with it."
The project, says Gerhild Steinbuch, "is a good opportunity for networking and exchange." The texts of the young participants of the project are followed from the first drafts to the completion of the piece", and adds that "in Germany and Austria there is good practice with different programs of this type".
This project took advantage of the theater's ability to "develop exciting and new formats on contemporary themes that resonate with young people," says Steinbuch.
In recent years, theater in the German-speaking world has "increasedly dealt with post-migrant and feminist discourses as well as issues of racism and climate change, which I strongly welcome," explains Steinbuch.
The question of the future of graduated playwrights is a so-called eternally current topic in Serbia. Namely, the theaters do not have the capacity to accept them and often neither the interest, so not a small number of young playwrights are forced to do other jobs.
Gerhild Steinbuch says that in Austria and Germany this problem is not pronounced. "There are workshops, festivals." (Stückemarkt), awards, premieres. Therefore, authors can make a living from their work."
The five participants of the "New Stages South East" project from Serbia are Divna Stojanov, Mina Milošević, Hristina Mitić, Irena Parezanović and David Jakovljević. It remains for the local theater scene to recognize them and keep them in the country.
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