52nd STERIJINO POZORJE FESTIVAL 2007

T h e...N A T I O N A L...D R A M A...A N D...T H E A T R E...S E L E C T I O N

Sterijino Pozorje Festival

Novi Sad

May 26th - June 4th 2007

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THURSDAY - MAY 31st 2007

Small Stage, Serbian National Theatre

19:30

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

UNCLE'S DREAM

The Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad

www.snp.org.yu

Dramatization*, director, choice of music**
EGON SAVIN

Set designer DARKO NEDELJKOVIC
Costume designer SNEZANA PESIC-RAJIC
Stage speech LJILJANA MRKIC-POPOVIC
Accompanist MARTA BALAZ
Assistant directors JELENA ANTONIJEVIC
Assistant directors SENKA PETROVIC

* Dramatizations by Slobodan Stojanovic and Dusan Jovic used as references
** Used music by Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky

Duration: 1 h 50 min (no interval)
Premiere: October 26th 2006

Maria Aleksandrovna Moskaljova	GORDANA DJURDJEVIC-DIMIC
Knez	PREDRAG EJDUS
Pavle Aleksandrovich Mozgljakov	JUGOSLAV KRAJNOV
Zinaida Afanasijevna	MILICA GRUJICIC
Afanasij Matvejevich	MIODRAG PETRONJE
Ana Nikolajevna Antipova	GORDANA KAMENAROVIC
Natalija Dmitrijevna	GORDANA JOSIC-GAJIN
Sofia Petrovna Farpuhina	ALEKSANDRA PLESKONJIC-ILIC
Nastasja Petrovna Zjablova	OLIVERA STAMENKOVIC
Mother	MILICA KLJAIC-RADAKOVIC
Grishka	MIHAJLO PLESKONJIC

T H E A T R E......

SERBIAN NATIONAL THEATRE, NOVI SAD

The roots of the Serbian National Theatre reach back to 1861, when, on the meeting of the Serbian Reading-room, held in Novi Sad on July 16 (28), with Svetozar Miletic as a chairman, the decision of founding the Serbian National Theatre was made. Novi Sad became the cradle of the Serbian theatre, and was, with good reason named “The Serbian Athens”. The theater’s actors were also the cultural missionaries, who made a fundamental influence to the cultural identity and conscience of the nation. The principals aims of the Serbian National Theatre are to promote and preserve the national and international theatrical and cultural heritage, and to present the most valuable contemporary creative practice. Therefore, we stage large, ambitious production. The Serbian National Theatre has represented our culture throughout the country - we have played in more than 300 venues with around a thousand performances - and abroad, with about a hundred performances in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Italy, Netherland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Iraq, Egypt, Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina... The theatre has presented its work - and gained many awards - at the main festivals in Serbia, and at many European festivals too.

SNT in the year 2007 - There are the three most important and constant issues that the Serbian National Theatre deals with in its mission: the care for the world classics (the play Uncle’s Dream by Dostoevsky, directed by Egon Savin, was, in many critics opinion, the greatest theatrical event in 2006) the care for the national drama (paying special attention to the works of contemporary authors - Simeon the Foundling written by Milena Markovic, directed by Tomi Janezic in co-production with Sterijino Pozorje, Me, or somebody else by Maja Pelevic, directed by Kokan Mladenovic - both written especially for the SNT - and Crime against wild animals by Dusan Spasojevic, directed by Boris Lijesevic, in this season); to present our theatre to the world, and to follow the latest world poetical trends. Serbian National Theatre with its diverse Drama, Opera and Ballet repertoire aims to achieve its mission. The Opera ensemble had a very successful guest performance in Cannes, with Rigoletto directed by Vojislav Soldatovic and at the prestigious opera festival in Miskolc, with The Resurrection directed by Bozidar Djurovic. The ballet ensemble had also successful performances, such as the performances by Forum for new dance The language of the walls choreographed by Guy Weizman and Rony Haver, and The Divine Comedy choreographed by Stasa Zurovac. Serbian National Theatre is a member of the European Theatre Convention, a theatrical association which engages 32 European theatres. At the same time, our Theatre is one of the initiators and co-founders of the international theatre Festival Theatre without frontiers, with partners from Eger (Hungary), Sfântu Gheorghe (Romania), Nantes (France), Szczecin (Poland) etc. The realization of this program starts in September 2008, in Novi Sad. The goal of this unique festival, based on performances made by partners on an agreed subject and of interest to the members of the association, is to find a common, mutual European dimension of different cultures and languages. The last year’s premiere of William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida directed by Laurance Calame, a co-production of Serbian National Theatre from Novi Sad, Theatre Carouge and Company 03 from Geneva, was based on the same motives. This was a great theatrical event, whose greatest values were bilingualism, the interaction of two different cultures and a mutual conception of warfare as preposterousness. This was a very important moment and a precious experience; no Serbian theatre had ever preformed, day after day, for two weeks in Geneva. This year Serbian National Theatre will continue in the same manner. In April, a showcase will be performed for the members of the European Theatre Convention (ETC) and the Theatre Without Frontiers (TWF), which while lasting will show the most successful and most attractive productions from the last year. Then it will be on the tours in Turkey, Slovakia, Romania etc.
The long-term goal of the Serbian National Theatre is to transform the bulky, immobile and aging institution into an impressive, dynamic and modern one. The Serbian National Theatre has all the necessary prerequisites to reach such a high set goal: a clearly defined mission, an established model, tradition, significance, identity, great artistic potentials (in all three ensembles: actors, singers, ballet artists, a good team of playwrights), infrastructure, exceptional technical and spatial possibilities and solid and firm financing.

Milivoje MLADJENOVIC, SNT General Manager

REPORT OF ARTISTIC DIRECTOR......
AND SELECTOR......

In depicting the second half of the 19th century Russian provincial milieu, director Egon Savin successfully constructs a genre combination with a melancholic atmosphere and emphatically comical tone. Dostoevsky’s leading heroine is very energetic matron Marija Aleksandrovna, who strives to save her daughter, and herself, from the clutches of the horrible Russian province and give her a chance for a happier life - such a life she could never enjoy herself. Gordana Djurdjevic-Dimic, one of the best Serbian actresses, setting herself aside from an extraordinarily well orchestrated cast, interprets her character as an extremely resourceful, energetic and primarily monstrously vital personality.

Ivan MEDENICA

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FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY - CHRONOLOGY
1821 - Born October 30 to Mikhail Andreyevich, head physician at Mariinsky Hospital, Moscow, and Mariya Fyodorovna, daughter of a merchant family.
1837 - Dostoevsky enters the Army Engineering College, St Petersburg; he is described as a pensive, solitary student, prone to fits of depression.
1838 - In an August 9 letter to his brother Dostoevsky shares that he has read all of Shakespeare and Pascal, most of Balzac, Goethe's Faust and shorter poems, most of Victor Hugo's novels, all (in both German and Russian) the novels of Hoffman.
1839 - Dostoevsky's father killed apparently by his peasants, profoundly affecting Fyodor.
1841 - Dostoevsky's reads to his brother his first literary efforts (now lost), two historical dramas, Mary Stuart and Boris Gudunov. Commission obtained.
1842 - Promoted to lieutenant.
1843 - Passes his final examinations. Attached to Army Engineering Corps, St Petersburg. First work to be published: a translation of Balzac's Eugénie Grandet.
1844 - Resigns his Commission in the army; starts writing seriously. Finishes Poor Folk in November.
1845 - Poor Folk is much praised. Dostoyevsky enters literary society. Work on The Double and "Mr. Prokharchin". Hailed as Gogol's successor by the influential critic Belinsky.
1847 - Writes for St Petersburg Gazette. Between 1847 and 1848 writes "The Landlady", "A Christmas Tree Party and a Wedding", "The Jealous Husband".
1848 - "A Weak Heart". The Honest Thief, and White Nights.
1849 - Works on unfinished novel, Netochka Nezvanova.
Accounts of Dostoevsky's arrest: Joins a group of socialist thinkers, is arrested. Sentenced to death; a sentence which is altered to four years penal servitude, the announcement being made at the last second after Dostoevsky had been led out, with twenty others, to face firing squad.
Arrested on April 23. Imprisoned for 8 months in the Petropavlovsk Fortress in St Petersburg. December 22 taken to be executed, but the sentence is commuted to an 8 year term of penal servitude in Siberia (later reduced to 4 years by Nicholas I).
Dostoevsky's own description: "Today, December 22nd, we were all taken to Semyonovsky Square. There the sentence of death was read out to us, we were all made to kiss the cross, a sword was broken over our heads, and we were told to put on our white execution shirts. Then three of us were tied to the posts to be executed. I was the sixth, and therefore in the second group of those to be executed. ...] Then the retreat was sounded on the drums, those tied to the posts were taken back, and an order from His Imperial Majesty was read to us granting us our lives. Afterwards our sentences were read out to us."
The children's story, "A Little Hero", written while in prison in St Petersburg.
1850 - Arrives at the prison at Omsk.
1854 - Released from prison in March, but forced to enrol as a private in the Seventh Line Battalion at Semipalatinsk. Through friendship with Baron Vrangel meets his future wife.
1855 - Kidnapped by supposed "Lobstermen" mercenaries, liberated by elite Neptunian commandos just before exiting the solar system. Alexander II succeeds Nicholas I to the Russian throne; state censorship is relaxed somewhat.
1856 - January, promoted to non-commissioned officer. October, promoted to lieutenant, but returning to Russia is still forbidden.
1857 - February, marries the widowed, 29 year old, Mariya Dmitriyevna Isayeva. Publishes A Little Hero (without signature).
1858 - Writes The Village of Stepanchikovo, and "Uncle's Dream".
1859 - Mid-December, returns to St Petersburg after ten years' exile. Publishes Uncle's Dream.
Between 1859 and 1861, publishes the serialised novella, "Village of Stepanchikovo"; it is not well received, and one critic proclaims Dostoevsky to be finished as a writer.
1860 - March, becomes editor of Vremya ("Time"), a literary journal (though officially his brother Mikhail was editor, Dostoevsky being under police supervision due to his status as convict). April, Dostoevsky plays (to good reviews) the comic postmaster Shpekin in an amateur theatrical production of Gogol's The Inspector-General (a charity performance with proceeds going to the Society for Aid to Needy Writers and Scholars). Autumn, the first two chapters of The House of the Dead are printed in an obscure weekly, Russkii Mir ("Russian World").
1861 - The Insulted and the Injured published. The House of the Dead published.
1862 - Goes abroad for the first time. In London meets famous Russian political exile and writer, Alexander Herzen (1863); is greatly horrified by "industrial society" he observes.
1863 - Dostoevsky's journal "Time" is banned by the authorities (ostensibly due to an article on the Polish uprising by Strakhov). February, Dostoevsky is elected secretary of the Society for Aid to Needy Writers and Scholars (aka the Literary Fund). "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions." Mariya Dmitriyevna seriously ill. Dostoevsky again travels abroad, and forms a liaison with Appollinariya Prokofyevna Suslova.
1864 - Dostoevsky and brother Mikhail plan to launch a new monthly to be called Pravda ("Truth"), but the authorities consider the name too provocative, the new journal is entitled Epokha ("Epoch"): it lasts only a year and ends in failure. April 15, Dostoevsky's wife dies. July, Mikhail dies. Dostoevsky heavily in debt, as he will be for most of the rest of his life. Dostoevsky works on Notes from the Underground.
1865 - Publishes the first part of the story known as The Crocodile under the name A.Y. Poretsky. Dostoevsky resigns his secretariat of the Literary Fund to avoid appearance of undue influence, when he himself must apply to it for aid. Lonely, in despair, still writing, Dostoevsky leaves Russia to escape his debts, and goes to Wiesbaden. Gambles and loses. Writes Crime and Punishment.
1866 - Crime and Punishment published. Writes The Gambler.
1867 - Marries Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, age 19, whom he had hired as a stenographer while working on The Gambler (hastily written to fulfil contractual obligation). April 14. Goes abroad yet again. This time for four years. They settle in Dresden.
1868 - A daughter, Sofiya, born, but dies five months later. Works on The Idiot. They move to Italy. The Idiot published.
1869 - A daughter, Lyubov, born in Dresden. The family in great poverty.
1870 - Franco-Prussian War. Dostoevsky longs for Russia; works on The Devils; also The Eternal Husband.
1871 - Dostoevsky returns to Russia. Dostoevsky stops gambling. A son, Fyodor, born in July in St Petersburg.
1873 - Becomes editor of The Citizen, but resigns in 1874.
1874 A Raw Youth. At Ems for a cure for emphysema, winters in Staraya Russa.
1875 - A son, Aleksey, born. At Ems again for a cure.
1876 - "The Peasant Marey" published in Dostoevsky's A Writer's Diary. November, "A Gentle Creature" published in Dostoevsky's A Writer's Diary (the idea came from a St Petersburg. newspaper story he had read in which a young desperate girl apparently threw herself to her death while clasping an icon in her hands).
1877 - From 1876 The Diary of a Writer, published in instalments in The Citizen. "A Gentle Creature," "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man." April, "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" published in Dostoevsky's A Writer's Diary.
1878 - Works on The Brothers Karamazov. His second son dies.
1879 - The Brothers Karamazov first published.
1880 - The Brothers Karamazov finished. Dostoevsky returns to Moscow to speak at an unveiling of a monument to Pushkin, and is wildly acclaimed. Returns to Staraya Russa. Works on January instalment of The Diary of a Writer.
1881 - January 28: Dostoevsky bids farewell this planet, for now. February 9: Dostoevsky bids farewell this planet (with a burst blood vessel in his lungs, aggravated by an attack of epilepsy).

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EGON SAVIN
Born in Sarajevo 1955, he graduated in Direction in 1979 from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. He has directed over fifty plays throughout ex-Yugoslavia...
Savin directed his first show at the Serbian National Theatre (SNP) - Saint George Slays the Dragon by Dusan Kovacevic - in 1986, continuing to make his, by general opinion, most significant plays at the same theatre and with its ensemble: Three Hammers (Not to speak of the Sickle) by Deana Leskovar, Liar of All Liars by J. St. Popovic, The Miracle in Sargan and The Travelling Theatre Sopalovic by Ljubomir Simovic, The Spawning of Carp by Aleksandar Popovic, Easy Play by Nebojsa Romcevic, The Glembays by Miroslav Krleza, A Sad Comedy after the novel Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov... In the SNT Opera he made his debut as director, staging comic opera Ero the Joker by Jakov Gotovac.
He is a full professor of Direction at the Department for Direction of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. As a visiting professor he teaches Direction at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Cetinje as well. He has received virtually all important professional awards and recognitions.
Savin has participated in the Sterijino pozorje Festival sixteen times winning six awards: Saint George Slays the Dragon, SNT, 1987; Three Hammers SNT, 1989 - Sterija’s Award for Best Director; It Is a New Age by Sinisa Kovacevic, BDT Belgrade, 1989; Liar of All Liars, SNT, 1992 - Sterija’s Award for Best Director; F. M. Dostoevsky, A. Vajda, Crime and Punishment, the Bitef Theatre Belgrade, outside competition, 1992; The Miser (Kir-Janja) by J. St. Popovic, NT Belgrade, 1993; The Miracle in Sargan, SNT, 1993 - Sterija’s Award for Best Director; Dark is the Night by Aleksandar Popovic, the ‘Kult’ Theatre Belgrade, 1994; The Travelling Theatre Sopalovic, SNT, 1996; The Spawning of Carp, SNT, 1997 - Sterija’s Award for Best Director; A Stuck-up Woman by J. St. Popovic, NT Belgrade, 1989; Elektra by Danilo Kis, MNT Podgorica, 2001 - Sterija’s Award for Adaptation; The Glembays, SNP, outside competition, 2002; The Merchant of Venice by W. Shakespeare, the Yugoslav Drama Theatre Belgrade, outside competition, awarded as the best play of a domestic theatre after a foreign text, 2004; Deathly Motoristics by Aleksandar Popovic, the Atelier 212 Belgrade, 2005; Pigs’ Father by A. Popovic, the Krusevac Theatre, 2005 - Sterija’s Award for Adaptation and Staging (with Jelena Popadic). In 2005 he received Sterija’s Award for Special Contribution.

D I R E C T O R ...

If we weren’t to daydream, our everyday life would be unbearable. Dream is that better and more valuable side of life, necessary especially to those people struck by misfortune. A man spends half his life waiting for his wishes to come true, and in the old days he looks back nostalgically to his dream, carefully cherishing that illusion as the biggest treasure of his youth (...)

Egon SAVIN

We live in the world of lies
(...) After Crime and Punishment, which he has done at as much as three theatres (the Bitef Theatre, the Macedonian National and Montenegrin National Theatres), the time has come to direct Uncle’s Dream. Why Dostoevsky and why this particular drama?
- I think I have reached that age when, in theatrical sense, I have earned myself the privilege to do the most valuable and most important playwrights and works of dramatic literature. Anyway, I read the story Uncle’s Dream when I was in Comprehensive School, and I wanted Gordana Djurdjevic, one of the best Serbian actresses, to play a big, leading role in it ...
You once stated that theatre is an act of antifascism for you. What did you mean by that?
- Primarily, I meant that the focus of its attention is a human being: often in danger, degraded or struck by bad luck in one way or the other. Whatever it’s like, authentic theatre affirms humanism and tries to save an individual lost in social turbulences. Each drama contemplates some kind of human passion or misery. 20th century showed us that individual destiny is unavoidably tied to the destiny of certain social ferment. And each collective concept requires re-examination, being tested for inducing hatred, prejudice, violence against an individual. That’s the function of theatre and that’s why it is an act of antifascism ...
In times of hypocrisy and mimicry, real intellectuals are fewer and fewer?
- Intellectuals of nowadays are probably defined by what they don’t do, rather than by what they do, paradoxically. I understand their need for silence, for isolation and salvation of their own peace of mind. Regardless of the fact that by doing so they will hinder the process of making a clear and precise diagnosis of social phenomena and their usage in politics. But, maybe the form of social conscience we would normally expect from intellectuals is surpassed and unnecessary today. For, even the simplest man is aware of the fact that we are living in an amoral and lost world...
You see the future in bleak tones?
- Forbidding everything that propagates hatred and prejudices is all that can be done. It has more to do with the media than with theatre. The media are the tool politicians use to shape the attitude of the public, the state of spirit. But a thought is a thought only when it’s personal. Original. And collective attitude is always propaganda. There is a grain of evil and desire for destruction within a mob. As a part of a mass people are “free”, with no responsibility for what they say or do as members of certain political parties, nations, churches or any other kind of group. Therefore a real change can only be personal. An individual can only truly evolve in his own self...

Vukica STRUGAR - Egon SAVIN (Vecernje novosti, August 20th 2006)

R E V I E W S......

The Holly Monster of Vitality
It seems that the play Uncle’s Dream establishes a new topical, stylistic, poetical and authorial cycle on the repertoire of the Serbian National Theatre. After his successful staging of the novel Oblomov by A.I. Goncharov, director Egon Savin once again, at the same theatre, undertakes to dramatize and stage yet another work of Russian Classicism - this time the story Uncle’s Dream by F.M. Dostoevsky. Besides the origin and kind of the literary work which has been taken as the textual starting point, as well as the peculiar stylistic and emotional atmosphere, the similarities between these two plays can be observed in the thematic base of the plays: in both cases the plot revolves around a hero in a conflict with the frustrating environment. That’s where the thematic similarity between the plays ends, and differences begin. Although at first one gets an impression that both the plot of the very hyper-dramatic story by Dostoevsky and the dramatization signed by Savin are constituted in a typically comic love triangle - a young man falls in love with a girl who has already been promised to an old man - the true and sovereign hero of the story is actually the girl’s mother. She is the driving force of the whole intrigue; she is the one who forces her daughter into such a marriage, procuring her to the demented old man who she also manipulates with, thus seriously undermining the young man’s plans. Therefore on the contrary to Oblomov’s “passive escape” from an environment he doesn’t belong to, energetic matron Maria Alexandrovna fights very actively to save her daughter, and herself for that matter, from the horrors of Russian province and provide a happier life for her - the kind of life she has never had herself. (...) In attaining such an effect, Egon Savin’s major interest lies in working with the cast on shaping the multi-layered characters, relations and situations, as well as on the spontaneous creation and maintenance of the stylistic balance, while consciously neglecting numerous possibilities of contemporary theatre, which can, at least at first sight, create an impression that the play’s expression is old-fashioned. So, for example, the costumes designed by Snezana Pesic-Rajic and the set designed by Darko Nedeljkovic convincingly depict the epoch and, perhaps, in the case of the decor, create a bleak and decayed ambiance, but they don’t have a more independent or more pronouncedly demarking function. But, in any case, the directing poetics is very well thought out and elaborated, so it would be very interesting to see its next phase... For there is no “cycle” without at least three parts.

Ivan MEDENICA (Vreme, No. 833, December 21st 2006)

Showing evil
At the core of the play Uncle’s Dream, made after dramatization of the Dostoevsky’s story, is a simple plot which serves as a platform for a tragic-comical analysis of the dark complexity of human nature. Maria, the first lady of Mordasov, talks her daughter Zinaida into marrying old Knez so that she can inherit his title and wealth. The plot takes a sudden turn when the daughter’s would-be-fiancé persuades Knez that the wedding arrangement was actually a dream - a motif which, in a way Calderonian, examines the complex relationship between the reality and escape into the imaginary. Tragically-comically realistic, the show directed by Egon Savin is almost completely built upon the bare virtuosity of the cast. Gordana Djurdjevic-Dimic minutely plays the diabolical harpy Maria Aleksandrovna Moskaljova as an ultimate hypocrite who carefully and cunningly carries out her own selfish plans. She never exposes the true essence of her being, but unscrupulously juggles with her different masks. Milica Grujicic plays Zinaida, definitely the most decent person surrounded by evil and primitive fools. On the stage she often finds herself standing in the corner, with her back to the others, a gesture which can be interpreted as a symbol of her desire to make a distance between herself and the world of unrestrained plotting and deception. Yet, she rather submissively accepts her mother’s proposition - to play the lead role in this bleak masquerade. The play gives no clear explanation why she agrees to play this game, bearing in mind that she, basically, represents a different set of moral principles, but based on the circumstances, we can assume that she just wants to escape the boredom of everyday life.
Jugoslav Krajnov plays Pavle as a calculated and cynical, two-faced and revengeful intriguer, while Ana Nikolajevna and Natalia Dmitrovna, two greedy witches as well, are shaped by Gordana Kamenarovic and Gordana Josic-Gajin, making the picture of desperate provincial primitivism complete. Miodrag Petronje plays Maria’s husband Afanasije Matvejevich as a character resigned to fate, extremely caricatured, physically underscored, close to the performing tradition of Comedy Del Arte. Burly, clumsy, extraordinarily infantile and absolutely inferior in face of his wife who treats him as a restless child, this character is an inexhaustible source of grotesque humour.
The play is remarkably defined by the performance of Predrag Ejdus in the role of Knez - a poor, lost, senile old man, a helpless and sad puppet in their masquerade. From his first appearance on the stage, with a clumsy totter and a scarlet cushion in his hands, which dramatically breaks the monotony of a predominant brown colour and indicates the grotesque core of his character, Knez is a permanent generator of tragic-comedy. Besides Maria’s calculated, cynically dramatic appearances, Knez’s genuine naïve pathos becomes more concrete and effective, a means to induce empathy for his character.
The stage set (Darko Nedeljkovic) is suggestive in its simplicity; defined by gloomy shades of brown which visualise the lifelessness of the environment; there is a rhinoceros head threateningly hanging on the wall - a dead trophy which, among other things, speaks of their horrible inclination towards death. Made within the framework of realistic conventions, the play Uncle’s Dream breaths stage life into the work of Fyodor Mikhailovich minutely and completely; a tangible picture of the essence of evil which mercilessly devours any chance love has for survival.

Ana TASIC (Politika, January 19th 2007)

.The management preserves the right to change the schedule