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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 |
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Sterijino Pozorje Festival |
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Novi Sad |
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May 26th - June 5th 2008 |
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WEDNESDAY - JUNE 4th 2008 |
Business Centre NIS-Naftagas
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21:00 |
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Ljubomir Simović
The TRAVELLING TROUPE ŠOPALOVIĆ
Atelier 212 Theatre, Belgrade |
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Director, space and light design
TOMI JANEŽIČ
Assistant Director BORIS LIJEŠEVIĆ
Assistant to Director ŠPELA TROŠT
Dramaturge MILAN MAĐAREV
Choreographer DENEŠ DEBREI
Music and sound design TOMAŽ GROM
Video design GREGOR BOŽIČ
Assistant to Set Designer DUŠKO AŠKOVIĆ
Stage Speech LjILjANA MRKIĆ-POPOVIĆ
Premiere:
October 27th 2007 |
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Majcen |
MIROSLAV ŽUŽIĆ |
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Milun |
NENAD ĆIRIĆ |
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Drobac |
BORIS ISAKOVIĆ |
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Blagoje Babić |
BRANISLAV ZEREMSKI |
Gina |
DARA DžOKIĆ |
Simka |
ISIDORA MINIĆ |
Dara |
RENATA ULMANSKI |
Vasilije Šopalović |
VLASTIMIR-ĐUZA STOJILjKOVIĆ |
Jelisaveta Protić |
JASNA ĐURIČIĆ |
Sofija Subotić |
NADA ŠARGIN |
Filip Trnavac |
SVETOZAR CVETKOVIĆ |
| Taking part in the production are: Snežana Marković, switch-board operator and porter in the Atelier 212, members of the choir and theatre AKUD "Branko Krsmanović" and students of Acting from the Academy of Arts BK, class of Mirjana Karanović |
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| The ATELIER 212 THEATRE - BELGRADE |
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The life of the Atelier 212 Theatre began on 12th November 1956 in the small theatre hall of the old ‘Borba’ before the audience of 212 chairs, with the premiere of Faustus directed by Mira Trailovic. It was founded by a group of actors, directors, writers and musicians at the moment when a need was felt for a theatre which would stage new avant-garde drama which had a major influence in Europe of that time. The Atelier 212 was the first theatre in Eastern Europe to play Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, 1956. This play’s great success opened the door to a number of other avant-garde dramas and authors to come: Sartre, Faulkner, Ionesco, Camus, Pinter, Adamov, Rożevicz, Joyce, Jarry, T. S. Eliot, Vitrac, Schisgal, Kopit, Genet – they all saw their first staging before the Yugoslav audiences here. The Atelier 212 Theatre discovered new Yugoslav authors and staged plays by Brana Crncevic, Aleksandar Popovic, Dusan Kovacevic... Mira Trailovic had been leading the Atelier 212 Theatre since the very beginning – at first, when Rados Novakovic and Bojan Stupica were at the helm of the theatre, she worked as the assistant manager, and then as its manager for many years to follow. Led by her, the Atelier brought down the boundaries of Yugoslavia and, in time, became a theatre known all over the world. Together with Jovan Ćirilov and other associates, Mira Trailovic initiated the establishment of one of the greatest European theatrical festivals, the BITEF festival, which was founded in 1967 in the Atelier 212 Theatre, where its now three-decades-long life began.
After Mira Trailovic, Ljubomir Draskic, who had joined the theatre as a young director almost at its beginning, became the manager of this theatre. For the twelve years of his rule, the theatre took on new young artists enlarging its company, and got a new house. In 1992 the Atelier, with its adapted building, became one of the best equipped theatres in the Balkans. Its Great Stage now has 385 seats in the auditorium and the Theatre in the Basement Stage has 141. Its fifth manager was Nebojsa Bradic, who didn’t hold his position for long (not even one whole season). The current manager, actor Svetozar Cvetkovic, has been member of the theatre’s company for many years. Nowadays the Atelier has a permanent ensemble of 32 actors and actresses, but it keeps its doors open for artists who aren’t permanently engaged here. The greatest actors and actresses still perform on the Atelier stages, and the best domestic and international directors work with this company. New dramas by contemporary Serbian and foreign authors are staged here, where the theatre leaves its own recognizable mark on them. In the recent years this theatre’s plays have been tearing down the newly established geographical boundaries conquering the world once again. At the moment, side by side with the old, already anthological plays, new plays are performed on its stages: Art by Jasmina Reza Taking Sides by Ronald Harwood, Family Tales by Biljana Srbljanovic, Three Versions of Life by Jasmine Reza, Wild Honey by Chekhov/Michale Frayn, Roberto Zucco by Koltés, Leda by M. Krleže, Krapp’s Last Tape by S. Beckett)... |
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P E R F O R M A N C E...... |
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(...) Simović’s drama begins with art invaded and destroyed by reality, and it ends with art interfering with reality and transforming it. In the last scene, theatre and life take their separate ways: actors leave Užice, and are once again nothing but travelling actors who take their illusionist art from place to place. Everything is back as it was, only Filip is not there. (...) Their art, which was poor and lame at the beginning of the play, for a moment illuminated life and transformed it, and now it’s back to being poor and lame. Simović has brilliantly chosen the art of travelling, not great actors, to be the one which intertwines with life. There is a twinge of a sneer at art, but also the faith that art is art even when it is in the hands of a travelling troupe. Confidently and naturally, The Travelling Troupe Šopalović moves from utter realism to poetic vision, and the moment when the playwright was joined by a poet nearly escapes us.(...)
Jovan HRISTIĆ |
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S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T...... |
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The Travelling Troupe Sopalovic – deconstruction or destruction
The master-piece of Serbian dramaturgy, multiply produced play The Travelling Threatre Sopalovic, for director Tomi Janezic represents a model for a drama-essay about the attitude of theatre to life, about the being of theatre in which real and fictional share the same body.
In the ‘gorge’, caught in the middle between two audiences – one in the conventional auditorium and the audience sitting in the stands set within a stage-box – there, along the narrow line where they touch upon each other, those parts of scenes from Simovic’s drama unfold which are devoid of the storyline causality. Janezic destructs the plot, sacrificing the character of Filip Trnavac, as a poetical-semantic counterpoint to the ‘mere life’ and theatre suited to the ones who make clear distinction between reality and fictitiousness. But the director begins this drama-essay with a long projection of Nazi crimes on the screen dropped between the two audiences, two auditoriums, on the very path where, after the screen is lifted, the play is to be performed, the character of Filip Trnavac is decomposed, or better still, transmuted into the main flow of the play, into an essay about the being of theatre in which fiction is histrionic play becomes alive, transforms a purse which becomes a tub for doing laundry, a water bottle turns into a sword... in which life becomes more legible and intensive, for it is condensed.
The play comes to Pozorje followed by opposing opinions of the audiences, from intellectual and emotional satisfaction to the rejection of the Janezic’s creation, with an attitude that the fact that it is stretched and lacks rhythm causes boredom which is no aesthetical category. The opinion of one part of the audience which considers that Janezic has destroyed Simovic’s drama is worthy of mentioning only to remind us that dramas cannot be destroyed by directors, as you will always find them published and bind in libraries and bookstores, and one is always able to direct their own personal interpretation in their heads; the right that is equally yours as it is directors’ – the right to direct, with a cast, their own fantasies, associations, the deepest reflections on the meaning and role of life in theatre and of theatre in life.
Tatjana MANDIĆ-RIGONAT |
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LjUBOMIR SIMOVIĆ
Since 1958 when his first book of poetry Slovenske Elegije (Slavic Elegies) was published by the Club of Užice Students, Simović has published a number of books of poems: Veseli grobovi (Cheerful Graves)(1961), Poslednja zemlja (The Last Land) (1964), Šlemovi (Helmets) (1967), Uoči trećih petlova (Shortly Before the Third Call of Roosters) (1972), Subota (Saturday) (1976), Vidik na dve vode (A Two-Sided View) (1980), Um za morem (Mind After the Sea) (1982), Deset obraćanja Bogorodici Trojeručici hilandarskoj (Ten Appeals to Theotokos of Three Hands of Hilandar) (1983), Gornji grad (Upper Town) (1990), Igla i konac (A Needle and Thread) (1992), Ljuska od jajeta (Eggshell) (1998), Tačka (Full Stop) (2004). Among a number of the selections of his poems the most important are: Hleb i so (Brad and Salt) (1985, 1987), Istočnice i druge pesme (Istočnice and Other Poems) (1994), Učenje u mraku (Studying in the Dark) (1995), prepared by the poet himself, as well as Najlepše pesme Ljubomira Simovića (The Best Poems by Ljubomir Simović (selected by A. Jovanović, 2002) and Sreda u subotu (Wednesday on Saturday) (selected by B. Kukić, 2002).
A definite edition of his poems that enters the literary cannons, 1953–2005, was published by Stubovi kulture (Pesme, knjiga prva; Pesme, knjiga druga) (Poems, Volume I; Poems, Volume II).
Three out of four Simović’s dramas have been performed on almost all former Yugoslav stages: Hasanaginica (Hasan Aga’s Wife) (premiered in 1974, National Theatre, Belgrade, directed by Ž. Orešković), Čudo u Šarganu (Miracle in Sharghan) (1975, Atelier 212, directed by M. Trailović), Putujuće pozorište Šopalović (The Travelling Troupe Šopalović ) (1985, YDT, directed by D. Mijač), while after the text of his fourth drama, Boj na Kosovu (The Battle of Kosovo) a film directed by Z. Šotra was made in 1989. The abridged, definite version of The Battle of Kosovo was published in 2003.
Simović published Snevnik, a diary of dreams, in 1998, and in 2005 Guske u magli (Geese in the Fog), a diary kept during the 1999 bombing campaign.
His book of essays Užice sa vranama (Užice with Crows), ‘a chronicle, which is sometimes a novel, or a novel, which is sometimes a chronicle”, has made two editions (1996; 2002).
His book of essays on Serbian poets, Duplo dno (Double Bottom) (1983, 1991, 2001) has been supplemented with new texts, not only about poets, but dramatists as well (Sterija, Nušić). The book of essays on painters and sculptors Čitanje slika (Reading Images) was published in 2006.
Articles, essays, speeches, letters and discussions on the events of 1981-2006 on the political scene of Yugoslavia and Serbia were published in four volumes: Kovačnica na Čakovini (Smithy on Čakovina) (1990, 1991, 2004), Galop na puževima (Gallop on Snails) (1994, 1997), Novi galop na puževima (New Gallop on Snails) (1999) and Obećana zemlja (The Promised Land) (2006). The book Rukopis vremena (The Manuscript of the Time) by Miloš Jevtić makes an entirety with these books (2005) – dialogues with Simović were made from 1990 to 2005.
Simović’s Dela u pet knjiga (Works in Five Volumes) were published in 1991 as a joint edition by SKZ, BIGZ, Prosveta and Dečje novine.
Simović has edited selected poems by J. J. Zmaj, L. Kostić, Đ. Jakšić, D. Vasiljev, M. Nastasijević, M. Pavlović and B. Petrović, as well as selected comedies by J. St. Popović (Liar of All Liars, 1997) and B. Nušić (Sumnjiva lica - Suspicious Person), 1996). Under the title of Tragedije kao komedije (Tragedies as Comedies) he wrote the foreword for Drame (Dramas) by Dušan Kovačević (2002).
Simović has received a number of literary and theatre awards (Statuette "Joakim Vujić", four Sterija’s Awards for the drama text) and public recognitions (October Award, The 7th July Award...)
Simović was chosen to be a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1994 and its permanent member in 1995. |
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TOMI JANEŽIČ
Tomi Janežič teaches acting and practical directing at AGRFT (the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and TV in Ljubljana). He also teaches within the Section for Set Design at the Interdisciplinary PhD studies of the University of Arts in Belgrade, and has taught at the Academy of Arts of the University in Osijek (Croatia), at graduate and postgraduate studies of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad and numerous acting seminars and workshops in a number of countries.
As a theatre director, he has directed in National, municipal and other theatres and independent productions in the majority of ex-Yugoslav countries.
Since 1996 he has been Artistic Director and since 2004 also the Director of the Studies for Research in the Art of Acting (Studio za raziskavo umetnosti) in Ljubljana.
He is one of the rare researchers of acting today in Europe (O. Milićević), an excellent interpreter of Stanislavski’s method (Jana Pavlič), the director of one of the best Chekhovs I have ever seen, one of those who has undoubtedly found what generations and generations of directors worldwide have been looking for (J. Ćirilov), (...) a virtual contemporary theatrical Mozart (D. Gašparović).
He graduated in Theatre Direction (1998) and received his Master’s Degree (2001) from the Academy in Ljubljana, receiving additional education in Slovenia and around the world, primarily in the field of different acting techniques. He is currently preparing his PhD at the University of Arts in Belgrade. |
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At the very beginning, film frames of horror. A warning that the dreadful is not over yet. There is only one mankind. Commemoratively serious, on the stage - are spectators. A person next to a person in an impressive frame of silent questioning. Here you are one with the other, look at each other’s eyes, repent, condemn, reflect - as if the director says. He himself shapes the space in which an engaged, intellectual emotion is possible. We witness the analysis of The Šopalovićes. A forum on the origin of evil and the attempt of art to overpower it. In love with the drama, Janežič dissembles it and then puts it back together; straying into linguistic channels, he plays with Simović’s rapids and chants. Old-fashioned and new at the same time, his theatre captures, wakes up with you the following morning.
Dramatically real Boris Isaković, Dara Džokić and Nada Šargin ... have awakened their physical and mental atoms to reveal the process, not an imputed result. They opened three points of vision of the same story. While some die, others act, and others yet - bludgeon. That’s life. The entire show is a work-in-progress. Among the participants there is the Atelier’s telephone operator, assistant to the director, then Dejan Mijač and Jasmina Ranković from the earlier version of the Šopalovićes. In the audience – the playwright. Moments of exaltation are crowned by yet another director’s folly - the roof of the Atelier 212 Theatre opens up and raindrops fall into Simović’s poetry. Verism or fantasy?
It can already be spoken of the Janežič system.
Branka KRILOVIĆ (RTS News)
All elements of an act are there, stripped to the core: its creators – from the director, through the cast, to the technical staff, and the audience relentlessly facing their decision, their acceptance to participate in a theatrical act. There is also the outside world who does not care for theatre, but whose mirror theatre nevertheless is, even when it has no such ambition. This all seems free and spontaneous, and yet, all is precise and deeply thought out, like, for example, when the director brings us, the audience, back to the safety of the dark for a moment, only to cast light on us and expose us again, just when we were starting to let ourselves to the illusion, in that ridiculous and strange readiness of ours to trust these people who pretend to be somebody else before our eyes. Or when with an orchestrated whisper of the choir hidden in the audience, he directs our reaction to what has been played, to what is happening before us. Or, finally, that poignant moment when the connection to the everyday politics is made with a single stroke, by means of an audio tape of a testimony given by a victim of the recent wars – and that he does at the very moment when we have been comfortably lulled in the thought that the play is about the past. So, Janežič, questions everything: the stage space, acting, the possibility of a distance, the need for illusion, the role of audience – he dissembles it all, takes it apart, only to establish it again in simple and smooth moves. Actually, it’s all about the power of theatre, its possibilities. In this play on the edge, the director often makes a slip of unnecessarily insisting on certain elements, but the show is no less exciting for it – on the contrary: this element of the freedom in approach makes it even more exciting, as theatre is a moment after all, unique and unrepeatable. Unfortunately, there is insufficient space to give enough praise to the perfect cast who have mustered the power of acting rarely seen, playing passionately and unusually harmoniously, recapturing what they have experienced. See Šopalovićes: it is no longer a play, it has become an experience.
Boban JEVTIĆ (YellowCab, 3rd December 2007)
A Lesson in Communicology
(...) In the role of the thug Drobac, who leaves a bloody trail, is Boris Isaković - an actor of extraordinary expressivity and power. He firmly, reversibly and with suppressed means of expression plays this villain who will pay for his disillusionment with his own life in the scene with Sofija (Nada Šargin), a young travelling actress who carries a symbol of beauty and joy through this beak landscape of World War II. Nada Šargin, an extraordinarily fragile stage figure, is an actress who has shown so many times before on our theatrical scene that she has mastered the feeling for the genuine and natural, despite the distractions imposed by the director’s idea. This time again, she is a real theatrical light on the improvised stage as well. Vlastimir - Đuza Stojiljković, Vasilije Šopalović, the travelling troupe’s manager, has succeeded, as he always does, in transferring the warmth and some wonderful gentleness from the real stage of Šopalovićes onto the false stage of the Atelier 212.
Jasna Đuričić (Jelisaveta Protić), Svetozar Cvetković (Filip Trnavac), Renata Ulmanski (Dara), Isidora Minić (Simka), excellent Dara Džokić, another one who would not let be swayed (Gina), Branislav Zeremski (Blagoje Babić), Nenad Ćirić (Milun), Miroslav Žužić (Majcen) – the cast who is a guarantee of success and an exciting theatrical act to anyone who follows Serbian theatre even a little bit. (...)
Dragana BOŠKOVIĆ (Danas, 21st November 2007) |
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management preserves the right to change
the schedule
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Copyright
: Sterijino pozorje 1998-2008.
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