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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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TUESDAY - MAY 27th 2008 |
Business Centre NIS-Naftagas
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19:30 & 21:30 |
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Ivan M. Lalić
A HERO OF THE NATION
"Toša Jovanović" Theatre, Zrenjanin |
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Adapted, directed by EGON SAVIN
Set design MIODRAG TABAČKI
Costumes JASNA BADNJAREVIĆ
Premiere:
December 20th 2007 |
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Budimir Životić |
JOVAN TORAČKI |
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Desanka Životić |
SANJA MIKITIŠIN |
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Ljupče |
JUGOSLAV KRAJNOV / IVAN ĐORĐEVIĆ |
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Journalist Lenka Simonović |
NATAŠA LUKOVIĆ |
Undertaker |
MIRKO PANTELIĆ |
Postman |
MILAN KOČALOVIĆ |
Professional mourners |
JELENA ŠNEBLIĆ, NATAŠA ILIN |
Make-up |
MIRJANA ĆUK |
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| 'TOŠA JOVANOVIĆ' THEATRE, ZRENjANIN |
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The first records of theatre art with the Serbs date back to the 18th century and are associated with Bečkerek , local teacher Jelisejić and his amateur students’ troupes. In 1839 a grain warehouse was adapted into a theatre. The Bečkerek Theatre is one of the oldest playhouses on the ex-Yugoslav territory. The building was completely adapted and reconstructed in 1985. The theatre did not have a professional troupe for about one hundred years (it was a host of Hungarian, German and Serbian theatres), and since 1946 it has had its own company which operates on three stages: drama, chamber and puppet. The theatre was named after the famous Serbian actor of Romanticism, Toša Jovanović.
The professional puppet theatre was founded in 1956 and it produces four premiers in Serbian and two premieres in Hungarian language a year. The Drama and Puppet Theatres merged into the ‘Toša Jovanović’ National Theatre in 1975. The puppet stage performs about 250 shows a year, 100 of which on other stages, and it has received 200 awards at international and national festivals. |
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P E R F O R M A N C E...... |
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...Why is the average Serbian person an absolute hero of all heroes; why are we soon going to start turning on our TVs to learn if we are still alive at all...
The play speaks of the loss of identity of ordinary average people who become consumers of lies, trading them for the truth. It is a serious and interesting summary which has a lot in common with our reality, primarily political but not only that. The media are actually malignant institutions which have fabricated much evil and hatred. They have produced many enemies over the last twenty years in this country and society. This is ... what theatre owes to the media, television, hidden or exposed cameras - it is all the same (...)
N. PEJČIĆ (Dnevnik, 19th December 2007) |
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S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T...... |
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A Hero of the Nation – between a number of realities
The play A Hero of the Nation wittily discusses on the stage the problem of contemporary phenomenon of losing boundaries between real and virtual, as well as the position of an individual which becomes a victim of the play of relativity of multiplied realities. The notion of reality was never so difficult to define as it is today, after the media and Internet revolution which ‘realistically extended’ this term. What is true and what is false in the media hocus pocus is difficult to distinguish, unless an individual follows the maxim ‘I think; therefore I am,’ or it is not enough too, but one must resort to the other saying: ‘I feel; therefore I am,’ as a person definitely cannot trust ’I see; therefore I am,’ just because the space of the visible is the most prone to the various attraction editing and manipulations. A Hero of the Nation develops the situation of a reality show taking it all the way to a Gogolean grotesque, applied to the so called small man who shyly articulates a personal rebellion caught in the cobweb of manipulation. A remarkably imaginative and symbolical set design done by Miodrag Tabacki provides a setting for the story which analyses the problem of decomposition of identity and a lonely position of personal experience in the time of Big and Small Brothers and newly-composed heroes. Ivan Lalic has a sense of humour which is neither relaxing nor indulging; it rather contains a precious cognitive dimension which reveals distortion and monstrosity, but overcomes and outgrows them with laughter. Thanks to that, as well as the direction, the play becomes more than a joke and deserves to enter the currents of genuinely Gogolean twistedness.
Tatjana MANDIĆ-RIGONAT |
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IVAN M. LALIĆ
Born in 1965 in Belgrade, Ivan M. Lalić graduated in Dramaturgy from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade (1991).
TV dramas: Abstainers (TV Belgrade, 1988), The Second Life of the Married Couple Kos (TV Belgrade 1989);
TV series: A Pilot in the Grass (TV Belgrade, 1990), Open Door (1994, screen script for six episodes);
Theatre plays: Puritan Comedy (National Theatre, Belgrade 1996), In the Flames of Passion (Zvezdara teatar Theatre, 1997), My Father Battling Villains from the Space (1998), Cuba Libre (Serbian National Theatre, 2000), The Game Club (Belef, 2005)
Awards: “Branislav Nušić”, Best Comedy in 1995 (In the Flames of Passion)
He has been a member of the international Red Cross, president of the Union of Dramatic Artists, manager of the Serbian National Theatre, vice president of the Council for Fighting Corruption of the Serbian Government, a columnist for NIN and Standard. He is president of the Board of Directors for the Car Museum in Belgrade. Since 2004 he has been working at the Exit festival on the development of new projects.
He lives and works in Belgrade. |
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Who today is a hero of the nation? Is it a politician or the man in the street who survives the reality show called Serbia?
Our hero of the nation is definitely the average Serbian person who has managed to stay alive and fairly sane ever since the famous Eight Session up to this day, and that means 21 years. His/her overall deterioration – including existential, moral, ideological, even mental – can be directly causatively linked to the schizophrenic role of the media in contemporary Serbian society. (...)
Interaction will mark the 21st century, in both theatre and film, and in a couple of years we shall probably be watching a live coverage of a real bank robbery. We will not know what our moral enface is, until we hear what Her Royal Highness – Television – has to say about that.
Ivan M. LALIĆ-S. MILETIĆ (Taken from the Bulletin of the 58th Festival of Professional Theatres of Vojvodina) |
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EGON SAVIN
Professor of Directing at Faculty Of Drama Arts in Belgrade and Faculty Of Drama arts in Cetinje (Montenegro). He has directed in almost all major theatres of former yugoslavia, and his productions toured Nancy, Paris, Warszaw, Tel Aviv, Vienna, New York... He received a series of awards for his direction of works of local and international authors, several Steria awards and «Bojan Stupica» Award.
He successfully worked with all production models in existance in these regions: from the production of Farewell Judas that assembled a group of conspirative young artists in mid-seventies who formed one of the possible models of theatrical off-scene, to productions at institutions of national significance – National Theatre in Belgrade, Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica, Macedonian National Theatre.
He successfully Staged works of local and international classics in which he finds concrete clues that reveal the essential power of theatre in our times, linking both the plays and their authors to the concrete space and time in which the production is created, avoiding the realm of daily politics, political vulgarisation and the banal. |
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Death as a Media Witticism
Ivan M. Lalić, a contemporary and playwright, has written a rather humorous, moderately wise, witty and somewhat satirical play entitled A Hero of the Nation - a play with an ambition to fixate, focus and make fun of the present (TV) media intrigues and manipulations, with varied genre characteristics of ordinary life and a dehumanised ‘Big Brother’-like installation. Here and now, in the state of Serbia, where television is an elder brother and a stepmother. That was his intention, but if it were not for director Egon Savin, who knows life and is on a first name basis with theatre, everything would stay on the level of a likable witticism. For, we have had our fair share of hidden cameras, some more bizarre, some more provocative; the heroes in his synopsises are only barely indicated characters, while black humorous, but nevertheless boulevard witticism would unavoidably make this kind of play end up in a shallow comedy. But it did not happen with the premiere in Zrenjanin because director Egon Savin, supported by the concentrated assistance of set designer Miodrag Tabački and costume designer Jasna Badnjarević, delivered to the actors a well-thought out, designed, studied, purified theatrical project – defensible and inspiring down to the very last detail, which they brought to life reasonably, inventively and with discipline. (...)
A Hero of the Nation is at the same time a repartee to the works which diagnose an era of media manipulations all around the world, from Broadway to off-productions, but it is also a reflection of the director’s skill to depict contemporary Serbia photographed in its current colours, with its legs spread between communism, parasocialism and hybrid ‘Europeanship’, composed of minute realistic details or iconographic residues of our recent history. With the right measure and overstatements which make this reality sustainably stupid, ridiculous and bitter. In this alchemist venture Egon Savin has managed to turn banality into liveliness, generality into regularity, bizarreness into absurdity. Proposing a consequently projected ‘matchstick box’ set design, Miodrag Tabački has conjured claustrophobia and the cultural fragmentation of Serbian society, offered through a husband-wife-their son character prism. Together with the even more alienated layer of others – the undertakers, professional mourners, and media manipulators. And its Highness – the TV. And advertising, of course. Jasna Badnjarević adroitly dresses actors in typical and commonplace robes, offering them a chance to play diversity. And diversity is what the unconventional director’s setting gives them space for, which they use as much as possible. Working for the mechanism of the play but also with the aim of attaining sharp artistic accomplishments. Excelling in this are Sanja Mikitišin, as a typical peasant woman with a strong character placed in an urban milieu, immersed in tradition, but ready to sink into the sludge of boulevard media wasteland. Still, Jovan Torački, in the role of Budimir Životić - a victim at first, then an accomplice, and finally protagonist - whose skilled acting covers all aspects of the character, dominates this likable show, with his remarkably plastic feeling for the micro-transformations of the character, at moments typical, yet at moments particular. Jugoslav Krajnov as the family ‘insider’, plays the manipulating son with expressive easiness and charm, while Nataša Luković very precisely plays the journalist who turns death into a farce, or vice versa, since the media are more real than reality! Without exaggeration, led by pure stage impulses, Mirko Pantelić, also with the right measure and a couple of stage ‘decorations’, conjures up the media and real undertakers. The Nataša Ilin and Jelena Šneblić duo of professional mourners are transformed by their expressivity into a tonal and metaphorical counterpoint of the show. While Milan Kočalović and Mirjana Ćuk, the former with stage minimalism in acting, the latter with her theatrical nonchalance, supplement this well-designed theatrical orchestration conducted by Egon Savin, in which Ivan Đorđević and Aleksandar Došen participate as well. About death as a media witticism.
Zoran SLAVIĆ (Zrenjaninske novine, 17th January
2008) |
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.The
management preserves the right to change
the schedule
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Copyright
: Sterijino pozorje 1998-2008.
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