54th STERIJINO POZORJE FESTIVAL 2009

Directed by LENKA UDOVIČKI

Dramaturgy TENA ŠTIVIČIĆ

Set Design ZLATKO KAUZLARIĆ - ATAČ

Costume Design BJANKA ADžIĆ-URSULOV

Music NIGEL OSBORNE

Sound Design DAVOR ROCCO

Light Design ZORAN GRABARAC

Choreography NATALIJA MANOJLOVIĆ

Assistant Director MARIN LUKANOVIĆ

Premiere: 10th August 2007

CAST	SRETEN MOKROVIĆ
	SVEN MEDVEŠEK
	KSENIJA MARINKOVIĆ
	NINA VIOLIĆ
	LINDA BEGONjA
	BRANISLAV LEČIĆ
	NEBOJŠA GLOGOVAC
	KRUNOSLAV KLABUČAR
	DAMIR ŠABAN
	ZORAN GOGIĆ
	MLADEN VASARY
	LUCIJA ŠERBEDžIJA
	IVAN ĐURIČIĆ
	DAMIR BOROJEVIĆ
	SVEN JAKIR
	DAMIR POLjIČAK
	JOSIPA LISAC
Musicians	mandolin Ranko Purić
	MOSTAR SINFONIETTA - viola Aidan Burke, percussions Anton Pešikan, cello Belma Alić, cello Clea Friend
	GOLDEN BOYS - trumpet Aleksandar Asanović, horn Igor Usunović, drums Burhan Huseini

P E R F O R M A N C E......

DRUNKEN NIGHT 1918

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The dramatic basis is the famous novella of the great name of Croatian literature about drammatic events from the beginning of November 1918, when for the first time in the history of the Croatian people a conflict between the concept of unconditional South Slavic union and the independent Croatian state in practice took place - a conflict of idealism and common sense, illusions and reality. Although the foundation is the novella “Drunken November Night 1918,” the play is a peculiar “symphony” with visible motifs from other works by Krleža. A dynamic and exciting play about a very complex time in which Austro-Hungarian monarchy lived its last years, and with its social, economic and moral flood threatened to pull down to the bottom all that which for centuries resisted the germanization of the Croatian national identity, which spastically fought to pull itself out of the enslavement and find ways to bring its ethnic identity out to daylight.

Everything always starts with the elite, and ends with cops, generals and decorations, with robbers who plundered the land. And here we are in a drama today.

Ivo ŠTIVIČIĆ

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

ULYSSES THEATRE - BRIJUNI

Ulysses Theatre is a theatre space where spiritually similar artists intertwine. It welcomes the cooperation of all those broadening aesthetical and spiritual horizons.
Movement in art, progress and voyage mark the active attitude towards reality and history. Voyage is one of the ways of not accepting the inevitable fate, so typical of the Mediterranean culture, from Homer onwards. Each man is destined to wander, outside or inside. Everyone is in search of his own Ithaca. Individuals and characters travel, whereas Ulysses is to all a symbolic figure. And a reminder never to give up hope and work, in search of new expressions in order to avoid withdrawing into the egocentric world that turns its back to reality and others. Ulysses is a cunning mythical and poetic figure (Greek metis, American Indian trickster) that easily travels through different language and cultures, connecting the differences. Actor-director Rade Šerbedžija and writer- playwright Borislav Vujčić founded the Theatre. The activity of the Theatre is closely related to the area around Vodnjan, Fažana, Brijuni and Pula in Istria. By its name it is homage to James Joyce, writer whose biography and work testify to the presence in this area. Joyce lived in Pula as an English language teacher in the Berlitz School of foreign languages from November 1904 to April 1905.
Besides Theatre production, in the years to come it would have a school and workshops for film, dance, writing, acting, directing, set design where internationally recognized theatre and film artists would convey part of their experience and knowledge to participants through a creative atmosphere.
Productions: King Lear, Medea, Marat-Sade, Play Beckett, Hamlet, Tesla Electronic Company, Caligula (co-production) ...

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Miroslav Krleža (born July 7, 1893, Zagreb, Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary [now in Croatia] died Dec. 29, 1981, Zagreb, Yugos. [now in Croatia]) essayist, novelist, poet, and playwright who was a dominant figure in modern Croatian literature.
Krleža trained in the Austro-Hungarian military academy at Budapest. He tried unsuccessfully to join Serbian forces twice, in 1912 and against the Turks in the Second Balkan War of 1913. For this latter action, he was expelled from the academy and subsequently sent to the Galician front as a common soldier during World War I. This firsthand experience of the “Great War” profoundly marked Krleža’s work. Owing to his leftist politics, his works were banned in the interwar period, but his opinions influenced greatly the cultural and political arenas of post-World War II Yugoslavia. His critical stance on Socialist Realism - with its emphasis on the didactic flattening of literature in the service of socialist tenets - proved decisive in extinguishing that mode of writing from postwar Yugoslav letters. Krleža directed the Croatian Institute of Lexicography and became president of the Yugoslav Writers’ Union.
A man of vigorous, powerful intellect and wide learning, Krleža wrote with great intensity, fearlessly criticizing political and social injustices. The strength and importance of his work should be judged from his entire opus - some 40 volumes of stories (e.g., The Cricket Beneath the Waterfall and Other Stories, 1972), essays, political commentaries, plays, poetry, as well as several novels - rather than from any one text in particular. The vast scope of his themes spread out across his texts, which often function as interdependent parts of one organic unity. His novels, such as Povratak Filipa Latinovicza (1932; The Return of Philip Latinovicz) and Na rubu pameti (1938; On the Edge of Reason), have as central characters intellectuals who have lost their power to act in a world characterized by the willingness to enslave one’s mind for material gains or for a sense of belonging. With its first volume published in 1938, his three-volume novel of ideas, Banket u Blitvi, 3 vol. in 1 (1961; The Banquet in Blitva), deals with characters and events in an imaginary eastern European country; it portrays in an allegorical and satirical manner both eastern European backwardness and western European decadence and opportunism in response to rising fascism in the interwar period. Krleža’s dramatic trilogy Glembajevi (1932; “The Glembaj Family”) is an indictment of the decadence of the Croatian bourgeoisie under the rule of Austria-Hungary. He also wrote works concerned with the past exploitation and sufferings of the Croatian peasants - for example, the stories in the collection Hrvatski bog Mars (1922; “The Croatian God Mars”) and the Balade Petrice Kerempuha (1936; “Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh”), which is considered by most to be his single best work.
Krleža’s works are characterized by his relentless commitment to humanism and the freedom of the individual mind against the social and mental confines of either a developed bourgeois society or a dogmatic socialist one. He was arguably the greatest writer of 20th-century Croatian literature.
Gordana P. Crnkovic, Encyclopadia Britannica Online

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Lenka Udovički Studied at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, University of Belgrade, where she gained her Master of Arts Degree in Theatre Directing. She started her professional career in regional and major Belgrade theatres and in 1992 left her native country. Since than she has lived in London and Los Angeles and works as international director for theatre and opera. Her special interest is developing new work and exploration in musical theatre.
FOR ULYSSES THEATRE, CROATIA - AS CO-FOUNDER AND ASSOCIATE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR 2001-PRESENT
Ulysses Theatre started in 2001 as a Summer Theatre Festival on the Island of Brijuni, Croatia. The founders idea has been to create a space where international artists and artists from different parts of Former Yugoslavia can work, exchange ideas and creative energy. So far, it had seven successful seasons with artists from Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Serbia, Italy, UK, USA, Germany, France, Chechnya collaborating in its big scale, site-specific productions on the remains of the biggest Austro-Hungarian fortress.
- KING LEAR by W. Shakespeare with Rade Serbedzija
- MEDEA by Euripides with Mira Furlan
- MARAT/SADE by P.Weiss
- HAMLET by W. Shakespeare
- CORE SAMPLE - (based on WAITTING FOR GODOT by S. Beckett and accounts of survivors from the Goli Otok prison Island) with Vanessa Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave, Amanda Plummer and Caroline Jones
- DRUNKEN NIGHT 1918 by M.Krleza and I. Stivicic - Audiences Award as Best Performance at the BITEF Theatre Festival 2007
FOR MOVING THEATRE COMPANY, LONDON - AS CO-FOUNDER AND ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR 1994-1999
- FIRERAISERS by M. Frisch - Riverside Studios, with Frances de la Tour
- BRECHT IN EXILE devised by company - Bridge Lane Theatre, with Vanessa Redgrave, Eckehart Schall and Rade Serbedzija
- WATERFALL by V Stevanovic - Riverside Studios, Critics Choice (Time Out), Hot Ticket (The Guardian)
- LEMONADE by E. Ensler- Kings Head, Chelsea Arts Center (rehearsed readings)
WORK AS THEATRE DIRECTOR INCLUDES
- THE TEMPEST by W. Shakespeare - Shakespeare’s Globe, London, UK with Vanessa Redgrave as Prospero, Jasper Britton as Caliban
- HAMLET by W. Shakespeare, California Institute of Arts, USA
- TAKING SIDES by R. Harwood, Atelje 212, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
- MOTHER COURAGE by B. Brecht, PPP, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, (best performance of the year by “SCENA” theatre magazine)
- ANTIGONA by D. Jovanovic - Kumanovo Macedonia
- CHAMBER MUSIC by C. Durang - BDP, Belgrade Yugoslavia
OPERA AND MUSIC THEATRE
- DIFFERENCES IN DEMOLITION composed by N. Osborne, libretto G. Simic WORLD PREMIERE, international collaboration between artists and performers from UK and Balkan countries, produced by Opera Circus, UK, toured Bosnia and City of London Festival in 2007, on tour in Scotland, Austria and Turkey in 2008. Lenka developed this opera with Nigel Osborne and Opera Circus through series of workshops and residencies between 2004-2007 in Croatia and UK, and ‘Sevdah Opera’ work in progress toured Dorset in 2005.
- A BETTER PLACE - composed by Marin Buttler, libretto C. Oswin, WORLD PREMIERE, English National Opera, Coliseum, London
- SHORELINE/STORIES OF LOVE AND WAR music by N. Osborne - co-production between Hebrides Ensemble, Opera Circus and Scottish Dance Theatre, toured Scotland
- THE CONSUL by G. Menotti - Leighton House, concert performance for Moving Theatre
- HISTORY’S RHYME - Limelight Club, London, for English National Opera Studio

D I R E C T O R ...

WE ARE STILL PAYING THE BILL FOR THE DRUNKEN NIGHT 1918

(...) Unfortunately, the so-called ordinary people pay the price. Interesting and curious are those stormy moments, and how people orient themselves in them, and which and what kind of people hastily change their decorations, coats, certificates, caps, whatever is needed, in order to remain in power or in order to acquire it.
Incredible, but true - every time it happens identically and every time people buy it.
(...) It is flabbergasting how little we know about the year 1918, which defined all of us

Lenka UDOVIČKI - T. NjEŽIĆ, Blic, September 27 2008

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

Krleža's patriots
In Zagreb salons, political gossip-places, as well as on the public scene, preparations are underway for the arrival of the Serbian military which, beside driving away Italians from Dalmatia and Rijeka, is supposed to enable the much-desired unification with brothers Serbs. That task of rapprochement fell into the very hands of those who were just recently against it, who stood out in the persecution and crimes against those who favored unification. Croatian patriots will joyfully receive Serbian soldiers who will, beside trumpets, bring their rules, customs and brandy. In that way both sides will build a foundation for future conflicts and slaughter-houses. First of all those during World War II, which Krleža senses in 1918, but also those we witnessed ourselves. The origin of that perpetual power of attraction and its fatal consequences, Krleža, as Lenka Udovički, sought in the inability of resistance by the careerists and turncoats, those whom we impotently spit at on our screens.

Ž. JOVANOVIĆ, Blic, October 4 2008