54th STERIJINO POZORJE FESTIVAL 2009

Director MARKO MANOJLOVIĆ

Set Design VESNA ŠTRBAC

Costume Design LANA CVIJANOVIĆ

Composer VLADA PEJKOVIĆ

Stage Speech LjILjANA MRKIĆ-POPOVIĆ

Premiere: May 26th 2009

CAST...................................Narrator	MIODRAG RADOVANOVIĆ
Green	SRĐAN TIMAROV
No. 58964	ALEKSANDAR ĐURICA
Muselmann	NIKOLA VUJOVIĆ
Prominent	GORAN ŠUŠLjIK
Man Under the Cap	ZORAN CVIJANOVIĆ
Wounded Person	PETAR BENČINA
S. K.	NEBOJŠA MILOVANOVIĆ
Old Man	PREDRAG EJDUS
Obersturmbannführer	TONI LAURENČIĆ
Sturmführer	MILOŠ PJEVAČ

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

YUGOSLAV DRAMA THEATRE - BELGRADE

The Yugoslav Drama Theatre (JDP) was founded in 1948 with the aim of attracting the cream of the dramatic talent from all over the FNRY, and of being the Yugoslav counterpart to the Moscow Art Theatre in terms of style and aesthetic quality. Supported by politicians and leading cultural figures, director Bojan Stupica selected the most notable artists from all the theatrical centres of Yugoslavia. The first premiere was held on April 3rd 1948. Bojan Stupica put on 'The King of Betainov' by Ivan Cankar.
The concept for the theatre laid down by politicians was only partially adhered to, whilst from the very beginning in its practical work artistic freedom was championed and the aesthetic credibility of directors and actors was supported. The managers of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre always belonged to the circle of the most notable and most competent of those working in the theatre, regardless of whether they came from the ranks of critics (Velibor Gligoric, Milutin Micic, Petar Volk), dramatists (Jovan Cirilov) or directors (Miroslav Belovic, Bojan Stupica). When creating the repertoire, managers of the JDP initially favoured great world and national classics, but over the course of the 50s they gradually introduced works from contemporary world and national dramaturgy.
Directors at the Yugoslav Drama Theatre always stood out for their new and inventive interpretations of the classics of world and national dramaturgy, through which they were changing the notion of theatre in our country. One can recall Bojan Stupica's interpretation of 'Dundo Maroje' by Marin Drzic and 'Fisherman's Quarrel' by Carlo Goldoni and Mate Milosevic's direction of 'Yegor Bulychov' by Maksim Gorky and 'Grieving Family' by Branislav Nusic. There was also Miroslav Belovic's direction of 'The Boastful Soldier' by Plaut and 'Dundo Maroje' by Marin Drzic, and then Dejan Mijac's direction of 'High Sea' by Branislav Nusic, 'Patriots' by Jovan Sterija Popovic and 'Le Misanthrope', 'Hamlet' directed by Stevo Zigon, and 'The Theatre of Illusions' by Pierre Cornier directed by Slobodan Unkovski. The stage of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre was the place where leading directors from all over Yugoslavia tested their skills: Branko Gavela, Paolo Madeli, Slobodan Unkovski, Haris Pasovic, etc., as well as numerous foreign directors: Jezi Jarocki, Georgij Aleksandrovic - Tovstonogov, Karlos Medina, Vitalij Dvorcin... Even at a time of great social turmoil, the Yugoslav Drama Theatre welcomed significant works by contemporary writers from all over Yugoslavia. The following authors and their works were promoted at the JDP: Dobrica Cosic - 'Discoveries', Jovan Hristic -'Clean hands' and 'Savaranola and his friends', Velimir Lukic - 'Innocent Anabella's affair', Slobodan Schneider - 'Croatian Faustus', Dusan Kovacevic 'Balkan Spy', Dejan Bukovski - 'Powder Keg', Biljana Srbljanovic -'Belgrade trilogy'. Our performances of their plays were enacted at the Bonner Bienale, the starting poing of their European recognition. An unavoidable part og the history of the JDP is also the story of the great actors who performed on this stage. An unavoidable part of the history of the JDP is also the story of the great actors who performed on this stage.
An unavoidable part of the history of the JDP is also the story of the great actors who performed on this stage. The reputation and success of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre was acknowledged at numerous international and domestic festivals and on guest performances. The Yugoslav Drama Theatre toured not only around former Yugoslavia but around the whole of Europe as well, and in doing so it confirmed its international and European dimensions.

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

The Heavenly Squad takes place in the concentration death camp Auschwitz, but this is not a piece about the horrors of Auschwitz, but about the power of life, about the human aspiration to die as a man, and not as a number.

Aleksandar Obrenović and Đorđe Lebović are the first recipients of the Sterija Prize for drama work for the play The Heavenly Squad, which was awarded for the first time at the Second Yugoslav Theatre Plays in 1957.

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Marko Manojlović: Born in 1982 in Belgrade, where he is in his last year of studies at the Faculty of Performance Arts, in the class of Professor Slavenko Saletović.
In 2001 he made a debut as the assistant director to Darijan Mihajlović in the play Danton's Death, and after that he assisted many established theatre directors, among which Rahim Burhan (play White, white world), Jagoš Marković (Mrs. Minister), Jovan Ćirilov (The Uncalled), Gorčin Stojanović (Captain John Peoplefox), Loran Vanson (Holes) ...
He directed the play Death, based on the text by Woody Allen, in 2005 on the stage Studio of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre. The play Trap followed at the National Theatre in Sombor, Three Little Pigs at the Theatre “Boško Buha, Pokondirena Tikva, National Theatre Kikinda and Belgrade Drama Theatre, Without Mask Atelier 212, In Eden in the East, Belef 2007, The Night of Murderers, Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Eling, Belgrade Drama Theatre, Liers, City Theatre Podgorica.

D I R E C T O R ...

The Heavenly Squad is not about death as part of the natural life cycle, but about murder, a temporary cessation of someone’s life. We are most frightened of this death. Are you afraid of death? What are you doing about that fear? Human body is made so it fights for life until the end. What is a man ready to do to stay alive? That’s a great dilemma of The Heavenly Squad. People still have different views on the members of the Sonderkommand. In the book We Wept Without Tears, they are represented as victims, and in Israel that book is banned. The survivors from Sonderkommand went into hiding after the war, but does the guild exist if your life is threatened? Does the choice to stay alive at no price make you more or less human? For me, the choice they were placed before is fascinating, as well as the fact that the mind and the complexity of human emotions make the man a being who in such a situation can choose, who is sentenced to choose.

Marko MANOJLOVIĆ

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Đorđe Lebović (1928 – 2004) was born in Sombor in 1928. He was a prisoner in Nazi camps in Auschwitz, Saxenhausen and Mauthausen (1944-45). He started his studies at the Technical Faculty (1947-48), and then graduated philosophy at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade (1948-51). During his studies, he worked as a physical worker, teacher, translator and humorist (contributor to Radio-Belgrade and Jež). In 1953 he worked as a journalist at Radio-Novi Sad and curator of the Museum of Theatre Arts in Belgrade (1954-55), where he left the largest manuscript, handwritten, The First Inventory Book of the Museum of Theatre Arts in Belgrade. Since 1955 he was the manager of the Summer Stage at Topčider, and since 1960 the manager of the Exhibition Pavilion in Belgrade. He was the director of drama at the Belgrade Drama Theatre from 1979-81, when he retired. He contributed to the following magazines and publications: Theatre Life (1956-65), Delo (1956, 1959), Borba (1957), NIN (1957), Student (1959), For the Victory (1959), Jewish Almanach (1959/1960), Liberation (1960), Soldier (1964), Echo (1969), Letopis MS (1972), Scena (1975)...
Dramas i radio-dramas: The Heavenly Squad (1957, co-authored with A. Obrenović), Light and Shadows (1959), The Funeral Usually Starts in the Afternoon (1960), The Charlatan (with J. Lešić, 1965), Three Grotesques, Alleluia, Victoria (1968), The Lonely Bunch (1970), Fallen Angels (1971), The Doll from the Bed No. 21 (1976), The Lower Land (based on the novel by J. Ignjatović Milan Narandžić, 1981), Ravangrad 1900 (based on the story by V. Petrović, 1982), The Szentendre Rhapsody (based on the stories by J. Ignjatović, 1983), Soldier and a Doll (1996), Ten Percent to Madness (1998, in manuscrip); Cacti and Roses (published in 1999 in the Anthology of the Contemporary Serbian Drama, v. 4). From his legacy, the unfinished novel about childhood, Semper idem was published and the unfinished book of notes about the holocaust Searching in the Ashes.
Lebović is the founder of the Association of Serbian Playwrights in 1976 and its first president. He is the multiple winner of the Sterija prize for contemporary drama text and many international awards.

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Aleksandar Obrenović was born in 1928 in Belgrade. He studied pedagogy at the Facuty of Philosophy. He was engaged in acting and paintng. He was a journalist at Radio Belgrade, dramaturge in the Drama Programme at TV Belgrade since its inception, the first art director of Sterijino Pozorje, then a freelancer, then the editor of Radio-drama in the Drama Programme at Radio Belgrade. He wrote screenplays for documentary films and directed them, wrote screenplays for feature films, TV dramas, wrote theatre plays, radio damas, stories.
More than 60 of his radio-dramas have been performed, the majority of which he directed himself in the country and abroad. His works have been published and performed in over 20 countries, and translated into 22 languages. «Prosveta» published a book of his plays The Return of Don Juan, Theatre Museum of Serbia a book of theatre pieces Flocks of Magic Stars. He published short stories in varous newspapers and magazines.
Plays: The Heavenly Squad, 1956; Variations (Rondo, Evening Game, Bird, Nocturno), 1958; Face, 1967; Captain of the Long Voyage, 1966; The Return of Don Juan and Other Plays, 1968; O, Sole Mio..., 1984.
Radio-dramas: Girl on a Roof, 1969; Sansara, 1969; The Undertaking of the Century, 1981; The Sweet Scent of Renaissance (1983) and others. Around 20 radio-dramatisations of national and foreign authors were performed at all larger Yugoslav radio stations and a dozen TV dramas and TV adaptations for the Belgrade TV.
His plays were published and performed in the USSR, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, German Democratic Republic, Switzerland, Monaco, France, Italy, Israel, USA, Belgium, Malta...