54th STERIJINO POZORJE FESTIVAL 2009

Director and Choice of Music
MATJAŽ POGRAJC

Artistic and conceptual basis Betontanc
(Matjaž Pograjc, Tomaž Štrucl, Branko Potočan, Mateja Benedeti, Jure Vlahovič)

Set and Light Design TOMAŽ ŠTRUCL

Costume Design MATEJA BENEDETI

Movement Coach BRANKO POTOČAN

Stage Speech LjILjANA MRKIĆ-POPOVIĆ

Sound Design JURE VLAHOVIČ

Author of Set Illustrations Milica BUTKOVIĆ
Producers Maja VIŽIN, Milorad JOVANOVIĆ
Assistant set designer Miraš VUKSANOVIĆ
Assistant costume designer Olga MRĐENOVIĆ

Premiere: June 2nd 2009

CAST
	BOJAN KRIVOKAPIĆ
	ANA MARKOVIĆ
	STEFAN BUNDALO
	JELENA ILIĆ
	DAMJAN KECOJEVIĆ
	ANASTASIA MANDIĆ
	PAVLE JERINIĆ
	MILENA PREDIĆ

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

NATIONAL THEATRE - BELGRADE

The activity of the Drama of the National Theatre can be viewed as a development in four stages: from 1868 till 1914, from 1918 till 1941, from 1945 till 1991, and from 1991 till today.The first stage is marked by many tragedies and enactments inspired by mediaeval and modern history, like The Death of Uroš V by Stefan Stefanović.The characteristic of the repertoire of the National Theatre, especially at the end of the 19th century were plays with singing like dramatizations of Stevan Sremac’s popular short stories: Zona Zamfirova and Ivkova Slava In the first two decades of the 20th century the broadening of subject matters was noticeable. Beside Branislav Nušić, best young authors write for the National Theatre, and we must mention Simo Matavulj, Vojislav Jovanović Mirabo and Milivoj Predić.Koštana by Borisav Stanković was first shown at the very beginning of the 20th century and it has remained the cult performance of this theatre till this day.In the first stage on the repertoire of the National Theatre were plays written by the most significant writers of all periods: from the earliest (Sophocles), to Shakespeare, Calderon, Moliere, Racine, Goldoni, Rostand, Gete, Ibzen, Strindberg, Gogol, Ostrovsky, Chekhov and Gorky. Between the two world wars, speaking of domestic dramaturgy, the plays of Jovan Sterija Popović, Branislav Nušić, Milutin Bojić, Borisav Stanković, Ivo Vojnović, Milan Begović, Ivan Cankar and Todor Manojlović were staged.In the period from 1945 till 1953 the plays with clear political message were played. In the first two years of this period, the Russian playwrights had the primacy .Political changes and certain liberalization characterise the relationship towards the foreign dramaturgy and discovering of the American drama and the works of Jonesco and Becket.Seventies and eighties were marked by plays of Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz, Aleksandar Popović, Žarko Komanin, Ljubomir Simović and Jovan Hristić.The National Theatre opened its door to the contemporary world dramaturgy. Plays by Martin Mcdona, Erich Emanuel Schmidt, Nina Valsa, Jasmina Reza, Pavel Kohout are played and plays by Serbian contemporary writers Siniša Kovačević, Vida Ognjenović, Jelena Kajgo, Miloš Nikolić, Stevan Pešić can be seen on the stage of the National Theatre.

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

BUNKER & BETONTANC - LjUBLjANA

Bunker is a non-profit organization for the realization and organization of cultural events. It produces contemporary theatre and dance performances, organizes educational programmes, brings together one of the most noted international festivals, the Mladi levi festival, and manages Stara mestna eletrarna - Elektro Ljubljana, one of the most beautiful stages for contemporary performing arts in Slovenia, where it hosts theatre and dance performances, numerous festivals, concerts and various interdisciplinary events.
The aim of Bunker is to invigorate the Slovene cultural space with innovative approaches. It encourages mobility of artists and their works and promotes the intertwining of different art disciplines. It creates a space, which allows the exchange of experiences, knowledge and interests among artists and various audiences. Bunker tries to stimulate discussions regarding various artistic practices and subjects and to create artistic programmes and events that reflect upon topical social, ecological, political and cultural issues.

Betontanc (”Concrete Dance”) was founded in 1990 by theatre director Matjaž Pograjc who gathered together people of roughly the same age from different backgrounds - musicians, dancers, actors, costume and stage designers - and through years became the main Slovene dance-theatre sensation. The group was formed as a reaction to high intellectual and conceptual art works in the eighties. Since then the exploration of Betontanc was focused on the physicality of the human body and its correspondence with elements which bound the freedom of movement. Thus what moves the protagonists could be either infantile and ridiculous or brutal and violent, however audience is always confronted with the breath taking presence of realness. The core of today’s Betontanc are director Matjaž Pograjc, set and light designer Tomaž Štrucl, choreographer and dancer Branko Potočan, costume designer Mateja Benedetti, sound designer Jure Vlahovič and actors Primož Bezjak, Daša Doberšek, Branko Jordan and Katarina Stegnar. This time director Matjaž Pograjc decided to create a magical dance-theatre performance with Serbian actors but with Betontanc’s artistic expression.

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

MAYBE WE ARE MICKEY MOUSE

“Maybe We are Mickey Mouse” is inspired by a Belgrade graphitti with a boy and a girl, embraced, with plastic ears on their heads. In the centre of the action there is an old camera, found in the pass “Bezistan,” right next to McDonalds, through which the characters of the play pass. The play deals with time and the relationship of an individual towards our own “petrified” moments in life. As a starting point it takes photography, which best reflects the desire for eternity and at the same time fear from temporariness.

Dramaturgical Note: The Tragedy of a Drawn Aura
The text Maybe We are Mickey Mouse is characterised by emotional power, poetics belonging to a post-drama form and an extreme stage potential. This is a play - more precisely, a type of a post-dramatic script - in which Maja Pelević, in a multi-meaningful way, critically engaged and in a formally innovative manner talks about the man in today’s world disoriented due to the lack of God, morals, love, tolerance or measures of value - and, most of all, meaning.
Looking from a wider poetic viewpoint, it could be concluded that this text is a logical, albeit a little poetically unexpected step in the opus of one of our most gifted young dramatists. Following her doubtless dramatic sensibility, Maja Pelević in the text Maybe We are Mickey Mouse uses one of the crucial technological phenomena of modern electronic, postmodern and consumer civilization - a machine for taking and developing pictures - as a means for forming the dramatic expression about the emptiness of the automatic postmodern world and the barren fulness of the soul inhabiting it, looking for fulfilment, or at least comfort. Maja Pelević also follows the tendency of a convicing widening of the list of motifs she deals with, at the same time realising the growing complexity, accuracy and convincing nature of the form.
While her first all-evening piece Ler is a cynical melodrama, Belgrade-Berlin, on the other hand, an allegory of adventure, Orange Peel a hilarious satirist parable about the rebellion of the Body, and Me or Someone Else a postmodern tragicomic fugue about freedom and all types of slavery, in this play a new process of the author’s double maturing is evident. On the one hand, the form of this text corresponds to the means, methods and even strategies of post-dramatic theatre - refraining from synthesis, interweaving of layers of stage illusion, play with the density and rhythm of dramatic-stage signs, simultaneity and synesthesis. On the other hand, this play, with its motifs, characters and non-plot, elliptical story, in a representative and topical way epitomises the thought of Walter Benjamin about the lost aura - “the disposable appearance of farness, no matter how close it is.” The stingy, emotion-imbued aspirations of all the characters - more precisely dramatic figures - of this sad Proustian ballad are turned toward the mentioned aura as a lost source and unreachable goal. Testifying to the precious temporariness of life and variable eternity of images, about love and forgetfulness, about remembrance and misunderstanding, the protagonists of Maja Pelević’s text at the same time in a new way direct the ancient Faustian cry to the fleeing dreams and the everyday existence they themselves are trying to flee. "Verweile doch, du bist so schön!” (Don’t pass, you are so beautiful!).

Svetislav JOVANOV (Scena, Nr. 3-4, 2007)

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Matjaž Pograjc - Born in 1967 in Ljubljana, theatre director and one of the most prominent Slovenian theatre artists.
Earned his degree in theatre and radio directing (AGRFT, Ljubljana), and in 1990 founded “Betonanc,” the troupe with which he develops and researches choreographic and physical forms of theatre expression, engaging in ideologically-oriented themes, particularly from the world of urban adolescence. The other important part of his research is dedicated to the verbal-theatre structure; with the help of the Youth Theatre, Pograjc researches mis-en-scene based on original interpretations of a contemporary dramatic text or the contribution of the acting ensemble. His method of interpretations includes different genres of pop culture, in which he reveals modern archetypal models of the lost civilization, chaos, violence and cruelty.
Awards: Grand Prix Bagnola (1992); Borštnik's award for special achievements (1992); Prešern's Foundation Award for directing in Youth Theatre (1997); The best fist-time choreographer - director in the selection “Five best in New York by the New York Times” (2000); Villanueva Prize for the play Who is Afraid of Tennessee Williams, for one of the best foreign productions in Cuba, (2003); Marul's award for best director for the play Fragile! at the Festival "Dani Marulića“ (2006); Grand prix Borštnik's dramatic meetings for the play Fragile! (2006).
More significant plays: Roberto Zucco Bernard-Marie Koltes, 1996; Butterendfly (M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang), 1995; Where I Haven't Been, 1996; Tirza, D. Z. Frey, 1997; Who is Afraid of Tennessee Williams?, 1999; The Home of Bernarda Alba (based on Federico Garcia Lorka), 2000; Peter Pan or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, J. M. Barrie - M. Pograjc, 2001; The Exile and Murder of Jean-Paul Marat, Peter Weiss, 2002; Play it Again Caligula (based on Caligula by Albert Camus), 2003; Luluby, Daša Doberšek, Branko Jordan, Nataša Matjašec, 2004; Fragile! Tena Štivčić, 2005; Whale's Stomach, Fabio Rubiano, 2006; Fatal Love, 2007; Poets without Pockets, Ljubljana, 1990; Romeo and Juliet, Ljubljana, 1991; Every Word is Golden, Ljubljana, 1992; Wet Hanky Thieves, Ljubljana, Angers, 1993; Meet Your Enemy!, Ljubljana, 1995; Three Sides of Heavens, Ljubljana, 1997; The Secret Sunshine Schedule, Bunker Productions, Ljubljana, 1999; Midnight Meat Flight, 2000; The Meeting House, Ljubljana, Rennes, 2002; Wrestling Dostoievsky, Vienna, 2004; All For Berlusconi, Junghollandia and Betontanc, 2004; Show Your Face!, Betontanc and Umka.L.V, 2006.

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Maja Pelević - Dramatist and dramaturge at the National Theatre in Belgrade. Graduated Faculty of Dramatic Arts, department of dramaturgy in Belgrade, 2005.
Performed Dramas: ESCape - Bitef Art Cafe 2004, directed by Jelena Bogavac; Ler - National Theatre, Subotica, 2005, directed by Slađana Kilibarda; directed by Miloš Lazin, MTM Mostar; Fake Porno (with M. Bogavac, J. Bogavac i F. Vujoševićem), directed by Jelena Bogavac, Bitef Teatar, 2005; Be a Lady for a Day, directed by Ksenija Krnajski, Bitef Teatar, 2005; Belgrade-Berlin, directed by Ksenija Krnajski, Zvezdara Theatre, 2005; directed by Predrag Kalaba, Volksbuhne Teatar (Parazit project), Berlin 2005; Orange Peel, directed by Goran Marković, Atelier 212, 2006; directed by Bojana Lazić, Culture Centre Lazarevac 2008; directed by Kokan Mladenović, Ujvideki szinhaz, 2009; Me or Someone Else, directed by Kokan Mladenović, Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad, 2007; Jumpgirl, directed by Kokan Mladenović, co-production Budva Theatre City and Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad, 2007; Sign endlessly near, endlessly far (Via Balkan), directed by Kokan Mladenović, National Theatre Sombor, 2007; Hamlet Hamlet Eurotrash (written and directed with Filip Vujošević), Theatre at Terazije, 2008.
Awards: "Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz" for dramatic work; "Slobodan Selenić" for best final drama; award by Sterijino pozorje for the original dramatic text, 2007.