54th STERIJINO POZORJE FESTIVAL 2009

Written and directed by VIDA OGNjENOVIĆ

Set Designer GEROSLAV ZARIĆ

Costume Designer LjILjANA DRAGOVIĆ

Music ZORAN ERIĆ

Dramaturgy SVETISLAV JOVANOV

Stage Speech DEJAN SREDOJEVIĆ

Choreographer
OLIVERA KOVAČEVIĆ-CRNjANSKI

Assistant Director JELENA ANTONIJEVIĆ

Assistant Director BEBA BALAŠEVIĆ

Assistant Costume Designer BRANKA ŠTRBAC

Assitant Choreographer FROSINA DIMOVSKA

Premiere: October 8th 2008

CAST
Ilarion Ruvarac, archimandrite of the monastery Grgeteg, famous historian	BORIS ISAKOVIĆ
Jaša Tomić, editor of the paper “Zastava”	NENAD PEĆINAR
Mr. Mihajlović, attorney, editor of “Zastave”	MIODRAG PETROVIĆ
Mr. Savić, professor, contributor to “Zastave”	PREDRAG MOMČILOVIĆ
Laza Dunđerski, wealthy estate owner	RADOJE ČUPIĆ
Mirković, journalist at "Zastava" and a womaniser	JUGOSLAV KRAJNOV
Milić, poet and journalist at “Zastava”	IGOR PAVLOVIĆ
Mr. Stojković, etiquette teacher	ALEKSANDAR GAJIN
Miletić (Svetozar), Tribune of Vojvodina and politician	STEVAN GARDINOVAČKI
Ćirić, merchant, member of the Battle of Kosovo Celebration Committee	DRAGAN KOJIĆ
Jojkić, merchant, Committee member	MIROSLAV FABRI
Radulaški, estate owner and Committee member	MIODRAG PETRONjE
Dimitrijević, editor of the paper “Branik”	ALEKSANDAR ĐURICA
Brother Makarije, monk at the monastery Grgeteg	MIHAJLO PLESKONjIĆ
Guard at a Budapest prison	ATILA NEMET
Choirmaster Volf, singing coach	DRAGOMIR PEŠIĆ
Mrs. Amalija, Chief of a women's charity association from Novi Sad	GORDANA ĐURĐEVIČ-DIMIĆ
Mrs. Radulaški, her deputy, wife of and estate owner	ALEKSANDRA PLESKONjIĆ-ILIĆ
Mrs. Radovanović, respectable widow	TIJANA MAKSIMOVIĆ
Mrs. Lugomirska	GORDANA KAMENAROVIĆ
Mrs. Savićeva, reserved, but knows everything	SANjA RADIŠIĆ
Milica Tomić, Jaša's wife, Miletić's daughter	DRAGINjA VOGANjAC
Katarina Lugomirski, chaste girl	JOVANA MIŠKOVIĆ
Miss Jojkić, merchant's daughter	TIJANA KARAJIČIĆ
Miss Ćirić, rich marriage candidate, single daughter of the merchant Ćirić	JOVANA BALAŠEVIĆ
Mrs. Gavanski, a good catch	SANjA RISTIĆ-KRAJNOV
Miss Popović, of marriageable age for some time	OLIVERA STAMENKOVIĆ
Miss Zeremski, sensitive and gentle	MARIJA MEDENICA
Chamber maid	JELENA ANTONIJEVIĆ
Children	Tijana Jovanović, Danica Golović, Pavle Mitić, Luka Putnik, Nikola Davidović, Nikola Milenković (Members of the theatre workshop "Theatre Fantasies")

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

SERBIAN NATIONAL THEATRE - NOVI SAD

The roots of the Serbian National Theatre reach back to 1861, when, on the meeting of the Serbian Reading-room, held in Novi Sad on July 16 (28), with Svetozar Miletic as a chairman, the decision of founding the Serbian National Theatre was made. Novi Sad became the cradle of the Serbian theatre, and was, with good reason named “The Serbian Athens”. The theater’s actors were also the cultural missionaries, who made a fundamental influence to the cultural identity and conscience of the nation. The principals aims of the Serbian National Theatre are to promote and preserve the national and international theatrical and cultural heritage, and to present the most valuable contemporary creative practice. Therefore, we stage large, ambitious production. The Serbian National Theatre has represented our culture throughout the country - we have played in more than 300 venues with around a thousand performances - and abroad, with about a hundred performances in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Italy, Netherland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Iraq, Egypt, Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina... The theatre has presented its work - and gained many awards - at the main festivals in Serbia, and at many European festivals too.
Serbian National Theatre is a member of the European Theatre Convention, a theatrical association which engages 32 European theatres. At the same time, our Theatre is one of the initiators and co-founders of the international theatre Festival Theatre without frontiers, with partners from Eger (Hungary), Sfântu Gheorghe (Romania), Nantes (France), Szczecin (Poland) etc.

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

WAS THE PRINCE'S DINNER SERVED

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Dark glitter of the jubilee: Using an anecdotal intention of a group of ambitious politicians to collect points in the political arena of the 1880s during the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo with a fair-like reconstruction of the story about the “prince’s dinner” - the basis of the plot being their vain search for a person who would play the mythic traitor Vuk Brankovic - the author “by the way” de-masks mythomaniacal patriotism as a constant of our mentality (...) Vida Ognjenović reconstructs the entire social and cultural landscape of Serbian 19th century citizenry into the apocryphal Stage, in order to show us the absurdity and lack of foundation, bareness and senselessness of its partial, mythic and ideological “theatres,” in order for the first time to mercilessly shed light on the “dark corners” of our inherited and still unsurpassed comedies of Sacrifice and tragedies of Misunderstanding. In that theatre, one should not forget, the Tribune ends up as a replaced actor, and the Historian survives only as a humble prompter: for the sake of everyone, the place of the Director has to remain empty.
Svetislav JOVANOV

Unique appearance: The piece was written in 1988, at the time when common sense stood helpless in front of the sights of a mass national hysteria, in which huge doses of national kitsch were digestiable only in completely empty stomachs and dedicated primarily to them, a the time when the preparation for the 600th anniversary of St. Vitus’ day was a task of first-class national significance. In those circumstances, Vida Ognjenović, for the reasons of personal mental hygiene, studied Serbian history “written by the hands of honorable people,” including one of the heroes of her play, Ilarion Ruvarac. And as coincidence always serves the artist, at the time she found the information about the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in Novi Sad. A brilliant opportunity to reconstruct a time (Oh time, oh customs!), and through analogy to lead a discussion about the events here and now. Accurate descriptions of mentality, image genre, political disputes, sobering philosophisings of the one who knows how to separate a lie from the truth, sincere patriotic zest of those who need history as a cure from the present, political strategies, stupid carelessness of those without knowledge and without experience etc.etc. - we find all of that in this melancholic (historical) comedy, which languished in a drawer (as its heroes would say) for two years, because it was not allowed to see the light of the day before the poets-academics have finished singing their tune.
Mirjana MIOČINOVIĆ, Dramaturgic schools, Scena, 4-5/91.

S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T......

Performed like a lavish ironic/polemic vivisection of our national/civil, even salon/political mind prone to a mythic understanding of history and our place in it, the lively and picturesque text by Vida Ognjenovic belongs to the kind whose topicality will not be questioned soon, both because of the so-called internal and external reasons. If we are thinking about the former, there is a skillfully and powerfully developed double-play constructed on the image of a civil milieu of Novi Sad at the end of the 19th century and the then political crede that sees its highest voice in the jubilee/parade-like reconstruction of “the prince's dinner”, the one which uncontrollably pours over into the emptiness of realistically possible and into a tragic incident as its energetic continuation. If we think of the other, “external” reason for this play, the matter is even more obvious, i.e. topical, not only as theatre that “denounces life” but also like the one offering it a mirror of a multi-meaningful message, if not a cure.
Of course, there is the third and the most important element, a rich ensemble play written in the proven directorial handwriting of the author itself, in which all the replicas are adequate, the actors at work are worth of art as much as of life we are living, and the audience aware of its participation in something larger than in a mere drama or a mere comedy. This is where the absence of a question mark in the title of Vida Ognjenovic’s piece perhaps comes from, just as this play does not need an exclamation point. It is sufficient to watch it, in a still-fresh edition.

Igor BURIĆ & Vladimir KOPICL

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Vida Ognjenović, director, playwright and prose writer. Earned her degree in World Literature at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade and at the department of directing of the Belgrade Academy of Theatre, Film and TV. She began her post-graduate studies in Paris (Sorbonne), and she defended her master's thesis in theory and practice of directing at the University of Minnesota (USA). She was the director of Drama at the Belgrade National Theatre, she taught at universities in Los Angeles and Chicago, she is a full professor at the Novi Sad Academy of Art... Her directorial opus is comprised of a hundred theatre and a large number of TV and radio plays ...
Awards: Sterija Prize for the best text (Prince's Dinner 1991; Jegor's Way, 2001), Sterija Prize for best director (Jegor's Way), Sterija Prize for dramatisation (Root, trunk and epilogue, 1984), October Prize of the city of Belgrade for directing (Mephistopheles, 1984), Golden Wreath of the Sarajevo Festival MESS (Mephistopheles, 1985), Prize "Joakim Vujić" for drama text (How to Make the Master Laugh, 1998), Prize of the city of Budva for dramatic creativity (2007).
Books of plays: Melancholic play (1991); Sad Comedies (1994), Plays I, 2000 (My Name is Mitar, How to Make the Master Laugh, Prince's Dinner, The Blue-haired Girl); Plays II, 2001 (Kanjoš Macedonović, Fear and Tremor, Jegor's Way); Play III, 2002 (Mephistopheles, Mileva Einstein, Visa), Don Krsto, 2008.
She published six books of prose works: collection of stories Poisonous Dandelion Milk (1994) and Old Watch (1996), Most Beautiful tales by Vide Ognjenović (2001), novel The House of Dead Scents (1995), A Trip to a Travelogue (2005), novel Adulterers (2006). Prose works and plays were translated into Engllish, French, Hungarian, German, Macedonian, Norwegian and other languages. She was a selector of Sterijino Pozorje (1992, 1993), the ambassador of FR Yugoslavia (later Serbia and Montenegro) in Norway.

D I R E C T O R ...

IRONY IS ANOTHER FACE OF MELANCHOLY

“Change the story,” one of the characters in your play cries. “If one requires from a folk song to replace history, then it’s a bunch of nonsense.” How does one change a tale, how does one neutralise the noise and anger of history?
By a correct reading. The trouble is that we read historical, scholarly works and texts as a collection of stories, as descriptions of imaginary bloodshed, murders and cannibalism. On the other hand, we understand fictional texts as documentations of reality, and we require them to bend to our preconception of the same event in reality. That is why the rejection of a literary work and the changing of historical interpretation is a regular practice in forceful social establishments. The “winners’ mythographs” have their hands full. They regularly paint over historical facts with the governing colours, or they offer their own literary discourse on the platter as their contribution to the political necessity. This is all unified in what Miša Stanisavljević brilliantly formulates as “Elan mortale.”

Vida OGNjENOVIĆ - Gojko BOŽOVIĆ, from the interview

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

Serbs are dear, but the truth is dearer
(...) Vida Ognjenović skilfully in an artistic way manipulates the truth, when talking about Jaša Tomića, Laza Dunđerski, Miša Dimitrijević, Svetozar Miletić or Ilarion Ruvarac, by combining historiography, myths and her own concept, in order to tell everything found in the heart of this suffering but illiterate Serbian nation prone to the song, rebellion and politicisation in an opulent waz. No, that is not generalisation, it is an accurate vivisection, only possible, and perhaps allowed, in art.
With a lot of love, but also uncompromising strictness and consistency, Vida Ognjenović reveals a possible scenario of events at the end of the 19th century, when a group gathered around Jaša Tomić and the paper “Zastava,” tries to organise a celebration of a half millennium since the Battle of Kosovo, with the prince’s dinner, treason and curse, and currently topical specialties of the Serbian political cuisine. (...)
In the symbolical “journalistic” set design by Geroslav Zaric, dominated by the motto “We have lost, but we are not defeated,” just like the bend, ripe wheat stalks, in truthful and pompous costumes of the epoch (costume designer Ljiljana Dragović) there was no bad acting, and almost all had their opportunity-replica, in order to stand out. Whether one is talking about the dandelion-head Professor Savić, played by Predrag Momčilović; the justifiably pretentious Laza Dunđerski, played by Radoje Čupić; the “guerrilla fighter” Mirković, played by Jugoslav Krajnov; the patriotic lady Amalija, played by Gordana Đurđević-Dimić; the chaste, but fiery Katarina Lugomirski, played by Jovana Mišković; the conceited Miss Ćirić, played by Jovana Balašević; or “Serbs are dear, but the truth is dearer” Ilarion Ruvarac, played by Boris Isaković.
Igor BURIĆ, Dnevnik, October 10th 2008