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Directed by DEJAN MIJAČ
Translation DRINKA GOJKOVIĆ
Set Design JURAJ FABRI
Costume Design MAJA MIRKOVIĆ
Composer ANjA ĐORĐEVIĆ
Dramaturgy JELENA MIJOVIĆ
Video SVETISLAV GONCIĆ
Stage movement MILOŠ PAUNOVIĆ
Adaptation of songs, lyrics of the final song MILENA BOGAVAC
Light Design MILAN TVRDIŠIĆ
Stage Speech LjILjANA MRKIĆ-POPOVIĆ
Organiser NEVENA VUČKOVIĆ
Premiere:
May 22nd 2008
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Elisio |
GORAN JEVTIĆ |
Fadoul |
NIKOLA RAKOČEVIĆ |
Absolut |
SONjA KOLAČARIĆ |
Mrs. Habersatt |
DARA DŽOKIĆ |
Franz |
MLADEN ANDREJEVIĆ |
Rosa |
NADA ŠARGIN |
Mrs. Zucker |
LjILjANA DRAGUTINOVIĆ |
Ella |
ALEKSANDRA JANKOVIĆ |
Helmut |
JANOŠ TOT |
Mother of a murdered girl |
BRANKA ŠELIĆ-ILIĆ |
Father of a murdered girl |
BRANISLAV ZEREMSKI |
1st Suicide Perpetrator |
GORDAN KIČIĆ |
2nd Suicide Perpetrator |
SRĐAN TIMAROV |
Young doctor |
BOJAN ŽIROVIĆ |
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| ATELIER 212 THEATRE - BELGRADE |
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| The life of the Atelier 212 Theatre began on 12th November 1956 in the small theatre hall of the old ‘Borba’ before the audience of 212 chairs, with the premiere of Faustus directed by Mira Trailovic. It was founded by a group of actors, directors, writers and musicians at the moment when a need was felt for a theatre which would stage new avant-garde drama which had a major influence in Europe of that time. The Atelier 212 was the first theatre in Eastern Europe to play Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, 1956. This play’s great success opened the door to a number of other avant-garde dramas and authors to come: Sartre, Faulkner, Ionesco, Camus, Pinter, Adamov, Rożevicz, Joyce, Jarry, T. S. Eliot, Vitrac, Schisgal, Kopit, Genet - they all saw their first staging before the Yugoslav audiences here. The Atelier 212 Theatre discovered new Yugoslav authors and staged plays by Brana Crncevic, Aleksandar Popovic, Dusan Kovacevic... Mira Trailovic had been leading the Atelier 212 Theatre since the very beginning - at first, when Rados Novakovic and Bojan Stupica were at the helm of the theatre, she worked as the assistant manager, and then as its manager for many years to follow. Led by her, the Atelier brought down the boundaries of Yugoslavia and, in time, became a theatre known all over the world. Together with Jovan Ćirilov and other associates, Mira Trailovic initiated the establishment of one of the greatest European theatrical festivals, the BITEF festival, which was founded in 1967 in the Atelier 212 Theatre, where its now three-decades-long life began.
After Mira Trailovic, Ljubomir Draskic, who had joined the theatre as a young director almost at its beginning, became the manager of this theatre. For the twelve years of his rule, the theatre took on new young artists enlarging its company, and got a new house. In 1992 the Atelier, with its adapted building, became one of the best equipped theatres in the Balkans. Its Great Stage now has 385 seats in the auditorium and the Theatre in the Basement Stage has 141. Its fifth manager was Nebojsa Bradic, who didn’t hold his position for long (not even one whole season). The current manager, actor Svetozar Cvetkovic, has been member of the theatre’s company for many years. Nowadays the Atelier has a permanent ensemble of 32 actors and actresses, but it keeps its doors open for artists who aren’t permanently engaged here. The greatest actors and actresses still perform on the Atelier stages, and the best domestic and international directors work with this company. New dramas by contemporary Serbian and foreign authors are staged here, where the theatre leaves its own recognizable mark on them. In the recent years this theatre’s plays have been tearing down the newly established geographical boundaries conquering the world once again. At the moment, side by side with the old, already anthological plays, new plays are performed on its stages ... |
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P E R F O R M A N C E...... |
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“Innocence” is a work by the youngest recipient of the prestigious literary award Berthold Brecht, and at the same time it is a play in 2006 declared the best text of the German-speaking territories (...) The piece talks about lost beings in nineteen small scenes, shedding light on sad and comical aspects of their lives, everyday existence, illnesses and death. The play examines the complex problem of guilt and innocence, first in a political context, and then on the level of intimate feeling of an individual experiencing the problem in everyday life. Made in the world in which violence is inflicted and suffered, the piece creates a peculiar poetics of horror, describing the most horrible things in a poetic way... “Innocence” not only represents one of the best dramas from the rich German production, it is a path which out theatre should take, the path of creative, artistic theatre which at the same time has good communication with the public, the head of Atelier 212 Theatre, Svetozar Cvetković, says.
 Danas, May 22, 2008
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S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T...... |
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Her name fits her well in a shamanic way (“Goddess Loher”), and she signs her lines of isolation and secure, two-way flow in a high-voltage, soothing way. Sometimes when the poles are life and death, poetry and philosophy emerge. Dea Loher has a gift, so the play of the alarmingly ironic and comically sad kind and title beautifully grows in the monologue, the carnal labyrinth, mortally stripped eroticism, suicidal exhibitionism... Enough for Dejan Mijac, already trained in the slow-moving/theatrical/fantastic themes, to become interested in her work, in this extendable case with stable control. And believe it or not, he managed to present all this in a hypnotizing series of images in which deus ex machina, the hypothetically, courageously set dilemma - the surreal will versus laws of human nature - determine the subsequent flow, be it submerging.
While the stage is determined by the prop transparency from the hands of Juraj Fabri, only one in a series of the pleasant but official, associative tendencies, and the action is made of the reality of the European continental-colonial union, the character interpreters with the hilariously wacky trip-hop duel of Gordan Kicic and Srdjan Timarov at its head, Nada Sargin’s hostess, or any other sample of the decent cast, they distance themselves from confinement, and they give to their director, and even more so to the enjoyer of “ the feathery that strikes like a maul” theatre, offer an extended adventure. If somewhere the grotesquely unbearable lightness of being can remain, it should not be sought in the magical lethargy of an Atelier 212 sprout. And if it becomes unbearable to one of them, let him/her remember the joke about a Bosnian to whom a fish would fulfill three wishes, if only he would know what they were.
Igor BURIĆ & Vladimir KOPICL |
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Dejan Mijač is one of the most significant Serbian theatre directors. He was born in 1934 in Bijeljina in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic Srpska. He studied directing at the Academy of Theatre Art in Belgrade. He was the director at the National Theatre in Tuzla and Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad. He is a professor of directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. He was director on many stages in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Novi Sad (about 40 plays), in Belgrade, Zagreb, Sombor and Nis.
He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including eight Sterija prizes:
- A Stuck-up Woman, Jovan Sterija Popović (Serbian National Theatre), 1974.
- A Man's Marriage and a Woman's Marriage, Jovan Sterija Popović (National Theatre, Sombor), 1976.
- The Sea, (Yugoslav Drama Theatre), 1978.
- The Travelling Troupe Šopalović, Ljubomir Simović (Yugoslav Drama Theatre), 1986.
- Prize for Systematic stage examination of dramatic oeuvre of Jovan Sterija Popović, 1987.
- Prize for special Merits for the Improvement of Theatre Art, 1990.
- Miracle in Šargan, Ljubomir Simović (Atelier 212 Theatre), 2002.
- Locusts, Biljana Srbljanović (Yugoslav Drama Theatre), 2006.
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THEY ARE MAKING A BLACK COMEDY OUT OF OUR LIVES ... |
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There is a character in the piece - an undertaker, the man who prepares corpses for the last dressing. He usually works with the deceased who don’t have any relatives. Suddenly he realises that the better off we are, the more we commit suicide. In poverty, he says, we didn’t have that tendency. And it is not a question of self-preservation. A person in difficult conditions does not have time to think about himself, about his surroundings, to determine a stance towards everything surrounding him, but reacts with the instinct of self-preservation and fights for life. As soon as something that removes you from that primal power begins, you find yourself in a vacuum. You start, without questions about the meaning of life, to accept the meaninglessness as destiny... A search for something that would save people. Not only from the (self)murdering way of thinking but a search for something that would help them relativise that which beset them. And what beset them is globalisation, the fall of morals and values. Both personal and universal is lost here. A person in that system, who becomes stronger, is not only objectified, like during the times of growing capitalism, but he is stripped of meaning.
Man is qualitatively changed. A lot of his contents is removed from him. Even the brain does not serve for thinking anymore, perhaps only for illness. Especially in new female authors, a yearning is pronounced, a call for something - let’s call it love. They don’t fight for female or any sort of rights anymore, for democracy. That’s completely devalued. A fight for the reign of rights does not mean anything. Violence means everything. Interests and prosperity measured by profit are placed on a pedestal. And sense and the feeling of happiness and fulfilment is nowhere in sight.
Black comedy - a genre in which our lives are set. This thing we are living, if it weren’t disgusting, it would be funny. A person can laugh at it too, but only if he first overcomes the disgust.
Dejan MIJAČ - Tatjana NjEŽIĆ, Blic, April 14, 2008 |
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Dea Loher (1964), studied Germanic Studies and Philosophy at the University of Munich. After having finished her master's degree (1988), she spent a year in Brazil. From 1990 she studied the subject “Writing for the Stage” with Heiner Muller and Yaak Karsunke at the High Acting School in Berlin. She lives in Berlin. She is a recipient of many prizes, including that of Goethe Institute and Schiller’s prize for young playwrights, and in 2006 she became the youngest recipient of the literary prize “Berthold Brecht.”
Plays: Olga's Room (Olgas Raum, 1992), Tatoo (Tätowierung, 1992), Leviathan, 1993, In a Foreign House (Fremdes Haus, 1995), Adam Geist (1998), The Bluebeard - Hope for Women (Blaubart - Hoffnung der Frauen, 1997), Manhattan Medea (1999), Klara's Opportunities (Klaras Verhältnisse, 2000), The Third Sector (Der dritte Sektor, 2001), Shop of Fortunes (Magazin des Glücks, 2001), Innocence (Unschuld, Thalia Theater Hamburg, 2003), Life on Roosevelt Square (Das Leben auf der Praca Roosevelt, 2004), Quixote in the City (Quixote in der Stadt, 2005).
Storybook: Head of a Dog (Hundskopf). |
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A PERSON TRIES TO UNDERSTAND ... |
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Theatre. Writing for theater is a political act. I believe in that way it differes from prose... Theatre for me is a public place of art in its purest form. And if things of common interests cannot be discussed over the stage, then I don't know where the place within art where this can be done is found... Theatre for me has in its original sense a connection with the polis...
I certainly believe that theatre can make an impact. If it didn’t, it would be a circus ...
Tragedy. There is an impulse running through all my pieces. During the last few years there was something paralysing in the air, and what really surprised me was that young people were ready to diminish, to devalue their ideals, even their feelings. As if all the walls have fallen now, borders are open, we don’t have our imaginary enemy, it is not worth fighting or living, and that is why we are all mutating into emotional dwarfs... I believe there are certain things that are important to every individual and when those are destroyed, or when they disappear, or have to be written off, it is an event that is engraved and it is not possible to pretend that, almost hand in hand with globalisation, there is a unification of individual life taking place, that everything is counted equally and nothing is more valuable than something else. This can be clearly observed in theatre ...
Dea LOHER |
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When Everythig is Gone
(...) In the play Innocence, human life is payment for guilt or sin, painful faltering under the weight of what has been, what has already happened, and what we didn’t even dream was happening to us. Only after life happens to him, man starts thinking about it, but now it is already late! As a girl from Kožetina says: Well, sir, I have already missed my life, but life has missed me too! Dea Loher and director Dejan Mijač in the play of Atelier 212 shape, dramatise the life, fate of one such group of people. (...) Dejan Mijač thinks about people passionately and with bitterness. He cares for humaneness, innocence, tenderness, for everything there has not been enough of, and today there is even less of, but a person leaves behind him all convincing signs of bestiality. We wanted to laugh, but laughter was stuck in our throat! Mijač intended to talk about painful and bitter things polemically, with irony and humour under gallows. Somehow it progressed, but it progressed slowly. Swiftian irony is mixed with the agonising romance whose dreams and foretelling were not realised. We wanted to ponder over human fate, over the metaphysical hole in which Loher and Mijač stuff everything lost, the destroyed human being. In a word, the play of unreliability and indeterminacy, and undetermined itself, stretched between reality and dream, reality of bestiality and irradiation. Scenes and actors are sharpened, pushed towards the edges and extremes, and an expression that out of rebellion, or prayer and repentance, turns into cries, a scream, irritability, madness. Both the actors and the director are searching for something we call foreignness, which is not the same as eccentricity, nor wonder. Loneliness, pain, abandonment turn the characters in the play into masks, grimaces, creatures, beings on the border of humaneness and bestiality.
Muharem PERVIĆ, Politika, May 24 2008
The Cursed Yard
(...) Elisio (Goran Jevtić) and Fadoul (Nikola Rakočević), two kids lost in modern “transculturalism,” who don’t know anything about themselves, even less about others. Only shock opens their eyes. Mijač set them, with the support of the author, as two perfectly real characters, who believe in their action. It is sufficient for the meaning to triple. Meeting Absolut (Sonja Kolačarić), who is a blind pole dancer, with the power to see with other senses, the boys gather with her, and she becomes significant, with them, to herself. Musically an accurately harmonised trio. Mrs. Habersatt (the excellent Dara Džokić), who imagines a son for herself, because she is lonely and unnecessary, Mother of the murdered girl (the uncanny Branka Šelić) and Father of the murdered girl (Branislav Zeremski) are an accurate image of families that cannot face the fact that in the modern world everything tragically changes, never for better. Franz (the avant-guard Mladen Andrejević) and Rosa (the absolutely masterful Nada Šargin), a couple lost in the cosmos of conventions they are not able to satisfy. Mrs. Zucker (the new Ljiljana Dragutinović), the voice of a constant pressure of illness and anxiousness inducted by evil and chaos. Ella (Aleksandra Janković) and Helmut (Toth Janos), a married couple who does not live, she just defines, and he is silent. An announcement of violence. Suicidal tendencies. Gordan Kičič and Srđan Timarov, rappers, are the mirror of a staccato world in which life happens after death, not before it. Young doctor, Bojan Žirović, has a very effective monologue on the borderline with Ionesco (...)
Dragana BOŠKOVIĆ, Danas, June 7 2008
(...) The term from the title functions as a conceptual leitmotif in which numerous, dispersed, poetically various and complex layers of this play are intermingling. All its completely independent and loosely tied stories treat similar questions: guilt, responsibility, sacrifice, a possibility of repentance, yearning for innocence, temptation of suicide in the world of plenty and of meaninglessness (...)
These stories turn out to be realistic and wondrous only when the reader succeeds to break to their situations and characters through a specific form which is, in all the cases, entirely unique, post-dramatic. In it dialogue and didaskalies are freely being mixed, it always moves from presentation to storytelling; certain utterances have the form of a song, while their contents is also characterised by a poetic power and philosophical cleverness. Even though they have a parodist overtone (as a means in character construction) of the philosophising of a resigned intellectual. They can be understood as a conceptual platform of this play: in the contemporary world there is less of a general meaning, great ideas, unifying systems, revolutionary movements, only the occupation with the individual, unsure connections of partial experience remains. Such a worldview is here in complete harmony with its dramatic expression, because in both cases the principle of fragmentation is taking place (...).
Ivan MEDENICA, Vreme, June 12 2008 |
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