55th STERIJINO POZORJE FESTIVAL 2010

Director Kokan MLADENOVIĆ

Translation to Hungarian
Kata ĐARMATI / Gyarmati Kata

Set Designer Marija KALABIĆ
Costume Designer Marina SREMAC
Composer Irena POPOVIĆ
Stage Movement Andreja KULEŠEVIĆ
Dramaturge Kata ĐARMATI / Gyarmati Kata
Assistant Director Judita FERENC / Ferenc Judit

Premiere: April 17th 2009

CAST
He	Aron BALAŽ / Balázs Áron
She	Andrea JANKOVIČ / Jankovics Andrea
Ms Mature	Livija BANKA / Banka Lívia
Ms Trouble	Emina ELOR / Elor Emina
Nurse	Terezija FIGURA / Figura Terézia
Ms Pregnant	Agota FERENC / Ferenc Ágota
Ms Widow	Edita FARAGO / Faragó Edit
Ms Tearful	Gabrijela CRNKOVIĆ / Crnkovity Gabriella
Ms Barbie	Elvira GAL / Gál Elvira

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

THE NOVI SAD THEATRE, NOVI SAD

The Novi Sad Theatre - Újvidéki Színház was founded by the decision of the Novi Sad City Assembly from 1st June 1973. The first performance - Cats’ Play by István Örkény directed by Tibor Vajda - was staged on 27th January 1974. Until 1985 the Theatre staged its performances at the Novi Sad Tribina mladih in Katolička porta, moving afterwards to its permanent house - the former playhouse ‘Ben Akiba’. This experimental city chamber theatre did not have its permanent ensemble until 1977; actors and directors were engaged on contract for each project. The theatre gradually established its troupe which has never had more than 15 members or a permanent director. The theatre produces five premiers a year and runs the same number of plays from earlier seasons. Its famous plays are Play Strindberg (Direnmat), Waiting for Godot (Beckett), Tango (Mrožek), and Chekhov’s Trilogy (Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanja) directed by György Harag. The Novi Sad Theatre - Újvidéki Színház has hosted directors such as Ljubomir Draškić, Ljuboslav Majera, Radoslav Milenković, as well as Miklós Jancsó. They have won a number of awards at festivals for small, alternative and experimental theatres in our country and abroad. The Novi Sad - Újvidéki Színház has participated in Pozorje three times: 1993 - Attila Faragó, The Cripple, directed by Béla Merő; 2000 - János Szíveri, Taming, directed by Kinga Mezei (Sterija’s Awards for: Stage Music Szilárd Mezei; Stage Movement Kriszta Szorcsik and Gábor Nagypál); 2001 - Hair, directed by Viktor Nagy (outside of competition, in honour of the award winners); 2008 - The Rocky Horror Show, directed by Viktor Nagy.

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

DRAMATURGE'S NOTE

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The sixth performed – and up to now the most ambitious – piece by Maja Pelević introduces a series of milestones into Serbian dramaturgy. Thematically, Orange Peel, by means of genuine sensitivity and unrestrained sensuality, expresses the renegade credo of the (post)modern, emancipated woman. On the level of genre, the author uses the accessibility of melodrama, attraction of tragicomedy inwrought by “nonsense” humour and lethal theoretical criticism of late feminism – in order to overcome all these elements and weave particular discursive ballads into her nightmarish erotic provocation. Formally and stylistically, this piece offers a diverse, yet dramatic web, within which the hero’s identities are dissolved, strengthened and transformed, and the “action” spins from dialogic fragments and anti-illusionist monologues, through parodying the forms of fashion recipes, commercials and classic literary “flow of consciousness,” to destructively-distancing multi-voicedness of computer e-mail chat in the style of Copeland’s prose, but also a commentary passage of the multi-divided and problematised authorial Voice itself.
In the manner of seeming directness, the subject of Orange Peel opens up with an illusionist “confession” about the unreality (of assigned) living, and concludes with the “manifesto” in which the liberated truth of the body takes over the helm. Between those two paradoxical points, a process of complex setting and, at the same time, even more complex dissolution of the unique metaphor of the piece takes place. In fact, that metaphor, “the orange peel,” a euphemistic name for cellulite, serves Maja Pelević as a detonator thanks to which an entire artificially initiated, virtual/illusionist, hysterical and paranoid/maniacal exterior of our contemporary civilization would be disintegrated. For, in the surroundings determined by machines for “producing bodies” (cosmetic treatments), multi-media mechanisms of selling fashion, culinary and emotional surrogates, as well as the exchange of sex/orgasms for power (prestige, glory), in such, therefore, world the simple truth of human, concretely the wish of the Heroine to be “ordinary,” can be sought only through a negation of everything that surrounds and naturally defines her (us).
The formal complexity of the piece, the dizzying change of narration, dialogue, monologue and commentary is supposed, therefore, to show the bareness, finiteness and uselessness of a life bound with formal gestures and empty rituals. The thematic and formal gradation with which Maja Pelević leads the reader/viewer towards the understanding of this problem is truly amazing: while parodying the “petty-bourgeois idyll” causes a humorous and satirical effect (but occasionally emotional identification), and the introduction of computer (email) communication causes shock and uneasiness of the distance, the imaginative and radical consistent variation of monologic/lyrical and descriptive segments introduces an essentially different kind of performance. This is a mix of horror and irresistible comedy, a performance that would not be possible without a lucid interweaving of two procedures that reach to the very core of the “dramatic”: while the character, i.e. the heroine (She) – both as an independent identity and as an occasional mask of the Author – dissolves into masks and surrogates, multiplies, negates and changes the point of view/action, the set of action demonstrates that all the mentioned genre and formal parameters are united into a significant contradiction (and sometimes a fragile harmony) of story and discourse. Or, to say it more simply – of our, inalienably personal, restricted sensitivity and the World in which emptiness reigns behind a mask of order. In that kind of world, the dilemma set before the Heroine – and Author – is: to be a perfect cyborg, or a discarded ruin, a despised torso of repressed desires. But both of them (consciousness and instinct), by overcoming the horizon of imposed conflict, choose the “orange peel” – the aura of imperfectability that would provide, with every new morning, at least a moment of burdensome, but valuable freedom.

Svetislav JOVANOV

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

Mladenović’s reading of Orange Peel, as Magelli’s Barbello, includes significant dramaturgical, structural changes in relationship to the text (also in relationship to the first performance of the text directed by Goran Marković). Repetition, as a determining form of dramaturgical/directorial procedure, is a stage-effective, symbolically potent manner of expressing the importance of the issues the play deals with – obsession with physical appearance, different fears from failure in society, breaking the stability of family relations, a general loneliness, alienation etc. Extraordinary accuracy, dedication and huge energy of the actors’ play deserve credit for a complete success of this multimedia, radically stylised play.

Ana TASIĆ

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KOKAN MLADENOVIĆ, director
Born in Niš, 1970. He matriculated from the High Drama School in class of Mima Vukovic-Kuric and graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, Department for Theatrical and Radio Direction – class of Miroslav Belović and Nikola Jevtić (1993).
Directed (selection): Shakespeare, Bunuel, Miller, Hamlet; Harms, Incidents; Tirso de Molina, The Seducer of Seville and the Stone Guest; Beumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro; A. Popović, The Evolutionary Road of Bora the Tailor, The Spawning of Carp; Aristophanes, Maričić, Mladenović, Lisistrata; V. Lukić, The Affair of the Innocent Annabelle; V. Ognjenović, How to Make the Master Laugh, Was There Ever Knez’s Dinner; Agota Kristof, The Notebook; D. Kovačević, The Marathon Family, The Balkan Spy, The Meeting Point; S. Selenić, Scolding the People in Two Acts; Ibsen, Per Gint; Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Taming of the Shrew; Lj. Simović, The Traveling Theatre Sopalovic; Goran Petrović, K. Mladenović, The Siege of the Saint Salvation Church; Goran Stefanovski, Bacchanalias; Bulgakov, K. Mladenović, The Master and Margarita; Mirjana Novaković, K. Mladenović, Fear and Its Servant; Goran Petrović, The Ferry; Tolkien, K. Mladenović, The Hobbit; J. M. Barrie, M. Stojanović, Peter Pan; Enda Walsh, Disco Pigs, Maja Pelević, Jumpgirl, Orange Peel, Marin Držić: Dundo (Uncle) Maroje, musical Hair. Mladenović has directed Alan Ford by Magnus and Bunker at the theatre ‘Pozorište na Terazijama’ as well as Peace, after Aristophanes, by Maričić and Mladenović. He has received the ‘Bojan Stupica’ Award as well as three Sterija Awards: in 1998, for adaptation, The Affair of the Innocent Annabelle (NT Sombor); in 2000, for adaptation, Scolding the People in Two Acts (NT Sombor); in 2002, for dramatization, The Siege of the Saint Salvation Church, NT Sombor) and a number of significant awards at festivals in Serbia and Montenegro. From 1st July 2009 he is Artistic Director of the Atelier 212 Theatre, Belgrade.

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MAJA PELEVIĆ
Born in Belgrade in 1981. Playwright and dramatuge at the National Theatre in Belgrade. Member of the project New Drama. Graduated Faculty of Performing Arts, Department of Dramaturgy in Belgrade in 2005.
Performed plays: ESCape – Bitef Art Cafe, 2004, directed by Jelena Bogavac; Out of Gear – National Theatre Subotica, 2005, d. Slađana Kilibarda; MTM Mostar, d. Miloš Lazin; Fake Porno (together with Milena Bogavac, J. Bogavac and Filip Vujošević) – Bitef teatar, 2005, d. J. Bogavac; Be a Lady for a Day – Bitef teatar, 2005, d. Ksenija Krnajski; Belgrade-Berlin, Zvezdara Theatre, 2005, d. K. Krnajski; Volksbuhne Theater (Parasite Project), Berlin 2005, d. Predrag Kalaba; Orange Peel – Atelier 212, 2006, d. Goran Marković; Cultural Centre Lazarevac 2008, d. Bojana Lazić; Speltriebe Theater-Stadt Osnabruck, 2009; Theater Halle Munich 2010; Me or Someone Else – Serbian National Theatre Novi Sad, 2007, d. Kokan Mladenović; Jumpgirl – co-production Budva Theatre City and SNT Novi Sad, 2007, d. K. Mladenović; Signpost-Endlessly Close, Endlessly Far (Via Balkan) – National Theatre Sombor, 2007, d. K. Mladenović; Hamlet Hamlet Eurotrash (authored and directed together with Filip Vujošević), Theatre on Terazije, 2008; Perhaps We are Mickey Mouse – co-production National Theatre Belgrade, Sterijino pozorje, Bunker Ljubljana, 2009, d. Matjaž Pograjc.
Awards: "Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz" for dramatic creation, prize "Slobodan Selenić" for the best graduating play and Sterijino Pozorja Prize for orginal dramatic text 2007 (Perhaps We are Mickey Mouse).

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

To Appeal Or Not To Appeal
After a successful premiere in the Theatre in the Cellar, which took place a few years ago, the piece Orange Peel by Maja Pelević has returned to Atelier 212, but this time to the Big Stage and as a guest play by the Novi Sad Theatre. It will turn out that the result of a comparison, which imposes itself, is a tie. In the Novi Sad play, the director Kokan Mladenović found very inventive theatric solutions for the particular, post-dramatic manuscript by Maja Pelević, but in the Belgrade play the story about the fight of an “arche-woman,” the prototype of female gender, against the marring requirements of the contemporary consumer society seemed somehow more exciting.
The subject of the exposition of the woman to the permanent beauty and youth mania was centered and sharpened on stage by Kokan Mladenović by setting the plot into a sterile white space of an aesthetic surgery office. The director additionally played with that basic stage situation, the appointment with a “plastic surgeon”: instead of once, as in the text, it reoccurs in a uniform rhythm, every time with a different female protagonist and a personal data adapted to her, thus becoming a dramaturgical frame of the play. The basis for this stage solution was acquired by adding new varieties (Ms. Pregnant, Ms. Widow, Ms. Tearful, Ms. Barbie) with the characters of Ms Mature and Ms. Trouble, epitomised in the play by two sides of the female obsession with appearance. This attractive, imaginative and metaphoric stage device in the form of a female choir – they all wear identical blonde wigs – does not only appear in that “repeated” scene in the office, but also in many others, thereby acquiring different functions: the wittiest use of the choir is the one where it imitates receiving messages, turning off, and similar computer activities.
In contrast to the stage recreation of the female choir, the director has kept the author’s idea that all the male characters passing through the life of the heroine – from one-night stands, through surgeons to the husband football player – are reduced to a single one. Aron Balazs interprets that “arche-man” in a very dynamic and attractive persiflage, with quick and sharp changes of the most basic typological characteristics and spiritual states. A clever persiflage and distance is present in the play of the choir as well, mostly by Edith Farago and Livia Banka. In creating the stage play, Mladenović was given significant support by other artistic collaborators (…) As a final result, a modern and attractive packaging was acquired, with very dynamic and metaphorical stage language resembling the German theatre tradition.
An important element of this directorial poetics is also humour that “works” the audience during the play, affirming that, in spite of serious motifs, Orange Peel is primarily a comedy. The main objection, however, would consist of the fact that the genre balance that exists in the piece is in the Novi Sad Theatre play nevertheless disturbed, because the serious story about a struggle for female self-consciousness and authenticity is somehow pushed to the second plan. The problem does not lie in the play by Andrea Jankovič, who, in interpreting the character of a woman who recalls “orange peel” (for the male readership: this is cellulite) as a paradoxical expression of female authenticity, accomplishes a few emotionally powerful moments. It is, on the contrary, found in the dramaturgical and directorial blending of the central dramatic action, and that’s the problem of female individuation, into the general stage attraction with a female choir and multi-layered male in its center… Having this in mind, the brilliant final scene can seem as an attempt to compensate and score that serious, dramatic tone, which was lacking in the first and greatest part of the play. Solidarising with the heroine, the choir steps on to the proscenium, takes a belligerent, frontal stance toward the audience and performs a dramatic gesture of taking off the wigs as a symbolical expression of resistance toward the dictatorship of beauty and youth. But, the risk is great: after a courageous act, doubt and reversal follow, for woman, whispering, begin to reexamine themselves. The play has a meaningfully open end, because one female dilemma remains unsolved: to appeal or not to appeal, that is the question.
Ivan MEDENICA, NIN, Belgrade

... orange peel, the ‘inflammation of the subcutaneous connective tissue,” as medicine deines it, that nightmare of every woman, is the subject of Maja Pelević’s text, made up of advertising slogans, answers to health surveys, internet chats, commentaries and descriptions of procedures and means of increasing male potency, shocking advices, ordinary replicas and confessions of marital arguments, dialogical and monological fragments. This text in Hungarian, after a detail work by the translator and dramaturge Kata Gyarmati, has acquired a form of a series of everyday episodes, which is more suitable for stage performance than the initial text. Gyarmati has achived this by separating the confessional / monologic continuity of the original text into independent episodes that begin almost literally the same way, so beside Woman, set in the focus of the play, there is an opportunity to shape six additional female roles...
László GEROLD, szinhaz.hu

The play by Maja Maje Pelević talks about male-female relationships, and about the role of the media in life and love of the contemporary man. But at the same time that brain overtaken by cellulite is worse, and that we should perhaps free ourselves from the orange peel in our heads so we could find/keep ‘the right one.’ Even though this is a play about women, the main role belongs to a man – ‘the ideal one.’ Aron Balazs and eight actresses shine in this play that initiates reflection.
kulturpont.hu