The programme for this year’s Belgrade International Theatre Festival (BITEF) will include work by Milo Rau, Tiago Rodrigues and Tjaša Črnigoj.
The 58th edition of BITEF, which has the slogan “Beauty Will (Not) Save the World”, will take place from 25th September to 4th October and feature work by artists from Germany, France, Switzerland, Bolivia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia.
The programme, which was announced at a press conference on 2nd July, is curated by artistic director Nikita Milivojević, Tijana Grumić and Ksenija Đurović.
The 58th BITEF will open with the dance performance Mellowing, by choreographer Christos Papadopoulos for the Dance On Ensemble from Berlin – a troupe of dancers over the age of 40 – in a co-production with Onassis Stegi from Greece and the National Choreographic Centre Rillieux-la-Pape from France.
This will be followed by Tiago Rodrigues’ production of Hecuba, Not Hecuba for the renowned Comédie-Française, coming to Belgrade following its world premiere at Avignon, the first time the renowned French company has performed in the region.
The line-up also includes Palmasola – a Prison Village, project by Kristoffer Frick, produced by KLARA Theaterproduktionen from Basel, Switzerland, based on research into one of the most infamous prisons in the world, the so-called prison village Palmasola in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia. This prison was built in the late 1980s and still houses 6000 men and women, though only around 25% of the inmates have ever been officially convicted. The rest are being kept in a form of preventative detention. Frik and his team have been the only artists to gain access to Palmasola.
Sex Education II: Fight, by Slovenian director Tjaša Črnigoj, in co-production of the Mladinsko Theatre, Maska Ljubljana and City of Women, is part of a larger lecture-performance series exploring reproductive rights in Yugoslavia, and the pivotal role played by Vida Tomšić. The show won the Jury Award at the Maribor Theatre Festival. Young director Jan Krmelj also won a major prize at the Maribor Theatre Festival for his work on Rupture, produced by the Ljubljana City Theatre.
Sex Education II: Fight
The main programme also features this is my truth, tell me yours, another lecture-performance by Jasna Žmak, in production of the Centre for Drama Art Zagreb and organisations Via Negativa and City of Women from Ljubljana. Drawing on personal experience, the solo show explores themes of misogyny, homophobia, and working conditions in the performing arts.
There are two Serbian productions in this year’s main programme. We Are Going to Make Something About War, Gender and Liberty, It Will Be Titled: What Would Chelsea Say by authors and performers Irena Ristić and Đorđe Živadinović Grgur, in a production of the Hop.La! group from Belgrade. Inspired by the American whistle-blower Chelsea Manning, a trans woman and former intelligence officer of the United States Army, the performance piece will offer audience members the opportunity to be active participants in the piece.
The Future, by Belgrade Drama Theatre, in co-production with Ljubljana City Theatre, is directed by Slovenian director Žiga Divjak, whose previous piece Crises premiered at BITEF. Like Crises, it explores ecological themes.
Milo Rau, the controversial Swiss director now at the helm of the Wiener Festwochen, returns to BITEF with Antigone in the Amazon by NTGent in Belgium, a piece made in collaboration with MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores sem Terra), the mass social movement of agricultural workers with no land ownership in Brazil.
The festival will close with close with Cadela Força Trilogy: Chapter I – The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella, performance by Carolina Bianchi and her dance company Cara de Cavalo from Brazil. This much talked about and impactful piece explores femicide and sexual violence in a visceral way with Bianchi ingesting a date rape drug on stage. It has
For more information about the festival, visit: bitef.rs
Further reading: review of The Future
Further reading: review of this is my truth, tell me yours
Further reading: review of Sex Education II
Natasha Tripney is a writer, editor and critic based in London and Belgrade. She is the international editor for The Stage, the newspaper of the UK theatre industry. In 2011, she co-founded Exeunt, an online theatre magazine, which she edited until 2016. She is a contributor to the Guardian, Evening Standard, the BBC, Tortoise and Kosovo 2.0
