SEEstage’s favourite theatre shows of 2023

I was thinking about Negotiating Peace written by Jeton Neziraj and directed by Blerta Neziraj, for days afterwards. I am not talking only from a local perspective, the depth, complexity, and variety of ideas this drama explored stretch to the global, addressing not only the torments inflicted on us by politicians but those of the whole world. Inspired by  a memoir about the creation of the Dayton Agreement and Ismail Kadare’s book The General of the Dead Army, its themes are both resonant and relevant, and would be of interest to a wide group of people, beyond the Balkan context. It combines the absurd and the comic with the vulgar truth; it’s more than a story about nations, it’s a story about people.

Desire to Make a Solid History Will End Up in Failure (Station Service for Contemporary Dance)

Chosen by Borisav Matić

My personal 2023 was a year of diverse theatrical experiences. The best shows I saw at the beginning of the year were the ones I hadn’t managed to see in 2022, Yankee Rose and Lullaby for Aleksija Rajčić being among them. There were also many noteworthy shows in this year’s production, like Before We Begin and Major and Helena on the queer side of the scene and The Gospel According to F.M. Dostoyevsky with its simultaneously epic and minimalistic poetics.

However, the show that engaged and shook me the most both on the intellectual and emotional levels was Igor Koruga’s authorial project Desire To Make a Solid History Will End Up in Failure, a production by Station Service for Contemporary Dance from Belgrade. The show, which draws its material from the careers of its six older-generation dancers and pioneers of the independent scene of Serbia, is the best example of how dance is present everywhere – at theatres, in the streets, at anti-war protests, queer venues, showbiz programs, etc. And yet, it is the most ephemeral of arts, both because of its nature and systemic marginalization within the cultural field. The concepts of “history” and “independent dance scene” put together can almost feel like an oxymoron. But the show’s team uses this as an advantage, creating an oral, performative, non-formal subjective history of the last four decades of dance. Their version of history – although based on real, sometimes painful human experiences – is far from concrete, existing at this moment but might disappear in the next. Is that the beauty or constriction of dance? You can choose for yourself.

Created by Jeton and Blerta Neziraj for Qendra Multimedia in collaboration with Tirana’s Experimental Theatre, this new play which premiered this spring in Tirana took racism against Roma as its theme. In the play’s title Jeton Neziraj chooses a racist term like Gadjo to describe the young Europeans. The positioning is clear: we see through the eyes of the Roma. This perspective is one of the play’s most powerful elements. It clearly highlights the depth of the racism to us. I like it when a play is inspired by a true event, as is the case here, and uses those stories to highlight issues that we see in our society.

In the show, a Roma girl, portrayed brilliantly by Edona Reshitaj, gets kicked out of Belgium and sent back to Kosovo. She is eager to explore her new surroundings and views events that occur to her with naive optimism, but she is demonized in the media as a child thief, which results in her being physically assaulted. Her supposed guilt is based solely on prejudice blended with fantasy. The result is a well constructed show with striking visual effects and strong use music impressively directed by Blerta Neziraj.

Read our review of Gadjo (the young europeans)

Still Alice (SNG Drama Ljubljana)

Chosen by Živa Kadunc

Progress is what most defines our society. Progress is what we think we should inevitably and surely look forward to and prioritise. We constantly seek out innovation, we search out the things that would drive us forward; stories we once heard are no longer enough for us, once brilliant concepts soon become boring, differential forms or constructs are just a new mask for things already known and felt.

Based on a novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova, adapted by Christine Mary Dunford, and directed  by Matjaž Zupančič, Still Alice is a simple and not in the slightest bit innovative staging of a story about a neuro-linguist, Alice, who is suffering from dementia. And although this could have been the same old story told once more, it hits us in a place that we still cannot control – it brings us into emotional terrain, a greatly detailed and naturalistically presented world of pain, pride, love and loss, with acting so organic, and directing and dramaturgy so precise that we can truly believe that this story is real.

Read our review of Still Alice

The Tin Drum (Yugoslav Drama Theatre)

Chosen by Ana Ogrizović

My favourite show of 2023 was The Yugoslav Drama Theatre production of The Tin Drum, directed and adapted by Vasil Hristov. This intrugiung performance places Günter Grass’ well known story about coming of age in traumatic times in a metatheatrical setting (dramaturgy by Vesna Radovanović). The actors portray several different characters (including themselves as actors throughout the creative process) with sublime precision, never losing their unique points of view. Sharp social commentary and political criticism, quite relevant to contemporary world events, is presented through the un-censorable protagonist Oskar (Miodrag Dragičević). The minimalistic setting subtly but steadily assists the story to a climax in the end,
when the living and the dead sit in chairs and get lifted above the ground, creating a dance macabre-ish carousel. Devastating with a great sense of humour, this performance evoked many questions and left me speechless as I exited the theatre.

Illuminating the case of a series of murders by poisoning in the Ćuprija district in the seventies of the 19th century

Chosen by Andrej Čanji

I am particularly affected when something that deviates from convention goes unnoticed and is ignored, or when something is viewed with elitist suspicion. Documentary theatre, forum theatre and immersive theatre remain rarities on Serbian stages. Even when they are performed not in theatre halls but in ordinary spaces, when there are no large and expensive sets and costumes, just seven actresses in ordinary black dresses performing in the middle of the audience that consists of several rows of chairs arranged in concentric circles, it is guaranteed that festivals and journalists will ignore something that is at once modest and unusual.

It is one such performance that impressed me the most this year. And that’s not just because of my sensitivity to unnoticed phenomena, but also because it really is a great artistic achievement. I’ve seen the play three times, each time with a different group of friends, but with the same mutual enthusiasm.

In 1875, eighteen women are on trial at the district court in Ćuprija for murder by poisoning. The victims were mostly the husbands of the accused, all the crimes were committed in the town of Svilajnac and the nearby villages of Markovac and Sedlare, and the quack doctor Kadivka was at the centre of the criminal network. Drawing on this true story, which was recorded in court records and history books, as well as on the laws and folklore of the time described in sociological and ethnographic studies, a theatre play was created with the long title of Rasvetljavanje slučaja serije ubistava trovananjem u ćuprijskom okrugu sedasmdesetih godina 19.veka

Although two local theatres from Serbia, a village cultural centre and an independent art group from Belgrade are behind the play, Anđelka Nikolić stages it in an extremely visually modest but artistically very rich way. The actresses sometimes immerse themselves in the incredible story, sometimes they distance themselves critically from it. The case of each of the eighteen women is re-enacted in detail. The roles of judge and witness are assigned to the audience, who are invited to participate and comment on the events and sing along with the convicts. The patriarchal legal framework in 19th-century Serbia is described in detail, the sociological origins of folklore are presented and compared with the modern value system.

This educational journey through time, a rollercoaster of emotions performed by an extremely committed female ensemble, is for me a hidden gem of the 2023 theatre year in Serbia.