The programme for the 69th Sterijino pozorje, the theatre festival of Serbian national drama, will include work by Ivica Buljan and Selma Spahić.
The 69th Sterijino pozorje, a theatre festival of Serbian national drama, will take place from the 26th of May to the 3rd of June 2024 in Novi Sad. The festival selection is made up of seven performances in the main Competitive program and three in the International selection “Circles”.
This year’s festival marks the first mandate of the new selector, theatre critic and scholar Ana Tasić. As noted in the selector’s report, she saw around 70 performances which premiered between the 20th March 2023 and the 20th March 2024 in Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Hungary. The selection is assembled around the theme Post-(Apocalyptic) Stage Lights.
“The priority criterion in the selection of shows was their artistic quality, the values of dramatic texts, direction, acting, music, scenography and costumes, and everything else was subordinated to that – the geographical origin of the work, the general thematic determinants of the program, the production conditions of the performance, etc.” Ana Tasić notes.
Since Sterijino pozorje is a festival of national drama from 2017 – before was a festival of national theatre – the candidate performances for the main selection are those based on national texts, either classic, contemporary plays or authorial projects. The shows could have had a premiere either in Serbia or internationally.
What’s striking about the current selection is that all 3 performances that are based on contemporary plays are staged in theatres outside of Serbia. Those include A Rainy Day in Gurlitsch from the Prešeren Theatre in Kranj and Ptuj City Theatre (Slovenia), a show based on Milan Ramšak Marković’s play, directed by Sebastijan Horvat; Little Wars and Zara Cabins from the National Theatre of Republika Srpska in Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina), based on Vida Davidović’s play and directed by Ivica Buljan; and Healing Regime from the Croatian National Theatre in Varaždin, a staging of Tanja Šljivar’s play directed by Bojan Đorđev.
Ana Tasić notes that the repertoire of contemporary drama in Serbian theatres over the course of the year was “very modest, in quantitative but also qualitative terms”, which resulted in the selection of the 3 performances from the region.
Fathers and Forefathers – National Theatre Belgrade
One authorial project, Andraš Urban’s Once Upon a Time in Novi Sad from Novi Sad Theatre (Újvidéki Színház), also found its way into the selection. Tasić notes that the show “examines the significance, meanings and conventions of the performing arts” in a self-ironic style.
Among other shows is the staging of Albina Podgradska’s 19th-century play Poor Mileva from Bosnia in Our Civilisation in the Year 1878 that’s saved from obscurity by Andjelka Nikolić who directed it at the National Theatre in Subotica in co-production with the Subotica Children’s Theatre and the Rural Cultural Center Markovac.
Kokan Mladenović’s direction of Milena Marković’s Boat for Dolls at the Bitola National Theatre in North Macedonia also found its way into the selection, as well as the dramatization of Slobodan Selenić’s novel Fathers and Forefathers which is staged at the National Theatre in Belgrade (dramatization: Kata Gyarmati, direction: Veljko Mićunović).
The International non-competitive selection “Circles” has in recent years focused on performances from the region which showcase the national text from their home-countries. The shows that made into this year’s “Circles” selection are My Sad Monsters from the City Drama Theatre Gavela from Zagreb, Croatia (text: Mate Matišić, direction: Vito Taufer); Red Water from the Croatian National Theatre in Split (dramatization of Jurica Pavičić’s novel: Ivor Martinić, direction: Ivica Buljan); and Purple from the Chamber Theatre 55 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, an authorial project by Selma Spahić.
Ana Tasić noted that the overarching topic of Post-(Apocalyptic) Stage Lights refers to many performances in both selections and their protagonists who are searching “for fragments of shattered identities in a (post)apocalyptic time, after the nightmare or in the nightmare we are still living locally and globally, after recovering from the ex-Yugoslav wars, transitions, the pandemic.”
For more information, visit: pozorje.org.rs
Further reading: Andjelka Nikolić on saving Poor Mileva from obscurity
Further reading: interview with Selma Spahić: “Resistance in the arts is necessary”
Borisav Matić is a critic and dramaturg from Serbia. He is the Regional Managing Editor at The Theatre Times. He regularly writes about theatre for a range of publications and media.
He’s a member of the feminist collective Rebel Readers with whom he co-edits Bookvica, their platform for literary criticism, and produces literary shows and podcasts. He occasionally works as a dramaturg or a scriptwriter for theatre, TV, radio and other media. He's the administrator of IDEA - the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association.
