The celector's voice This year, let us watch, equally intrigued, how the echo
from the deep well of classic heritage reaches us
and our lives and what it has to tell us.
Comparisons can be useful in contemplating the theatre of today, especially
when one searches for answers to questions such as:
"What is contemporary theatre and which are the ways to reach it?"
At the same time, by re-examining that which is old and supposedly universally known in a completely new manner, we can learn about the past just as much as about the present.
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Dell'Arte Company, Blue Lake, Ca, SAD
John Milton
Izgubljeni raj
PARADISE LOST: The Clone of God
Directed and Designed by: Giulio Cesare Perrone
The Dell'Arte Company is one of the longest running actor-managed resident ensemlbles in the U.S.
They moved through the space with a fluid combination of dance and physical theatre technique, subtly changing the visual images like pieces turning in a kaleidoscope...
The "Paradise" project is a visually rich, multi-media adaptation of one of the most intriguing stories of humankind,
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Akvarij
AQUARIUM,
an aggressive nightmare with no acts nor end Radovan Ivšić
Directed by: Mario Kovač.
Criticism of the absurdity and obscurity of totalitarian regimes and of life resembling captivity under centralised state governments, would be the basic concept of the play Aquarium written by Radovan Ivšić in 1956...
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Katona Joszef Szinhaz
Budapest, Hungary
Euripid: Bakhe / The Bacchae
Director: Sándor Zsótér
Zsótér's The Bacchae is played on an almost bare stage, without any complicated machinery.
There is a plain oval space with six actors dressed mostly in modern costumes, and there is a cleverly edited text. The Bacchae is a bravura of unexpected costumes ( or the lick of them) and of props that gain new life and function by each use of them. In this production, a master totally in charge of his profession proves that he easily utilises, destroys and rebuilds the rules of theatre. Andor Deutsch. Zsöllye
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Miroslav Krleža:
Adam i Eva
Adam and Eve
Directed by: Franka Perković
Adam and Eve are placed into two connotatively different spaces; the first is surrounded by glass, while the second opens into the spaciousness of a (deserted) factory. The glass cube represents the shell of the human psyche exposed to evaluation and judgment as well as to public condemnation...
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Janko Polić Kamov
Tragedija mozgova
The Tragedy of Minds
Directed and adapted by: Dora Ruždjak Podolski
At the point where Krleža brings his characters to the edge of absurdity, Kamov's Tragedy of Minds begins. ... Defiance of set values and modes of life guided by the forces of juvenile rebellion fails; it is a priori doomed because it is led by the instinct of death. ...
These performances will be remembered for their actors' great commitment and for the director's authentic handwriting, but perhaps above all for their unpretentiousness and dedicated idea of revealing and then exposing their modernistic interlocutors - Kamov and Krleža - to criticism. Ivana Slunjski in "Zarez"
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Studium Teatralne, Warsaw, Poland
Adam Mickiewicz
Ponoć
Midnight
adapted from the novel Dziady Forefather's Eve
Adapted and Directed by: Piotr Borowski
The Studium Teatralne is the most interesting vanguard theatre group in Warsaw.
The spectacle -"Ponoć" ("Midnight") is based on Adam Mickiewicz' s drama "Dziady".
Północ doesn't attempt at giving a literal interpretation of the drama. We see it as a dream Mickiewicz has on his deathbed.
"Dziady" as a play has a long and important tradition in Poland, in spite of the fact that it doesn't mean much to contemporary twenty-year olds. In "Dziady" they find what is relevant to their lives, a story about themselves, about their entering adulthood, about experimenting with love, religion and power.
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Markus Zohner Theater Compagnie,
Lugano, Switzerland
Shakespeare/ Barbuiani/Zohner
HA!HAmlet
Adapted by: Markus Zohner, Patrizia Barbuiani
Dramaturgest: William Spettigue
Consequently, the group reduces theatre to its basics, abandons extras, and concentrates with all its being on every quiver of the human soul living between the comic and the tragic.
it is a tragedy about the search for answers to eternal questions of humanity that, even though they offer no new truths, still have much to say:
The result is always different, yet on all occasions breathtaking. It is genuine theater in its purest of forms.
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HKD Teatar Rijeka
Heiner Müller
Quartett
Directed by:Samo M. Strelec
Quartet is based on Laclos' novel Dangerous Liaisons. Müller took the plot and presented it through the performance of only two characters - the marquise Merteuil and her lover Valmont, that is, through their intellectual and sexual competitivecombat.
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Slovensko mladinsko gledališče Ljubljana, Slovenia
Anton Pavlovič Čehov
Tri sestre
The three sisters
Directed by: Tomi Janežič
The almost scientifically thorough and profoundly conceived approach of the director Tomi Janežić, as well as the sophisticated, masterly precise acting of the whole ensemble, have resulted in a collective achievement of genuine and almost ritual harmony. This performance should be viewed and evaluated as a theatrical rarity.
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Gradsko dramsko kazalište
Gavella, Zagreb
Jean Genet
Sluškinje
The Maids
Directed by:Damir Zlatar Frey
perfectly supplemented Genet's theatrical idea which nullify all defined boundaries between master and servant, man and woman, and generally speaking, between any existing dualism. This is a show that, due to exemplary and sublime acting, channels suppressed humiliation towards a critical explosion of movement and ideas; it is a blow to social hypocrisy that every admirer of the great Human Stage will easily recognise.
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Montenegrin National Theatre, Podgorica
Maksim Gorki
Malograđani
PHILISTINES
Directed by: Paolo Magelli
The three-hour presentation of an intriguing text has been directed absolutely inventively. The acting is first-class, and visually, this is one of the most attractive and impressive performances... Paolo Magelli has undoubtedly justified his exceptionally high reputation as director . Magelli has succeeded in merging considerably different schools of acting into a unique milieu, thus materialising his idea of interpretative precision.
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Croatian Cultural Centre Sušak
TeatroImmagine Venezia, Italia
Carlo Gozzi
Zaljubljen u tri naranče
/L'AMORE DELLE TRE MELARANCE
THE LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES
Adapted and directed by Pino Costalunga
ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI CULTURA DI ZAGABRIA
A group of actors of various provenance, who gather around common projects with the aim to revitalise and revaluate the commedia dell'arte - a genre deeply rooted in Italian and, above all, Venetian culture. By permanently exploring the foundations of commedia, those of drama, pantomime and the use of masks, through a variety of methods of improvisation and interpretation, they approach their goal.
The characters and the plot are typical of the commedia dell'arte: an unhappy prince (obsessed by demons), a wicked witch, a "distinguished and respected minister" (yet slightly shallow-brained), and a servile but ingenious servant - all of them acting in the manner of the commedia; they leap and run across the stage, they talk in a falsetto, all their gestures are overacted, all their emotions maximally simplified. Yet, they use very modern language, they wink at the audience when alluding to contemporary events ... proving, thus, that the eighteenth-century philistine laughs at the same things that amuse the contemporary employee...
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Teatar & TD Zagreb;
in coproduction /Theater &TD, Zagreb, The Split Summer Theatre Festival & The Art Workshop Lazareti,Dubrovnik - joint production BAD co
Diderotov nećak ili krv nije voda
DIDEROT'S NEPHEW or Blood is Thicker than Water
Director: Goran Sergej Pristaš
....the whole performance consists of material introduced by the performers themselves in relation to the themes that caught our attention.... Each performer enacts only two or three different themes, but the continuous shift of focus and re-contextualisation create an effect of multitude.
.....very contemporary dialogue between the movements of the performers and the verbal comments accompanied by an aggressive use of microphones by the two philosophers - Plato and Diderot.
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Croatian National Theatre
Split
Seneca: Edip
Seneca: OEDIPUS
Directed by: Ivica Buljan
....the cast wholeheartedly embraces the given concept, and thus, through cultivated speech, succeeds in decomposing the meaning of complex verbal constructions.................................................................................
Pozorište Atelje 212 Belgrade, Serbia
Miroslav Krleža
Leda
Directed by: Dejan Mijač
.......a precious show, not only in relation to Krleža's dramatic output. It is a show created with a deep moral and artistic purpose, as an imperative of our times. If anyone in this show, besides the director, deserves to be qualified as excessive - in the most positive sense of the word, it is the actor Svetozar Cvetković...
