On the fifteenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and of everything it symbolised, we have decided to dedicate the whole International Small Scene Theatre Festival to Eastern European theatre. We have placed emphasis on the shows of directors belonging to the younger and middle-aged generation of people who have built their original and influent theatre poetics precisely during this period of transition. Thus, among them are the "poet of Bulgarian spirit", Bojko Bogdanov, the new star of Hungarian theatre - Bela Pinter, two renowned Slovenian directors - Samo M. Strelec and Tomi Janežič, and one who is "just making it" - Rene Maurin, as well as the Croatian directors Rene Medvešek and Saša Anočić - both of them actors by vocation yet whose plays rate as inspiring "products" of Croatian theatre at the turn of the century. The distinguished Serbian director Dejan Mijač arrives with a new play by Biljana Srbljanović, the most celebrated Eastern European playwright in the West, and, as some kind of by-pass between epochs, the Festival will honour the presence of one of the greatest living world directors, Jurij Ljubimov. All the shows these people have directed emerge from a variety of textual references, starting from the drama classics of the twentieth century (Wilder's "Our Town", Weiss's "Marat-Sade", Sartre's "No Exit"), through recently written plays ("America" by Biljana Srbljanović, "The Baltimore Waltz" by Paula Vogel, and Silver's "Fat Men in Skirts") to "factures" partially or completely composed during rehearsals ("Only God Knows", "Gledaloto", "The Bakony Hospital"), in the process of which the actors, together with the directors, have become the "co-authors" of the script. Most of those shows, however, deal with similar problems: with various types of aggression and manipulation, questionable interpersonal relationships within closed and isolated micro-worlds, with conflicts between two individuals and/or between the individual and historic and social processes that slowly yet relentlessly destroy one's identity.

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Hrvoje Ivanković