ON THE OTHER SIDE

Since 1997 Nataša Rajković and Bobo Jelčić have, due to their characteristic and recognizable scripts, created a number of highly commended plays (Observations, Slowdowns, An Uncertain Story, Heimspiel, A Walking, Talking, and Improvising Workshop...), staged in Croatia and Germany and performed in respectable theatres throughout the world (Vienna, Brussels, Quebec, Berlin, Duisburg, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich and others). On the Other Side is the second project they have completed with and for the Zagreb Theatre of the Young (ZKM), presently one of the most propulsive and successful theatres in Croatia.

Instead of following the hundred-year old verified model by which theatre imitates reality, Nataša Rajković and Bobo Jelčić create a theatre in which reality and imagination merge. Following the principle of chance and coincidence, the authors collect fragments of events most often not connected by plot, story, or action, thus constructing an open form which is yet to become a play (a drama). Such dispersive manuscripts allow the creation of a simultaneity of theatrical integration and disintegration, a process that has already been applied and practised in literature for a number of decades. The authors and the actors are not interested in the result but in the proceeding – they do not question the possibility of reproducing reality, but of freezing moments of everyday life, moments bearing traces of the actors’ personal stories as well as of those of the characters they are playing. Such acting eliminates all differences between the active and the passive, and annuls the imperative of following determined models or views. Theatre thus becomes elusive, extended, or disseminated into reality, and vice versa. There never exists a single perspective, a single reading, a single ideology, a single solution, subject, centre, or periphery… "since you’re always on the other side".
Dubravka Vrgoč

On the Other Side is a show dealing with the lives of four lonely people and their attempts at telling the audience their stories. Those stories are neither grand nor special, but to the protagonists they are immensely important. They are all they have. And, in spite of the fact that ultimately every life-story can fit into a single sentence, it is good to know that such a sentence can be voiced in a million ways.
It might not seem unusual that when people reach their forties they become flooded by the feeling that life does not make much sense. That could be called a crisis. We might say that when one’s thirty, it seems normal to wish for more and to want to be accepted the way one is. And to those who are 25, we might say they’re still very young and that one day they’ll see for themselves. And we might add that in the end everything will be fine. But it would be fair to conclude that everything need not be fine too. That one never knows. That nothing’s certain. And that in the end everything depends on luck. And that it’s easier for those who are lucky and that those who aren’t – need help. And that we should learn to see how different we are so we could become better people and stop shutting those that are miserable out of our lives because it’s easier for us to think that they’re personally responsible for their misery. But some are really not.
Nataša & Bobo

In an impertinent script that hits the face with truths thought about but never voiced, the tandem Rajković-Jelčić by collaging merges theatre with reality. In spite of the fact that the audiences are familiar with their method, they have once again created vivid and unconventional theatre in which they suppress the idea and importance of mimesis. Because, why imitate, when the actors on stage can become larger than reality, benign victims of a voyeurism they voluntarily consent to. Theatre is life and life is theatre. Copies do not exist. The merging of the two images enables us to perceive our own biographies, our experiences, and the biographies of those we love.
Helena Braut, Vjesnik