Pozoriste Bora Stankovic Vranje

srpski/english

30. BORA'S THEATRE DAYS
21.10 - 26.10.2010

* * * * * * * * * *

The Existence of Bora’s Theatre Days - Nebojsha Cvetkovic

And there was the Word - Ivan Medenica

The accompanying programme - Ksenija Radulovic

* * * * * * * * * *

Nebojsha Cvetkovic

The Existence of Bora’s Theatre Days

Self-knowledge should be acquired in a way extremely common to people who are more or less close to us disregarding their religion, race, nationality or social rank. Self-knowledge is a topic of universal interest and people we call classics now wrote about it many years ago.
Undoubtedly, Bora Stankovic is one of them. Even nowadays his works represent a great challenge for literary theoreticians, literary critics, dramaturgs, theatrologists, directors and actors. Bora’s birthplace, Vranje, organizes for the thirtieth time theatre Festival in his honour, and precisely owing to “Bora’s Theatre Days”, Vranje has established an important position in Serbian culture.

A radical change in developing Festival repertoire was made last year, when a selection committee was appointed. The selection committee is made up of the most important people of Serbian theatre: Ksenija Radulovic and Ivan Medenica, who are both theatrologists, and Zeljko Hubac, a dramaturg. With the motto “A Feminine Matter”, besides carefully chosen plays, the accompanying programme was skillfully prepared, and, thus, according to some local media , and before all according to the audience, the Festival was proclaimed the cultural event of the year.
This year both the Theatre “Bora Stankovic” and the city of Vranje celebrate a double jubilee: the thirtieth anniversary of the Festival “Bora’s Theatre Days” and the hundredth anniversary of publishing the novel “ Impure Blood“ written by Bora Stankovic.

This jubilee Festival provides an opportunity to see not only six plays of outstanding quality on the stage of Vranje theatre but also an interesting accompanying programme that will, I am absolutely certain, attract a large number of theatrical art admirers. Undoubtedly, fot both the city of Vranje and for Serbian culture in general, the Festival “Bora’s Theatre Days“ is becoming , to express myself symbolically, the “requisite“ without which the existence of theatre would be meaningless. The importance of the Festival can be observed and interpreted from different aspects: political, economic, sociological, cultural, aesthetic........

The theatre “Bora Stankovic“ in Vranje is the foundation and basis of the city’s culture , while the city’s “pillars“ are the Ministry of Culture, local government, economic and social subjects that provide considerable financial resources in order to make it possible for the Festival to continue to be the centre of culture in the birthplace of Bora Stankovic . The burden of all our distress visible on Stankovic’s wrinkled face has left a permanent trace in contemporary prose.Vranje Theatre, that is proud of its name “Bora Stankovic“, reminds us of the most touching detail from Stankovic’s biography, when he was “begging“ in order to be able to publish a book – so, it points out chronic financial problems and opens the door to those who are willing and able to invest in theatre, and, thus, increase the importance of “Bora’s Theatre Days“.

And concerning self-knowledge itself, it is useful to take a long hard look at ourselves, our souls and intellect. Of course, that can be even hard, very hard........
And there was a word.

Nebojsha Cvetkovic

Nebojša Cvetković

to the top

And there was the Word

The motto of the jubilee thirtieth Bora’s Theater Days – “And there was a word“ – can be misleading. The concept of the festival does not imply religous issues, as this recognizable slogan of the Christian world might suggest. What we are interested in concerning this archaic statement is not its religious meaning but the archaic part of the statement: which indicates the fact that the original cause of things is in words. Speaking in terms of theatre, it means that words, speaking, telling and narrating represent the very essence of the art of theatre.

Even though at first sight this assertion seems intelligible enough, it is not indisputable , particularly not in the theatre of the second half of 20th century. In collusion with modern philosophy, this theatre wanted do separate from “logocentrism“ of our civilisation and, therefore, it has been looking for its roots, from Arto up to now, in movements, rhytm, dance, music , rituals: this tendency gave birth to very important works in the last 50-60 years.However, it does not mean that ,at the same time, there was not a literary theatre ,based on great literature, that also produced significant pieces of work .

Literary theatre is often said to be equivalent to drama theatre: in putting on new plays or re-reading of drama classics. Nevertheless, nowadays this equalizing is not sustainable: after the period of physical expression and multimedia dominance (the use of videos and other modern media in theatre), the interest in “pure text“ revives again, but the text is not necessarily dramatic and, very often, it is not prose dramatisation either. Instead of putting it in the form of drama, great literaturee in modern theatre readily tries out new, original, “non-theatrical“ ways: narrative forms are more frequent, static saying of texts, monologues...

The return to the text itself, in fact, does not necessarily mean the return to drama. Some , let us say, “retro avant-garde“ importance can be noticed in this tendency. The return to words, speech, story telling and listening is, at the same time, a kind of theatre resistance to current frenzy of media society that is turned towards speed, attraction and visual effect, which brings about outstanding superficiality of perception..... Just to paraphrase the very beginning of the play Metamorphoses, which is in festival selection this year: “people used to have time to listen to stories.“

We have gone too far for our puposes. In Serbian theatre these new forms of literature try-out on stage are not so spread, thus, the programme of 30th Bora’s Theatre Days contains more or less classic prose dramatisations. Accordingly, none of the plays was done according to dramatic texts but according to other literary works: an epic (a long narrative poem) in 15 books (Ovid Metamorphoses, directed by Aleksandar Popovski, Yugoslav Drama Theatre , Belgrade), a novella (Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, directed by Ana Djordjevic, Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Belgrade) a collection of short stories (Bora Stankovic, Old Days, directed by Nebojsha Dugalic, Theatre “Bora Stankovic“ , Vranje) and two novels (written by Mesha Selimovic: Death and the Dervish, directed by Egon Savin, National Theatre Belgrade and The Fortress, directed by Nebojsha Bradic, National Theatre Krusevac). Moreover, stage reading of the dramatised novel Impure Blood (Necista Krv) written by Bora Stankovic, directed by Ana Djordjevic and performed by actors from Vranje – a stage form that is new for the festival Bora’s Theatre Days - completes, in my opinion, a representative sample of theatrical performances done according to the greatest works of both Serbian literature and “non-dramatic“ world literature .

Similarly to the last year festival, this year’s concept of Bora’s Days originated from the works of Bora Stankovic himself. Although he is the author of the most popular drama performed in Serbian theatre, Koshtana , in the first place, Bora Stankovic was a great prose writer – you will let me express this maybe completely subjective opinion. Here I specifically refer to his greatest work , and at the same time the most important one in Serbian prose writing, Impure Blood . This novel has received its acknowledgement not only in literature but also in other arts: theatre, film ballet..... This year there is an additional motive to devote ourselves, during Bora’s Days Festival, to his work , particularly to this novel: in additon to celebrating festival jubilee named after this great writer (30th festival) , we also celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the publishing of Impure Blood. Besides main festival programme, stage reading of the dramatised novel Impure Blood (that can later be transformed into a new theatrical performance in Theatre “Bora Stankovic“), the hundredth anniversary will be marked in the accompanying programme, too , with the exhibition dedicated to the novel and lectures given by Tihomir Brajevic, a professor at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade and a distinguished literary critic.

BDSLIKA

Ivan Medenica

Multiple conceptual networking and intertwining of 30th Bora’s Theatre Days programme , which sustains standards defined last year , is also present in the accompanying programme. In addition to the above mentioned exhibition and lectures, the accompanying programme includes the exhibition of Serbian Theatrical Art Museum from Belgrade dedicated to stage performances of Mesha Selimovic’s prose, video projections of important plays from the past done according to “non-dramatic“ literature (also out of the collection of Serbian Theatrical Art Museum). At first sight it is evident that another jubilee of Serbian literature is being celebrated in both the main and accompanying programme of 30th Bora’s Theatre Days: the hundredth anniversary of Mesha Selimovich’s birth. (two plays and an exhibition).

I hope this short text justifies the decision made by a programme commission of Bora’s Days that 30th Bora’s festival would be conceptually dedicated to the deep, ancient and essential relationship between words and stage, literature and theatre, and all in honour of great writers, above all Borisav Stankovic and Mesha Selimovic. If that is so, then it is high time we kept silent and surrendered ourselves to listening to a good theatre. Do not worry, there will be a lot of things to see.

Ivan Medenica

to the top

This year the accompanying programme of Bora’s Days consists of video presentation of plays from our theatrical past that are thematically connected to the festival selection. All the selected plays were prepared on the basis of domestic prose works and, at the same time, they reflect a variety of ways or modes in which prose can be transformed into a theatrical play. (not only different thematic frameworks but also aesthetic methods). Thus, a short story Restless Year (Nemirna godina) by Ivo Andric inspired Vida Ognjenovic to write the original dramatic text for A Girl with Indigo Hair (Devojka Modre Kose) (directed by Vida Ognjenovic, performed by Yugoslav Drama Theatre)while Valjevo Hospital (Valjevska Bolnica) appeared as the dramatisation of the last volume of the novel Time Of Death (Vreme Smrti) written by Dobrica Cosic, where the brutal consequences of war are the central theme.( dramatisation by Borislav Mihajlovic Mihiz, directed by Dejan Mijac, performed by Yugoslav Drama Theatre) ;
A classic novel of modern Serbian literature Fathers and Forefathers (Ocevi i Oci) written by Slobodan Selenic was the starting point for the play with the same title , dramatised by Nenad Prokic (directed by Zoran Ratkovic, Atelje 212) ,while, on the other hand, Wounded Eagle (Ranjeni Orao) written by Mir Jam represents an interesting example of transforming the so-called trivial literature into a successful stage/scene form (dramatisation by B.M. Mihiz, directed by Soja Jovanovic, performed by Atelje 212).

Ksenija Radulovic

to the top