Sometimes a poster beckons a viewer in mysterious ways. Mirko Ilic‘s eight seasons designing posters for JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade, Serbia, are very special because they enable the designer to interpret the material in any way that makes sense. Each season is rendered in a generally different but uniform manner. In this sense, it is the perfect job for a conceptual artist who likes to move to the beat of his own tin drum (which is one of the posters he’s done). For these posters, anything goes as long as they pique the theater-goer’s interest.
Man’s Tear is a collage piece based on the motifs from four one-act plays – A Joke, A Marriage Proposal, The Bear and Tatiana Repina – and a short story On the Road by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. The characters in this stage play have suffered in love, they are lost in time and trapped in a tavern during an apocalyptic storm. Being thus forced to spend time together encourages conflict and somber reminiscences and the text is infused with the author’s ironic tone. The common denominator in the selected pieces is the crumbling of the male characters which ends in tears that, even today, are seen as a sign of inappropriate weakness in men who end up being stigmatized and forced to maintain a stiff upper lip. Chekhov described these pieces as vaudevilles even though he was very much aware of the emotional and existential depths lurking in each one of them. The elements of comedy are, on the one hand, a natural consequence of the mundane and ordinary, but are also progressive and remain a modern commentary on the part of Chekhov on the banality and short-sightedness of male chauvinism and the patriarchy as a social order. The storm itself is a metaphor for the chaos, pandemonium, and wars of our modern times and it represents everything that will eventually and inevitably come to the surface if tears are held back and pride and shame are the order of the day, all to avoid a show of “weakness” in men.Einstein’s Dreams (left) by Alan Lightman fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist who is troubled by dreams as he works on his theory of relativity in 1905, and each dream involves a conception of time. Mercy Street (right) by Neil LaBute is a 2002 play that was among the first major theatrical responses to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Set on September 12, it concerns Ben, a man who worked at the World Trade Center but was away from the office during the attack, with his mistress, Abby, who is also his boss. Expecting his family to believe that he was killed in the towers’ collapse, Ben contemplates using the tragedy to run away and start a new life with his loverThe King of Betajnova (left) is a social-critical drama on the complete demise of ethics and justice. The central figure of the play is the factory owner, tycoon, and candidate for MP, Jozef Kantor: a social climbing, egocentric manipulative, violent, power-thirsty materialist… Bribery, dirty lobbying and intrigues are the essential tools for attaining his goal.
A Month in the Country (right) by Russian writer Ivan S. Turgenev chronicles the comic and erotic turmoil that befalls an otherwise quiet country estate when a handsome young tutor arrives to teach Natalya Petrovna’s young son. Soon, Natalya is interested in a tutelage of another kind, much to the consternation of her husband and her long-suffering friend, Rakitin, who is secretly smitten with her. A beautifully nuanced meditation on the nature of unrequited love. Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? is a play based on Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michael Fengler’s film of the same name. The play depicts the life of middle-class draftsman Herr Raab, who, in an unpredictable violent spell, murders his neighbor, wife, and son before killing himself.The Glass Neck (Vrat od stakla) (left), a new play by Biljana Srbljanović. The play is about relationships between women in a multi-generational family who are forced to abandon their apartment. Uncle Vanya (right), a play by Anton Chekhov. What happens in Uncle Vanya isn’t as important as what doesn’t happen. The dominant mood is of a frustration kind that builds up on a wasted life. I decided that the visual theme of this theater’s season is going to be profiled.Nathan the Wise (left) is a play set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade; it describes how the wise Jewish merchant Nathan, the enlightened sultan Saladin, and the leader of the Templars, bridge the gaps between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The major themes of the play are friendship, tolerance, relativism of God, a rejection of miracles, and a need for communication. Lorenzaccio (right) is about Italian politician, writer and dramatist Lorenzino de’ Medici (1514 – 1548). Lorenzino lured his cousin, the Duke Alexandro of Florence, into his apartment with the promise of a night of passion then assassinated him with a dagger. Lorenzino acted for political reasons with the goal of freeing Florence from a man that many considered to be a tyrant. After the assassination, he fled Florence, and a few years later two hired killers caught up with him and murdered him in Venice. Overall, it’s like a Renaissance Game of Thrones.La Celestina is considered to be one of the greatest works of all Spanish literature and is regarded as the beginning of the renaissance in Spanish literature. While chasing his falcon through the fields, a rich young bachelor, Calisto, enters a garden where he meets Melibea, the daughter of the house, and is immediately taken with her. Unable to see her again privately, he broods until his servant Sempronio suggests using the old procuress Celestina. She is the owner of a brothel…When the weary Calisto returns home at dawn to sleep, his two servants go round to Celestina’s house to get their share of the gold. She tries to cheat them, and in a rage they kill her. In an attempt to escape, Sempronio and Pármeno are caught and are beheaded later in the town square…Calisto returns to the garden for another night with Melibea; while hastily leaving because of a ruckus he heard in the street, he falls from the ladder used to scale the high garden wall and is killed. After confessing to her father the recent events of her love affair, Melibea jumps from the tower of the house and dies too. Much Ado About Nothing (left) by William Shakespeare. There’s a lot to do but not much to say that the poster does not.
Screw the one who started it (right) by Dejan Dukovski. “In some ways, it was a reaction to the view of war from a close range. The outrage of this view is also felt in the text. Outraged views of fallen angels,” says Dukovski. “I did not want to write about war or comment on politics and military strategies of the time, the text is an homage to mythical theatrical situations about love and war, sex and violence. All scenes are replicas of already existing scenes of world dramaturgy. I guessed some things … Like for example, the young character of Shakespeare’s Hamlet could have met in the town of Wittenberg, the old and knowledgeable but decadent Marlowe’s Faust. Learned to doubt..” The Traveling Troupe takes place during World War II, a traveling theatre company arrives in the occupied Serbian town of Užice. In the square where the company was supposed to perform, the bodies of murdered people are being displayed, and that is where the story starts.Pucina (Offing) (left) was written in 1902 by Branislav Nušić, a Serbian playwright, satirist, essayist, and novelist. In the play, Jovanka, the wife of the official Vladimir Nedeljković, becomes the mistress of a minister in the desire to create a career for her husband and thus, to ensure a high civic reputation for her family. Thanks to that, Vladimir progresses and becomes a senior official, but he soon learns that his wife is not faithful to him, just as he learns and is aware of the fact that he progressed thanks to his wife’s love affair.
Kaspar (right) is Peter Handke’s first full-length drama, hailed in Europe as “the play of the decade” and compared in importance to Waiting for Godot. Kaspar is the story of an autistic adolescent who finds himself at a complete existential loss on the stage, with but a single sentence to call his own. Drilled by prompters who use terrifyingly funny logical and alogical language sequences, Kaspar learns to speak “normally” and eventually becomes creative–“doing his own thing” with words; for this, he is destroyed. Belgrade Trilogy (left), a dark comedy set in Sydney, Los Angeles, and Prague on New Year’s Eve, the play shows snapshots from the everyday life of young people who fled abroad to escape the Balkan war and the choices they face as they attempt to build a new life for themselves as exiles. For the image on the poster, I use a major symbol of Belgrade, the Pobednik (The Victor) monument by Ivan Meštrović. The image is positioned upside down because that is how it is seen from the other side of the globe, and it is printed in three not perfectly aligned colors.
In Moj Muž (My Husband) (right), two actresses play a variety of different roles, analyzing female relationships with men, husbands, marriage, and sexuality.The Vast Domain (Das Weite Land) is a play by the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler, which focuses on 1890s Viennese society, demonstrating the effects of upper-class codes of behavior on human relationships. It is a play that combines detailed psychology with a portrait of a society … What the play shows us are couples indulging in a polite sexual excuse behind which lurks panic, death, and an insane preoccupation with honor … What is fascinating is that the action is conducted against a background of tennis parties, trips to the Dolomites, charades-like affairs and summerhouse banter against Art Deco panels. Everything suggests a world of golden leisure and civilized deceit. But what Schnitzler shows us is the corrosive effect of habitual lying on this Smiles of a Summer Night atmosphere and the destructive impact of the hero’s contaminated sense of honor. I think it’s a marvelous play because it pinpoints decadence with wit and irony.I Saw Her That Night (left), a love story in time of war, is a story about a few years in the life and mysterious disappearance of Veronika Zarnik, a young bourgeois woman from Ljubljana, sucked into the whirlwind of a turbulent period in history. We follow her story from the perspective of five different characters, who also talk about themselves, as well as the troubled Slovenian times before and during World War II; times that swallowed, like a Moloch, not only the people of various beliefs involved in historical events but also those who lived on the fringes of tumultuous events, which they did not even fully comprehend―they only wanted to live. But “only” to live was an illusion: it was a time when, even under the seemingly safe and idyllic shelter of a manor house in Slovenia, it was impossible to avoid the rushing train of violence.
In Zagreb–Belgrade via Sarajevo (right), we follow two young writers, Ivo Andrić and Miloš Crnjanski, on an imaginary train journey from Zagreb to Belgrade. Shortly after the end of the First World War in which Crnjanski fought on the side of Austria-Hungary, and Andrić was imprisoned in Maribor as one of the suspects in the Sarajevo assassination, the two meet in Zagreb at the moment when the Southern Slavonic people decide to live together in one country called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Strongly influenced by the pressures and euphoria of a victory and a defeat, the disappearance of a number of countries and the creation of several ones, breaking away from the past and embarking on something entirely new, this journey in 1919 takes us on an emotional and intellectual journey through the lives of these two young authors who discuss a number of interesting issues – questioning what has been and anticipating what is still to come.Alice in Fearland (left) was inspired by episodes from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. When she was a girl, Alice believed that six impossible things may happen before breakfast. Now, she is a big girl in her thirties. She is supposed to have a career and a family. She should have become successful, stable, and grown-up. What she does have is a new therapist, and together they travel around her head. When she was a girl, there were wonders all around her – caterpillars smoking hookahs, talking cards, grinning cats, tea and cakes, hysterical birds. This was a world where new excitements awaited at every step, a world of possibilities for endless wonders. Now, it is a land full of doubts and fears. And yet, there is still a chance of a miracle… The Miracle in Šargan (right), a cult play by Ljubomir Simović, premièred in 1974, explores the themes of cruelty and suffering as well as the deeply rooted conviction that suffering is inevitable. Simović weaves the stories of a selection of morally dubious characters gathered in the Šargan tavern, lost somewhere on the outskirts of a city but also the world, into a complicated tapestry hanging somewhere between the past and the future. The play gives us an insight into the reasons behind cruelty but also an opportunity to question whether the vicious circle of suffering, and the need to inflict it on others, can be broken. Throughout the entire play, constant heavy rain emphasizes the suffering and cruelty of the characters. Oedipus (left) goes to the Oracle of Delphi to find out who his real parents are. The Oracle doesn’t see fit to tell him this, but she does tell him that he’s destined to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Oedipus tries to run from this fate but ends up running right into it. He kills Laius in a scuffle at a crossroads, not knowing he’s his real dad. Later, he wins the throne of Thebes and unknowingly marries his mother, Jocasta, after answering the riddle of the Sphinx. Several years (and several children) later Oedipus and Jocasta figure out the truth of everything with the unwilling help of Tiresias, the seer. Jocasta hangs herself, and Oedipus stabs out his own eyes. The blind king then goes into exile with only his daughter, Antigone, to guide him, and eventually dies in the town of Colonus.
Dr. Ausländer (Made for Germany) / Dr. Foreigner (Made for Germany) (right) is a theatre co-production between JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theatre and Bitef Theatre. As the title of this production may have suggested, the play points to a burning issue of the mass exodus of Serbian medical doctors and other health workers to Germany in search of a better life and working conditions. The main characters are medical workers who, irrespective of their level of education, are learning the language and moving to Germany. The play is partly based on interviews with 13 medical workers from the countries of former Yugoslavia, most of whom are already living in Germany while others are getting ready to go. Titus Andronicus (left) is believed to be William Shakespeare’s first tragedy. It is also his most brutal and bloodiest play believed to have been written as Shakespeare’s attempt at “revenge tragedy,“ which was extremely popular at the time. The text went far beyond the scope of revenge tragedy and became the first glimpse of Shakespeare’s genius.
Feux (Fires) (right) by the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar. The book consists of nine monologues and narratives based on classical Greek stories. Antigone, Clytemnestra, Phaedo, and Sappho are all mythical figures whose stories are mingled with contemporary themes. It consists of aphorisms, prose poetry, and fragmentary diary entries alluding to a love story. Interspersed are highly personal narratives, reflecting on a time of profound inner crisis in the author’s life. The unwritten novel among the fantasies and aphorisms of Fires is a classic tale.Aleksandar Popović’s play The Development Path of Bora Šnajder (left) follows several connections, the most important of which are the socialist social milieu in which incompetent and unprepared careerists rise, the conflict between social and private work, and the meeting of an anonymous person with ideology and its laws.
The Loser (right) is a combination of Alexander Pushkin’s The Little Tragedy about Mozart and Salieri with the classic novel The Loser by Thomas Bernhardt, enabling the passionate experiment of author and director Nataša Raulović. Just as Pushkin’s “Mozart and Salieri” is not about its nominal protagonists, so Bernard’s Glenn Gould from The Loser is not a biographical account, but a parable about the relationship between genius and banality, a study of the collision between the banality of everyday life and the sublimity of artistic peaks. It is a story about music, genius, envy, terrors of success, and how easily a person may fail in their endeavorsPains of Youth is a shocking, erotically charged play by the Austrian writer Ferdinand Bruckner. The play depicts the moral corruption and cynicism of a group of medical students with unprecedented candor in Vienna in 1923. For these young people, youth itself is a fatal disease, and the idea of death by suicide is always present in their minds. A discontented post-war generation diagnoses youth to be their sickness and do their best to destroy it.An Incident at the Border (left) is a play about When a country’s new border is drawn, a couple are divided by the line. “Under the rigorous eyes of a brand new border guard, they are trapped in an increasingly absurd nightmare, stuck in between two aggressive nations on the verge of war. The play explores the imaginary lines that divide us and the severe penalties for breaking them…”
The Tin Drum (right) is a theater adaptation of Günter Grass’ novel of the same title. The story revolves around the life of Oskar Matzerath, a young boy who willfully arrests his own physical development and remains in the body of a child even as he enters adulthood. A darkly comic war drama with magical realist elements, the play follows Oskar, a precocious child living in Danzig, who wields seemingly preternatural abilities. He lives in contempt of the adults around him and witnesses firsthand their potential for cruelty, first via the rise of the Nazis and then the war. Through all this, a toy tin drum, the first of which he received as a present on his third birthday, followed by many replacement drums each time he wears one out from over-vigorous drumming, remains his treasured possession; he is willing to commit violence to retain it.
Pig and Runt (left) were born at the same hospital at nearly the same time and grew up next door to each other. They live in their own world and rarely interact with others; when they do, it’s mostly to express their hostility toward them. Their relationship, while very intense and unhealthy, remains platonic until just before their 17th birthday. Around this time, Runt catches and reciprocates the attention of another young man from their school, Marky, just as Pig develops romantic feelings for Runt. As their birthday draws closer, Pig becomes more volatile and violent, and his new feelings become obvious to Runt when he kisses her after a rampage at a nightclub. Runt does not know how to reject him, and they continue their friendship, though relations between them are markedly awkward. Their relationship finally raises concerns at their school. With the cooperation of her parents and Pig’s single mother, Runt, considered the more adaptive of the two, is sent away to a boarding school. On their 17th birthday, Pig arrives at Runt’s school and asks her to leave with him, which she does. Elated at their reunion, the two eventually chance upon a nightclub called The Palace. There, Runt sees Marky again and dances with him. In a fit of jealous rage, Pig beats Marky until he dies. Runt, scared, runs away, and Pig stays next to the corpse of the man whom he barbarically beat to death, discovering something completely new about himself: he likes blood. Cyrano de Bergerac (right) is a verse drama by Edmond Rostand set in 17th-century Paris. The story revolves around the emotional problems of the noble, swashbuckling Cyrano, who, despite his many gifts, feels that no woman can ever love him because he has an enormous nose. Secretly in love with the lovely Roxane, Cyrano agrees to help his inarticulate rival, Christian, win her heart by allowing him to present Cyrano’s love poems, speeches, and letters as his own work. Eventually Christian recognizes that Roxane loves him for Cyrano’s qualities, not his own, and he asks Cyrano to confess his identity to Roxane; Christian then goes off to a battle that proves fatal. Cyrano remains silent about his own part in Roxane’s courtship. As he is dying years later, he visits Roxane and recites one of the love letters. Roxane realizes that it is Cyrano she loves, and he dies content.
Michael Kohlhaas is a theater adaptation of a novel with the same title by the German author Heinrich von Kleist, published in 1810. The novel is based on the 16th-century story of Hans Kohlhase. The merchant Hans Kohlhase lived in Cölln on the Spree (now incorporated into Berlin) in the Margraviate of Brandenburg in the 16th century. In October 1532, he set out on a trip to the Leipzig Trade Fair in the neighboring Electorate of Saxony. On the way, two of his horses were seized, at the command of the Junker von Zaschwitz, as a supposed fee for passage through Saxony. Kohlhase sought redress in the Saxon courts but failed to obtain it. Outraged, he issued a public challenge in 1534 and burned down houses in Wittenberg. Even a letter of warning from Martin Luther could not dissuade him, and Kohlhase and the band he collected committed further acts of terror. In 1540, he was finally captured and tried, and he was publicly broken on the wheel in Berlin on March 22, 1540.
