KULTURA / CULTURE
58 TH BITEF Beauty will (not) save the world The first days of autumn will this year once again be marked by the staging of one of Europe’s most prestigious theatre festivals. Set aside time in Belgrade for BITEF from 25 th September to 4 th October
THE BELGRADE INTERNA- TIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL – OR SIMPLY BITEF – is one of the most beloved local festivals, repre- senting a meeting place of avant-gar- de ideas, original productions and artistic stories that time and again erase borders and great distances. By always looking to the future, coura- geously considering the present and shedding light on important lessons from the past, Bitef has posed ques- tions throughout its tradition that dates back more than half a centu- ry, but also provided answers that are debated passionately until the next edition of the festival. This makes it totally clear why there is once again great interest in this year’s 58 th edition of the festival, which will unfold from 25 th Septem- ber to 4 th October under the slogan “Beauty will (not) save the world”. This year’s edition includes as many as ten productions in the main pro- gramme – coming from Germany, France, Switzerland, Bolivia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. The festival will officially open with the dance performance “Mel- lowing” by Berlin’s Dance On En- semble, choreographed by Greek artist Christos Papadopoulos. This German dance company is specific in that it comprises dancers who are all aged over 40, and who ask ques- tions about what it means to mature, how the body mellows and how it changes as it matures... France’s famous Theatre Comédie-Française will present it- self to the Bitef audience for the first time in its long history, with the play “Hecuba, Not Hecuba” di- rected by prominent Portuguese art- ist Tiago Rodrigues. He utilises the myth of Hecuba and the children that she lost in the Trojan War as
the starting point of his work, on- ly to expand on this context with a contemporary true story about a specialised institute for autistic chil- dren in Geneva. Exploring univer- sal themes of suffering, justice and motherly love, this play raises the question of whether a world where children endure so much suffering even deserves to be saved. The struggle for land, rights and freedoms “Antigone in the Amazon”, by Belgium’s NTGent city theatre, is another play from this year’s pro- gramme that reinterprets and pre- sents a mythical and ancient female figure in a new and current light by blending it with modern contexts. For the purposes of work on this play, famous Swiss director Milo Rau trav- elled with his team to Brazil, where capitalism and fire are devouring for- ests and nature, and where 1% of the population owns 45% of the land. The project “Palmasola – A Pris- on Village” authored by Christoph Frick and produced by Basel-based KLARA Theaterproduktionen, is based on multi-year research in- to one of the world’s most notori- ous prisons, the so-called Palmaso- la prison village in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. It cur- rently houses more than 6,000 men and women, only a quarter of whom have officially been convicted. Frick and his team are to date the only ar- tistic company to have been grant- ed permission to spend time inside Palmasola. The play “Rupture”, directed by Slovenian author Jan Krmelj, is based on a text by a British author who has been given the pseudonym Rrose Sélavy for the purposes of this performance. Specifically, in the in- troductory note to her text, the writ-
er emphasises that the play must not be marketed under her real name and real title. This note itself provides a key to interpreting the text, which explores the fate of two climate ac- tivists who were found dead in their apartment in 2021 and about whom there is no information available on the internet, despite this allegedly being a documentary story. Lessons on identities and futures This year's programme will also focus on lecture-performances, as is the case with the play “Sex Educa- tion II: Fight" by young Slovenian di- rector Tjaša Črnigoj, which explores the struggle for reproductive rights in post-war Yugoslavia. Croatian playwright Jasna Žmak is arriving at Bitef with her lecture-performance entitled “This is my truth, tell me yours”. This anxious dramaturge, alone on stage, strives to conquer her own inner unrest by bravely and wittily telling us about her experience in the theatre that led to her developing tinnitus, while at the same time she explores themes of misogyny, working in culture and homophobia. The programme of this year's Bitef also includes two domestic productions, one of which is “We Are Going to Make Something about War, Gender and Liberty, It Will Be Titled: What Would Chelsea Say“ by authors and performers Đorđe Živadinović Grgur and Irena Ristić. This is another of the pieces focusing on the lecture-performance format at this year’s festival, while it goes a step further by simultaneously pre- senting a kind of theatrical inquiry inspired by American whistleblow- er Chelsea Manning, a transgender woman and former US Army intel- ligence analyst.
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