KULTURA CULTURE
UNUSUAL SHOW ABOARD A PLANE With Air Serbia on a journey beyond the centre of the earth This year's Belgrade Summer Theatre Festival provided audiences with the opportunity to see for themselves that it’s possible to watch a theatre play in the most unusual of places and to travel in many ways T he theatrical play Journey Beyond the Cen- tre of the Earth was performed on the last three days of June, with the unusual ex- perience of each performance enjoyed by 150 spectators aboard an actual Air Serbia plane at Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport. e concept of the play, which takes the audience on a specific journey, carries the signature of actor and producer Vladimir ‘Vlada’ Aleksić, who says that the world is no longer the one with which we’re familiar … “ e year of the pandemic has led to us facing a situation that it’s impossible to escape, in which trav- elling is almost impossible. e crisis has changed the way we travel. With this play, we enabled the audience, in the role of passengers, to travel, from the city and buses, through the airport to the plane, in a joint at-
tempt to traverse the road from old stories, ideas and dreams, through current ones, to new ones,” says Vlada. One challenge for the authors of this “aviation play” was to adapt it to the new stage dramaturgically. “ e audience watched the last part of the play aboard an Air Serbia plane used for European flights. e ac- tresses, in the role of flight attendants, served cham- pagne and the national airline’s famous walnut cookies. e notion of the entire play was to get the audience moving and for them to be an active part of the show, because in a theatre they are separated from the actors while they sit in a darkened auditorium. A plane is like a space shuttle, a symbolic space that offers us a new, more cultivated reality without pandemics, diseases, poverty etc. is play could also be an opportunity to familiarise foreigners with the history of Belgrade, if we perform it in a foreign language in the future, as a new type of postcard of Belgrade. It would be interesting to perform plays on a plane while it’s flying.” According to him, the possibility of departing doesn’t only mean taking a trip to faraway destinations, Euro- pean capitals and turquoise seas, but also a chance to leave behind, or jump out of, one's own skin, destiny, living conditions. “ e dream of travelling, whether in a pandemic or not, symbolises dreams of escape, change and a differ- ent life. e play has a happy ending, just like landing after flights completed successfully. We send an opti- mistic message as a symbol of hope for a better and nobler world.” Aleksić claims that his travels allow him to find strength and inspiration, while he also loves to fly. He enjoys preparing for a flight, arriving at the airport, checking in, everything… “On flights I do my best thinking and the most beau- tiful ideas cross my mind. A plane has wings, which a
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