SHOWCASES
Zagreb Youth Theater SHOWCASE
Zagreb Pentagram
Directed by Paolo Magelli
June 23 at 20:00
Venue: Zagreb Youth Theater: ISTRA
The Zagreb Pentagram omnibus, which links five dramatic texts by the noted writers Nina Mitrović, Ivana Vidić, Filip Šovagović, Damir Karakaš and Igor Rajki, gives a generational view of Zagreb in transition focusing on the turbulent period from 1980 until today. The director Paolo Magelli uses the stage to pose questions that concern us deeply and which we come across every day – questions of individual and social responsibility, the burdens of the past and the uncertainties of the future.
The protagonist of this unique theatrical project is the city of Zagreb, and Magelli evokes on stage all of the temptations and conflicts of a time that has changed us. The Zagreb Pentagram speaks in an authentic voice about this modernity, about the city in which and with which we live, about the people that we meet every day and, ultimately, about ourselves.
On the Other Side
Directed by Nataša Rajković and Bobo Jelčić
June 26 at 20:00
Venue: Zagreb Youth Theater: ISTRA
We might say that when one’s thirty, it seems normal to wish for more and 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 does not have to be fine. That one never knows. That nothing is 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. Some of them are really not.
Since its premiere in 2006, On the Other Side has won 10 regional theater awards and has toured extensively, from Berlin to Varna.
Anica Tomić and Jelena Kovačić: Excuse Me, Can I Ask You...?
By Anica Tomić (director) & Jelena Kovačić (dramaturge)
June 28 at 20:00
Venue: Zagreb Youth Theater: MIŠKO POLANEC
Excuse Me, Can I Ask You…? presents a sociopsychological study of a society built on repressed traumas. Anica Tomić and Jelena Kovačić offer a powerful, partly raw, but above all memorable and anxiety-ridden vision of life in the aftermath of war. The authors uncompromisingly advance a thesis about happiness as a means of masking anxiety and trauma. In the world of four people, a smile serves as a customary mask that provides the only way to fight against their horrifying thoughts. Excuse Me, Can I Ask You…? is a story about strained and staged happiness beyond whose facade lie hidden horrors of a war locked away in chaotic memories.
Student Center – Teatar &TD SHOWCASE
Weight Man
By D.B. Indoš and Tanja Vrvilo:
June 27 at 20:00
Venue: Student Center – Teatar &TD
The extreme music performance is based on a musical model – a sample of Captain Beefheart’s Crazy Little Thing and sheet music for the Deep Throat punk jazz group from the estate of Z. Šilović. The process of multiplication of distinct image-music develops on the principle of the double trope: an instrumental performance on piano, trumpet, double bass and xylophone which re-creates the music of Z. Šilović is overturned by a vocal-textual performance of the numerical transcription of sampled material from Captain Beefheart´s song. The instrumental without the original lyrics and the vocal performance without the original music, four songs from the one side of the weight plane and four from the other capture an unstable diagram. Two sides of the same; visual images and sound waves enclosed by a line whose ends remain lose. Beyond the line, the dance battle shuffles all the weights, creating false movement within the loop.
Co-produced by the University of Zagreb – Student Center – Culture of Change – Teatar &TD, N.O. Jazz Festival, House of Extreme Music Theater
Shadow Casters SHOWCASE
Shadow Casters (Bacači Sjenki): PROCESS_CITY
A trilogy inspired by Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial and his entire opus
Part 1 of the Trilogy is also included in the program of the PSi # 15 shift: Serial Performativity? Dialogues about Chained Actions, Missed and/or Expected Unity, Multiple Geneaologies and Co-originality
The third part of the trilogy, Process in Progress, was the first to be realized (2004) as a synthetic interpretation of the entire corpus of Kafka’s novel The Trial on the crossroads of two media – theater and film – submitted to multiple live editings ranging from VJing to the spectator’s gaze. With the Legend of the Law parable as its starting point, the second part, Ex-position, instigates journeys into personal histories and the sub-consciousness of the Other through a series of one-on-one encounters that promote spectators into sensators, exchanging their institutionalized passivity for compassion, exposing them to the public view in moments of their utmost dedication to the intimate, and offering them a bird’s eye view of the situation lived moments earlier, all this accompanied with the possibility for the sensator to pass through all positions, stories and phases. The first part, Vacation From History, tackles the above-mentioned question directly as a meta(physical) comment on Kafka’s work: it is a journey on the edge of collective and individual consciousness, through the realms of dream and death as the only safe refuges from history.
Its segments were shown at many international and Croatian festivals where they have won several awards, among them the Avaz Dragon Award at MESS festival 2008 (Sarajevo, BiH) for the entire trilogy and the Special Jury Prize at BITEF 2007 (Belgrade, Serbia) for the second part of trilogy, Ex-position.
Vacation from History (PROCESS_CITY, PART I)
June 25 at 00:30
Venue: Frankopanska 22
Concept and Direction: Boris Bakal
Text: Katarina Pejović
Dramaturgy: Katarina Pejović, Boris Bakal
Ex-position (PROCESS_CITY, PART II)
June 26 from 13 to 19h
June 27 from 12 to 18h
Venue: Osnovna škola “Ivan Merz” (Ivan Merz Elementary School), Ivana Račkoga 4
Concept and Direction: Boris Bakal
Dramaturgy: Katarina Pejović, Boris Bakal, Stanko Juzbašić
Process in Progress (PROCESS_CITY, PART III)
June 28 at 20h
Venue: Student Center, Savska 25
Concept, Adaptation and Direction: Boris Bakal
Dramaturgy: Katarina Pejović