At the beginning of the study Opening borders professional reception Bitefa in Serbia Ksenija Radulović analyzes and explains the cultural and theatrical the climate that led to the creation of Bitef and how intellectuals and theater creators gathered around the idea of Bitef managed to use this favorable cultural climate. In the middle of the 60s of the 20th century, a complicated set of various favorable circumstances emerged in and around Yugoslavia. At the time of the growing arms race, Yugoslavia was one of the initiators of the Non-Aligned Movement, so it could act sovereignly and constructively on the international level. When we talk about Europe, SFRY was located between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. By managing to balance between the two, it created good political, economic and cultural cooperation with both the West and the East of Europe. Of course, these favorable geopolitical conditions would be of little value if local (ie city) political forces were not aware of the importance of cultural diplomacy and were ready to promote the idea of cooperation and overcoming differences and borders through culture. Analyzing these (pre)conditions for the launch of Bitef, the author notes that at that time, other significant international cultural events were initiated in Belgrade (Fest, Bemus, October Salon, "Joy of Europe"). Bitef was, in fact, part of a great positive cultural wave.
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The slogan of the festival "new theater tendencies" was general and broad enough to bring together artists from different theater cultures. From the beginning, Bitef had several parallel repertoire streams. At the festival, we could watch the so-called classics in a modern way (e.g. A Midsummer Night's Dream Peter Brook). It was an important and useful repertory line because, of all Bitefov tendencies, it was the closest to our repertory theater, in which the emancipation of the theater from the "correct reading" of the dramatic text began at that time. The second and most famous repertoire line of the festival is the line of radical experiments (The constant prince Grotowski). This repertory direction was significant for our theater because it encouraged the development of new ideas and created a prerequisite for new approaches to the theater to be accepted more easily. Although for a long time there was a widespread belief that Bitef had weak or even no points of contact with our theater, Ksenija Radulović's research confirms that Bitef had (and still has) a significant influence on our theater life. The third festival line was related to the representation of traditional performance practices, the so-called of the Third World (a performance of the Indian Kathakali theater was performed at the first Bitef). This segment of Bitef's repertoire was significant because it went hand in hand with our non-aligned politics. Ksenija Radulović points out that Bitef also contributed to the promotion of new European theatrical dramatic texts. And indeed, some of the texts that we had the opportunity to see at Bitef became part of the repertoire of our theaters and thus influenced the local production of dramatic texts.
Reading in this book about what was needed to create the preconditions for Bitef, it can be clarified why such ambitious cultural undertakings did not happen later. Already in the 2000s, the Yugoslav leadership did not seem to understand what changes were happening in the world and was not equipped to deal with the growing problems in the country itself. A complete disaster occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the moment when Europe was uniting, we went to war with each other. But even in those darkest times of our recent history, Bitef tried to raise his voice against the war and to preserve contacts with artists and theaters from around the world in every way. After the changes that took place in the XNUMXs, Bitef played a significant role in restoring broken cultural ties and presenting relevant, new European theater artists to our public.
The book by Ksenija Radulović confirms the assumption that the most important Serbian critics such as Vladimir Stamenković, Muharem Pervić and Jovan Hristić were a great supporter of the festival with their writings about it from the beginning. They were aware of Bitef's importance even when they harshly criticized individual plays. On the other hand, the attacks on Bitef concerned not the essence of the festival but some performances that could seem scandalous in the (small) civil society. In a certain sense, even that "scandal-making" helped draw media attention to the Festival. It is also significant that the author pointed to the lucid criticisms regarding the first performances at Bitef by the esthetician and philosopher Pavel Stefanović. This is an important discovery because it shows that the subtle consideration of theater in our midst is broader than what is lumped down to a few well-known critical names. Also, Ksenija Radulović, writing about the work of her colleague Ivan Medenica and other critics of the younger generation, indicates that there is continuity in the quality monitoring of the Festival to this day.
When it comes to theoretical texts about Bitef, the author states at the beginning of this chapter that their number is relatively limited, but not scarce. Natalija Vagapova, who regularly attended the Festival for four decades, wrote a book Bitef festival, theater, life and it can be considered the first monograph that was entirely dedicated to this festival. The festival itself was the subject of numerous theatrical texts published in magazines and anthologies. Some researchers have dealt with specific aspects of the development of the festival in their books. So Radivoje Dinulović devoted himself to the study of theater spaces at Bitef. Milena Dragićević Šešić paid special attention to the Bitef festival as part of the SFRY's cultural diplomacy. Bitef was written relatively regularly in two of our most important theater magazines, "Scena" and "Teatron". The heritage of Bitef was part of the topic "Bitef: 35 years" which was published in two issues of the magazine "Teatron", and then this research was continued through the subsequent editions of the magazine. Since at that time Ksenija Radulović was the chief and responsible editor of "Teatron", we can assume that the work on this topic was a kind of preparation of the author for the book.
At the end of the book, we can come to the unequivocal conclusion that the Bitef festival left a big mark on our theater life and that Belgrade theater criticism had the capacity to adequately analyze and accept it. This is an important knowledge because our environment generally has a problem with a clear assessment of our own values (we very easily start from total negation and end up in total glorification). Through a serious and well-grounded assessment of Bitef's professional reception, we get a balanced picture of this important festival. With that, our place in the modern (theatre) world becomes clearer. That's another reason why the book Opening borders professional Bitef reception in Serbia important.
