The strongest impression is the lack of maintenance"Bitefa” and hosting “No: Bitef”. Theater the public was justifiably angry with the city administration because of this, but this is, in fact, the finale of a long and multi-year agony. Funds for "Bitef" are decreasing year by year. Anja Suša and Ivan Medenica also reported on this. The 2023 selection team consisting of Nikita Milivojević, Tijana Grumić and Ksenija Đurović was chosen literally at the last moment. The repertoire of their first edition of "Bitefa" was hastily composed and could not be representative. It was not until the following year that this team had the opportunity to show what it can do. It was a good edition of "Bitefa", which reflected the needs of our theater community and gave a fairly solid picture of the world theater. However, someone from the authorities did not like Milo Rau's speech at the opening and that, it seems, was reason enough not to extend the mandate of the team that had just started to work well. And not only did they not extend their mandate, they re-elected a new selection team (too late) and did not give it enough funds for the Festival. Milo Rau's ban was the last straw. Those who at that moment represented the city government in culture obviously had no idea what "Bitef" meant for Belgrade. Those above them became aware of the problem only when "Bitef" was canceled and the European scandal broke out. The Secretary for Culture has resigned, and the new one promises that everything will be fine with "Bitefa" and "Fest" this year. Honestly, I don't believe it until I see it, but let's not get too dark in advance! However, the new year 2026 has just begun.
"THE FACADE IS HOLDING UP"
Let's remember the beautiful moments, and one of them is the performance of the play Pelico Process. I have already written in the text (see "Vreme" no. 1824) and I will repeat; this play is significant because it brought together time, place, performers and audience. This is our time - rebellious. The hall of the rebel FDU was the logical center of the rebel "No: Bitef". The play about a woman who has been abused by her husband for years and who gathers the strength to appear as a witness at the trial takes place in a country where the culture has been deprived of funds for contemporary art. Rebel artists and activists participated in the performance. Vesna Trivalić played Mrs. Peliko. We will long remember the calmness and concentration with which he tells the truth, the gesture of taking off his prescription glasses to reveal a calm face that has endured great pain but refuses to cry. When the actress says "the facade is holding on", and then barely audible "but inside I'm a ruin", the viewer's skin shivers. This moment was one of the most exciting moments in Serbian theater in 2025.
DILEMMA SOLVED: PLAY!
Another event that marked the season is the case of the National Theater. It's not exactly a new story either. In the recent history of the Narodni, there have been several rebellions in the ensemble due to inadequate management. This year was particularly difficult. The actors showed solidarity with the student rebellion. Theater management reacted differently. The worst were those theaters where the management tried to impose its will even at the cost of not playing plays and firing disobedient ones (the case of the Šabac Theatre). However, what happened in Narodni, in one of the two oldest Serbian theaters, helped to resolve the dilemma of whether or not to play. After the situation with the National Theater, the answer is clear - to play! Because it is more appropriate for the authorities that the theater does not work than that it works and constantly finds new ways to be rebellious. That is why I think it is important to highlight the premiere of the play as a significant event Mrs. Olga. We will write about her in more detail at the first opportunity in the new year, but for now we should say that it is a good repertoire move by the outgoing artistic director Molina Udovički Fotez. Mrs. Olga is a drama about money addiction that eats away at the family as a social nucleus and the individual. Nela Mihailović is an excellent actress who plays Mrs. Olga with her entire habitus of a mature, self-aware woman, a woman who knows what love and passion are, but also what money and power can do. It's a great scene of seduction because it shows how the social mask, resistant to insults and blackmail, cracks at a gentle touch.
photo: promoThey are gone.
TO THINK ABOUT THE PAST
I believe it is the most important performance in the last year They are gone., performed in Hartefakt House (director Andrej Nosov, playwright Dorutina Basha) (see "Vreme" no. 1795). The success of the director and playwright is that they delicately and gradually introduced us to the world of a mother who lost her family. The main character (Mirjana Karanović) is not crazy, she is not demented, she knows that the paramedic exists, that her daughter exists even though she is not there, and that her husband and her sons are dead. Mother does not confuse the living and the dead. She just can't bear to live without her husband and her sons, and she has to. Even those who know nothing about the events in Srebrenica after this play will understand how those who survived it feel. It is important that we never forget that, because everything that happened to us later, and even these two cases mentioned above, are an indirect consequence of the destruction of Yugoslavia and its civilizational values.
WHAT IS THEATRE??
Boris Liješević's original project should be singled out among the few Belgrade premieres My theater in Atelier 212. The director creates this piece according to principles and methods that are close to his previous plays (verbatim and devising), with the fact that in this play he goes one step further. In front of the audience and actors, he asks a deeply personal question - what theater means to Boris Liješević after decades of practicing this art. We got the impression that he opens up to us in this play in an attempt to understand himself. The author is aware that both in the theater and in life, time (even some important people) simply disappear, leaking out of our environment like wine from an old barrel. In a world where values are challenged and questioned every day, it is important for the theater to ask the question of what it is to itself, that is, to the artists and to us sitting in the hall (see "Vreme" no. 1798).
photo: radovan baja vujovićMaga
REBELLION OF THE OPPRESSED
In addition to the four mentioned, I would single out two more plays - Maga in the National Park Uzice and A broken jug in the National Theater of the Republic of Srpska (see "Vreme" no. 1793). Drama and play Maga is inspired by the life and work of Maga Magazinović. Although inspired by the life and work of the founder of modern dance, Maga is not a biographical drama but a polemic of the writer Jelena Kajgo with the attitudes of the Serbian traditional community towards women and modern dance as a metaphor for a liberated body. The depth and beauty of this performance is given by the fact that it is not only polemical but also poetic - the creation of modern dance is "spoken" through movement and music. A harmonious combination of music (Irena Popović Dragović), movement (choreographer and stage movement Isidora Stanišić) and the appearance of actress Andrijana Simović as an adult Mage, and Božana Marković as a young Mage, gave softness and poetics to the drama about the clash of emancipation and tradition that marked the 20th century not only in Serbia. The director of the play is Boris Todorović.
The value of the play A broken jug NP RS is doing excellent work with the actors of director Tanja Mandić Rigonat. The relationships between the characters are precisely set and consistently managed throughout the play. Actor Aleksandar Stojković (Judge Adam) does not exaggerate the gags and carefully builds the character of a scoundrel who hides his true intentions. His main partners in uncovering and concealing robberies are the scribe Licht (Boris Šavija) and Walter, the court advisor (Ljubiša Savanović). The three show how different levels of government depend on each other and fight each other for better positions. The director clearly shows us through the well-placed relationships between the characters how the government manipulates and abuses citizens who naively believe that the government exists to protect its subjects. The most dramatic moments are when we watch the victim (Eva - Tara Jovanić) try and fail to say the obvious in terrible fear of the consequences. We are taken aback by the force of the violence committed against her, which is not only physical but also psychological, because the abuser plays on the victim's feelings of guilt.
Writing about A broken jug we spontaneously returned to the topic Pelico Process - how shame can change sides and the oppressed stand up to defend their rights and their dignity. It seems to me that this is a question that we will transfer from the year 2025 to the theatrical year 2026.
