The director asks himself or: What is theater?

Director Boris Liješević made a number of successful plays based on documentary materials, according to the principles of verbatim and devising theater. Especially successful and well-known were the two plays he performed on the small stage of Atelier 212 - Waiting room about the victims of transition and Fertile days about the suffering of couples trying to have a child through artificial insemination. A new play in this theater, My theater, the director creates according to principles and methods that are close to the aforementioned plays, 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 does theater mean to Boris Liješević after decades of practicing this art. He does not approach this question the way a researcher approaching from the outside would do - he does not deal with important points in the development of his own directorial career. His question, or rather dilemma, goes from within - he tries to unravel and explain his reasons for doing theater and his personal feeling towards the motivation that drives him to create. If we wanted to "classify" the scenes thematically, we could determine that one group of scenes has as its theme family and growing up, another about work in the theater - the relationship with the actors, the management, the third the relationship with one's own inspiration, the fourth the relationship with fears and hopes... One could list more, however, the thematic circles are not the most important, they are a training ground where the author explores the essence of the theater for him personally. This is where we come to what we could tentatively call the personal ontology of the theater.

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Space and time, human relationships in space and time, the relationship between the author of the text, the character to whom the text is given and the person (actor/performer) who speaks the text, the viewer who influences the performance by watching it and the energy that holds all these factors together - this is what we could define as theater based on Boris's performance. The performance takes place in the empty space of the large stage of Atelier 212. The idea of ​​empty space is important for contemporary theater and was introduced by the director Peter Brook in the book of the same name, which begins with the sentence that (paraphrasing) an empty space is needed in which one person moves and another person watches, and that is the theater. But essentially, empty space simply does not exist (not even intergalactic space is completely empty), and in this performance, empty space is not really empty, but rather the bare space of a theatrical scene. The audience sees an empty theater stage, and when some scenography elements are introduced as necessary, they are "only a stage sign" and not a theatrical illusion of real space. The same principle was used for actors - the actor is who he is. For example, Nebojša Cile Ilić, who at the request of the author/director plays a certain role in one scene, and another in the next - he is also Nebojša Cile Ilić who helps Boris Liješević to present a situation and an actor who plays a given character. In addition to Nebojsa Cilet Ilić, Vojin Ćetković, Ana Mandić, Branka Šelić and Bojan Žirović play in the play. Which actor will play which character is chosen by the author himself, according to how he thinks that actor can represent the character in a given situation. So, for example, Vojin Ćetković plays staunch traditional men (most often the father), Branka Šelić plays the mother and older women, Bojan Žirović plays the older brother, colleague or friend, Ana Mandić the younger brother, colleague... The principle by which actors are chosen for certain roles is somewhere between the principle on the basis of which actors in the drama theater are chosen for certain roles and the principle on the basis of which the protagonist of a psychodrama chooses those who will play in his psychodrama scene. During the entire performance, Boris Liješević is on stage - he is the author of the text, the director, and one of the actors in certain scenes, and a spectator who observes the scenes in which he does not personally act. In the theater, these two creators (the director and the writer) are mostly behind the scenes, and the actors/performers/actors can sometimes be spectators, while the spectators can only exceptionally participate in the play. This multiple role in which Boris Liješević is on stage is associated with a psychodrama session, with the fact that here he is in the double role of a psychodramist and a patient who tries to solve his problem through the stage action. The problem he is trying to solve is the question of what theater is and why Boris Liješević can't live without it. Psychodrama was chosen because it is an action method of group psychotherapy, which in its form (role play) is closest to theater (and Liješević himself deals with psychodrama).

It should be said that this is not the first time we have seen such performances. Oliver Frljić made a play I hate the truth, and Nina Rajić Kranjac the play Solo. Such performances are very successful if the creator manages to convince the audience that it is really him.

We got the impression that Boris Liješević opens up to us in this play in an attempt to understand himself. In everything, we managed to understand that Boris Liješević is a man who has a passionate need for theater, that he is tender and emotional. He is also aware that both in the theater and in life, time (including some important people) simply disappears, leaking out of our environment like wine from an old barrel. But although realistically gentle, emotional, even insecure, Liješević in this play is not weak towards himself and does not feel sorry for himself - on the contrary! There are many moments of self-irony and humor in this play. Actors, with their approach to "roles", or more precisely, to situations, significantly help his intention to succeed. This is because each of them in each of the scenes managed to convey that characteristic gesture, movement, facial expression that clearly determines the character of the person represented. The way they present us what art is for Boris becomes a gentle way to understand what theater is today and here. 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.