In honour of playwright Jovan Sterija Popović, Sterijino pozorje was held this year for the seventieth time. In the selection curated by theatrologist and theatre critic Ana Tasić, nine plays were included in the Competition Selection and three in the international Circles Selection. These are productions from Serbia (Sombor, Lazarevac, Novi Sad, Belgrade), as well as from the region (Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and North Macedonia). Under the slogan Creating History/Changing the Future, the festival highlighted the urgent need to confront the present in both theatre and life, the present that is here and now, which earnestly attempts to free itself from heavy shackles, because human and humanity, society, man and woman are enslaved.
The three most provocative and challenging plays at this year’s Sterijino Pozorje, according to my opinion, are the focus and subject of this text. In the first play, the man is a prisoner of the state, directly exposed to its terrifying repression within the confines of the Goli Otok prison. In the second play, man is a servant of God, a captive of merciless nature, of his genes, ancestors, and descendants. The third play tells the story of a man enslaved by liberal capitalism through the life of a soccer player burdened by the weight of his own success.
Even the characters from Sterija’s plays two hundred years ago are enslaved: by money in Kir Janja, by social status in Pokondirena tikva, by lies and illusions in Laža i Paralaža. Sterija, as the author, exposes these forms of bondage in order to reform people.
Theatre, like humanity, has always carried the symbolism of Prometheus Bound, who creates, shapes and perfects man, giving him fire and thought. “He loved mortals greatly” – such as theatre. In the fight against injustice and in the pursuit of freedom, theatre and humanity continue to stand up to the “superior gods” and are therefore constantly punished. The punishment is the eagle that devours his liver, where emotions are held.
The Belgrade Trio
The play The Belgrade Trio, produced by the Anton Podbevšek Theatre Novo Mesto and Cankarjev Dom Ljubljana (Slovenia) and directed by Matjaž Berger, is based on the novel of the same name by Goran Marković. It represents a historical and social scar, a foggy mixture of painful memories from the former shared homeland of Yugoslavia. The play brings a sense of stage elevation through a theatrical form of perfectly elegant minimalism and fights through its message, approach and principles, invoking cosmic justice against oblivion, decaying systems and vague theatre. The setting is Belgrade in the late 1940s, after the Informbiro period, the split between Tito and Stalin and the sudden political shift. British writer, diplomat and MI6 agent Lawrence Durrell becomes involved in the political persecution of Tito’s opponents and entangled in a love affair with the wife of a Yugoslav officer who ends up in the notorious Goli Otok prison, while she is sent to a female prison called Sveti Grgur.
The Belgrade Trio, directed by Matjaž Berger. Anton Podbevšek Theatre Novo Mesto and Cankarjev Dom Ljubljana (Slovenia) at Sterijno pozorje. foto: Ana Ilić
Director Berger stages a chess game in a transrational, quite clever style. From the very beginning, the actors are divided into two groups and seated on chairs facing each other like pieces on a chessboard. As the dramaturgical game unfolds, they move, shift, draw closer or farther from one another, building human relationships while two high-ranking British officials: the foreign minister and the ambassador to Yugoslavia, stand firmly and confidently before them throughout the performance. They dictate the course of events while casually seated at their desks and, aided by projections appearing on stage, symbolically “hold” the entire theatrical country and its people in their hands. We witness a portrayal of “the wild business of diplomacy.”
On both sides of the stage, black-and-white images are projected. Naturally, at one point, a digital pedestal of the former president of Yugoslavia, Tito, appears on stage, opposite Stalin on the other side. At another moment, these projections are used to display archival footage: faces caught in the grip of a dark era, whether as persecutors, the persecuted, or victims of the repressive mechanisms of the former state. This black-and-white world, filled with unethical propaganda and depictions of a “long-outdated society,” suddenly opens up as a deeper, timeless story, full of the eternal soul.
White violets, a black (Peter’s) hole, a visit to this cold land, a prison beauty pageant, decorated with a crown of “thorns and nettles”, made of “clay and demons”: people and their stories stand, without ironic tenderness, without silence. In the archive of tragic memories, from a triangle of sorrow, pentagons and decagons emerge, entire networks and connections, transcripts, diaries, dispatches, memories that still carry their pressure points of pain. In the performance, in the struggle for bare biological existence, everyone ends up stripped of their shoes. The secrecy of the word UDBA (secret police organisation of Communist Yugoslavia) is spoken clearly and loudly into the microphone, recessionist gangs are named, and the cold and forgotten past, whether forgotten by accident or on purpose, brings burning questions. Although “people are witnesses to their own misfortune”, the performance, as an image and reflection of a harsh era, a terrifying history, and the hidden side of a country, remains elegant. It does not idealise, but it possesses refinement as it tells this story, as it presents it in delicate images and gestures. It is precise, fierce, honest, and tactful. Even when everything falls apart and crumbles, there is still elegance in this direction, in this performance. The acting aligns with that intention.
The Belgrade Trio, directed by Matjaž Berger. Anton Podbevšek Theatre Novo Mesto and Cankarjev Dom Ljubljana (Slovenia) at Sterijno pozorje. foto: Ana Ilić
The actor Svit Stefanija, portraying Bora Tankosić, a victim of extreme systemic repression, persecuted, chained, put into (Peter’s) hole, yet unbroken, offered his own brief treatise on acting for this performance:
“I approached the character of Bora Tankosić from the perspective of a divided man. On one side stands the ‘ideal of communism,’ that is, Soviet Russia and Stalin, and on the other, of course, his family. What intrigued me most was precisely that inner split, something almost unimaginable today: how someone could sacrifice absolutely everything for an idea. Physically and psychologically, I tried to portray a man who will not submit at any cost, even if it means losing everything.
In interpreting the character, I also tried to find the moments in which he doubts his choice, when he, himself, is no longer sure whether he acted rightly. Whether the idea he believes in is truly worth that much.
Since this is a man who has learned to subordinate his feelings and desires to an idea, I played with that: how to conceal emotions. How to suppress what are, in fact, his deepest desires. In the performance, there are only a few moments where (I hope) the audience gets a glimpse into the inner world of the character.”
The Belgrade Trio, directed by Matjaž Berger. Anton Podbevšek Theatre Novo Mesto and Cankarjev Dom Ljubljana (Slovenia) at Sterijno pozorje. foto: Ana Ilić
Vera Tankosić does not survive; she dies in terrifying agony. Bora manages to save himself, but did he truly save himself? The aesthetics of acting, directing, and text rose above and triumphed over all the horrors and evils which the play bore witness to.
Struggle at the Sinkhole
“He (God) said to the woman: I will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children with painful effort. Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you.
And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’: The ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it. For you are dust, and you will return to dust.”
(The Holy Bible, Genesis 3:16-20)
The productions of Jernej Lorenci can be described as theatrical “iconographies”, moving histories of art, dissections of flesh-and-blood humanity. These are long, profound narratives that devour the stage with their very resonance: worlds filled with faith, stories, and portrayals of an artistic religion, where acting and stage movement are pushed to the limits of endurance. Rituals. Such is the performance Struggle at the Sinkhole, presented by the Prešern Theatre Kranj and the City Theatre Ptuj (Slovenia).
Struggle at the Sinkhole, directed by Jernej Lorenci. Prešern Theatre Kranj and the City Theatre Ptuj (Slovenia) at Sterijno pozorje. foto: Ana Ilić
Based on the novella by Prežihov Voranc, the play unfolds as a portrait of cycles, of endless footsteps, of ceaseless labour that, to the unfamiliar eye, might appear as a kind of dance. It is a painful staging of an archetype: the story of a man named Dihur, born to die, and while alive, to merely survive. Just like all the Dihurs and Dihurkas before and after him. The word “Struggle” (in Serbian translation “boj,” meaning battle) in the title refers to an existential struggle, a war in which, from birth to death, the weapons are made of farming tools, and the enemy is not born of a mother, but created by God. In other words, it cannot be defeated. It is nature. The performance ritualises Slovenian social realism, grain and moss. It tells us: if you are born a Dihur or Dihurka, when you grow up, you will become an ox-driver or a shepherdess. Your cradle rocks eternally, your land is barren, and your hunger is insatiable. The greatest mortal enemy of Dihur, forever and always, is the ravines carved by water. “The real monsters were the swamps, where the dampness broke through most intensely. These swamps were called ‘požiralniki (sinkholes)’ by the Dihurs, probably because they swallowed and destroyed the crops.”
A prayer for the ox and a buried man in unconsecrated ground. The rhythm of wooden soles and human hooves. Footsteps are the pulse of passing time. Trampled soil, eternal rain mixing with sweat. The cycle of day and night. “A vast, quiet, fragrant night.” A new day for the peasant. “Give your body no rest.” For bread. Hunger knocks at the door.
Struggle at the Sinkhole, directed by Jernej Lorenci. Prešern Theatre Kranj and the City Theatre Ptuj (Slovenia) at Sterijno pozorje. foto: Ana Ilić
The director displays the highest mastery of his craft and an immeasurable talent precisely through rhythm. The long narrations pull the spectator deep into the abysses of humanity. The actors’ movement on stage is passionate, powerful, vigorous, and carried to the point of exhaustion. Dance and music appear as two entirely separate elements, even though they correspond perfectly. The dance does not stop even when the music falls silent. The music, on the other hand, fills the emptiness of the stage. Everything is connected in a new, experimental, and exceptionally potent way, where each part, each segment of the performance, stands independent, self-sufficient, forceful, and capable of existing without support from the other fragments. Lorenci’s thematic fixations, like a delicate thread woven throughout his body of work, are once again present: children’s tears that should never have happened, suffering that no one could prevent, truth that enters the actor’s core, inner Christianity born through art, helpless animals, chamber-like and environmental scenography. The same themes, and yet renewed, encouraging and magnificent.
Four actors carry this enactment: Darja Reichman, Živa Selan, Gregor Luštek, and Branko Jordan. Husband and wife in their younger and older forms. In a circle. Each one raw and whole, perfect. The director teaches the actors how to look the audience straight in the eyes: each person individually, how to speak truthfully, how to be aware of the text, to live it, and breathe it into their own soul, and at the same time into the soul of the spectator. The stage is a field. The stage is a ring. A confessional, a hall, and a hut. And nothing. And even when it is nothing, it is still beautiful, in the direction of Jernej Lorenci.
An actress from the performance, Darja Reichman, offered us her personal reflection, her treatise:
“We are all descendants of our ancestors, who depended on the land and the mercy of the weather for their survival, and that remains within us, within me. In honour of the play Struggle at the Sinkhole, I planted potatoes on my terrace in three large bags meant for that purpose. That’s when I realised just how hard that work is, and how dependent you are on luck and weather conditions. My yield was very poor, and I can say I didn’t succeed. As an actress, it was certainly easier for me, but not easy, because working on this role required immense memorisation of text and great physical endurance.
Working with Jernej Lorenci, with whom I’ve now collaborated for the sixth time, truly demands deep dedication, but it’s not hard to channel that dedication into the performance, because even the rehearsals themselves are so captivating that they draw you fully into the world we’re exploring. It’s a great privilege, and I’m endlessly grateful for the opportunity each time. For me personally, the hardest part was having to convey such a painful story as a medium, without letting emotions and my own compassion for these people carry me too far. Still, during the performance, I experience many emotions, perhaps even more when I am in the role of a listener. I’m always deeply moved by the story of the ox, then by Dihurka’s death, and of course by the bravery of those children left to fend for themselves, digging a grave and building a coffin for their father. Dihur is an archetype of the Slavic man, but also a universal symbol: one who lives with the land, depends on it, and holds a firm view of the world, which to him is not merciful but harsh.”
Struggle at the Sinkhole, directed by Jernej Lorenci. Prešern Theatre Kranj and the City Theatre Ptuj (Slovenia) at Sterijno pozorje. foto: Ana Ilić
“The great Lovro Kuhar, Prežihov Voranc, was for me a true revelation once again through working on Struggle at the Sinkhole. We all read him during our school years, in the upper grades of primary school and later in high school. I must admit that the last time I read him before this project was with my son, when Solzice was assigned as required reading, and that’s when I realised how difficult it really is for a child, or a very young person, to truly understand him. This renewed encounter with his literature was a great pleasure. That is the privilege of our profession – that literature can always be rediscovered and must be rediscovered again and again. What impressed me the most upon rereading was the mastery of his language, which completely captivated me. Now I realise that when I was young, I couldn’t appreciate it like this. He uses many archaic expressions, and it took effort to decipher them all. I will never forget the performances’ tours in Carinthia, both in Slovenia and Austria, where people truly consider Voranc one of their own and where the connection with the audience was especially moving. I was also deeply touched by the wonderful response of the Novi Sad audience, and I take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to the viewers.“
The fight with the devourers, the archons, the demons, is a shared, eternal struggle for all of us.
Football Boot Tongue
The Zagreb Youth Theatre (Croatia) immediately delivers a strong and sharp sports salute to the audience with the play Football Boot Tongue. Directed by Borut Šeparović and based on the dramatic text by Filip Grujić and Ivan Ergić, this production exposes soccer as the religion of modern capitalism, where the body becomes currency, time is measured in coins, and stadiums transform into godless temples. Through the myth of the golden jersey and the imagery of midnight Casanovas, the play reveals sport as a brutal game and a violent act inflicted upon one’s own body and soul. The raw, relentless play on stage mirrors exactly what happens on the field.
Football Boot Tongue, by Filip Grujić and Ivan Ergić, directed by Borut Šeparović. Zagreb Youth Theatre (Croatia) at Sterijno pozorje. foto: Ana Ilić
The dramatic text and powerful direction mercilessly strip away the illusion of success. At the centre of this soccer player biography stands actor Bernard Tomić (in the role of player David), who embodies the passive suffering within the long-since mechanised machinery of the sports industry: a world of childhood trading stickers, flashy advertisements, and soulless sports betting shops that generate a false image beneath which yawns a vast emptiness. In this merciless world, love becomes collateral damage, career is an imperative, and luxury is a ridiculous, hollow feeling of endless rounds of hard liquor in a smoky nightclub, while the symbol of Balkan melos blares louder, more distorted, deeper into a faceless crowd. Players are under the spotlight, and their health is tracked in real-time on a video screen throughout the entire performance. Everything is recorded. Heartbeats. Steps. Only numbers, constantly written and erased. Injuries are invisible, hidden. Fatigue is unacknowledged. Emotions are repressed, nonexistent. Because weakness must never even be sensed. The football becomes Sisyphus’ stone, heavy, unbearably heavy. Soccer matches are no longer sports arenas but animal cages, where life-and-death battles take place. The fermentation of every emotion, the loss of control, the collapse of will: until the system takes over, even the final trajectory of the ball. The myth of the shoes which, once you put them on, you can never take off. They play on their own. The football boots. You are condemned to play forever. To prove yourself over and over again. Endlessly. The epilogue is a press conference without journalists. A football player asking himself questions and answering with the only truth that, paradoxically, does not set him free. The soul is in offside. The four-four-two formation and one man who no longer knows why he ever needed any of this.
Football Boot Tongue, by Filip Grujić and Ivan Ergić, directed by Borut Šeparović. Zagreb Youth Theatre (Croatia) at Sterijno pozorje. foto: Ana Ilić
Dramaturgically sharp attacks, defending drills, and shooting directly at the audience. The powerful dimension of stage movement, credited to Tamara Despot, penetrates the muscle memory of the body to the breaking point. The locker rooms expose toxic patterns of functioning. The pulled-on jersey becomes a second skin, an identity that is not easily shed. Costume designer Marta Žegura dresses the characters in roles that don’t come off easily. Not at all. The deserved jersey. The emblem on the chest. The lucky star? The winning mentality and mental dribbling never stop. Because the match is always on. The games of life. “No one can do anything to us?” Be “correct, proper, and brainwashed.” “Stronger than fate?”
The final lines are written by Filip Grujić, one of the authors of the play Football Boot Tongue, composed especially for this text. Here is his brief treatise on drama:
“The Balkans shape us in multiple ways — through our eyes and our lives, just as much as through the eyes of the Western world, which places the Balkans into one of its boxes, expecting the Balkans to be everything the West is not, at least in the cultural-hegemonic sense. The upbringing of generations born in the seventies, eighties, and nineties is not the same as the upbringing of those same generations in the Western world — and unfortunately, when we speak of “the world,” we almost always mean the West, though that will certainly change at some point. In the case of Football Boot Tongue, this Balkan identity is reflected in the relationship between the family and David — we hold together as a family, we grow together, and we fall together. For any work of art, it is necessary that there are two opposing sides, even if very abstract. In the world of soccer, one of these sides, as you said, is exactly brutality versus tenderness. In that order. If a play were to be made about theatre itself, the order would be reversed — tenderness versus brutality. Theatre, as we have long known, is not what life is, but what life could be. That is why the monologue at the end was important to us, the one that in the tangible world wouldn’t happen at that moment, but in our created theatrical world, it can. Once the illusion of realism is destroyed, and it is absurd to maintain it, the fourth wall becomes irrelevant. But what the theatre can do depends on many conditions. Honestly, I think that right now, the theatre here can do nothing. But that’s a whole different topic.”
Football Boot Tongue, by Filip Grujić and Ivan Ergić, directed by Borut Šeparović. Zagreb Youth Theatre (Croatia) at Sterijno pozorje. foto: Ana Ilić
This post was written by the author in their personal capacity.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.
This post was written by Emilija Kvočka.
The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.
