Flour in the Veins
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Flour in the Veins
Sarajevo War Theater - SARTR Scena MESS
Igor Štiks Flour in the Veins - pre-premiere Director: Boris Liješević Dramaturge: Dubravka ZrnčićKulenović Set Designer: Vedran Hrustanović Costume Designer: Lejla Hodžić Music: Duško Šegvić Cast: Klement, father of Vladimir and Igor, Nadija’s husband, 78 years of age MIKI TRIFUNOV Nadia, Klement’s wife, Vladimir and Igor’s mother, 70 years of age KAĆA DORIĆ Vladimir, their elder son, 48 years of age IZUDIN BAJROVIĆ Igor, their younger son, 45 years of age ADMIR GLAMOČAK Helena, Vladimir’s wife, 43 years of age SELMA ALISPAHIĆ David, Vladimir and Helena’s son, 17 years of age JASENKO PAŠIĆ Stage manager: Goran Filipović
Head technician: Damir Fazlagić Stage lighting: Nedim Pejdah and Nedim Kukavica Sound: Irhad Hodžić and Sretko Vujić Stage design: Nurko Oprašić Equipment: Elvis Sijarić Wardrobe supervisor: Hava Redžić Make-up artist: Sanela Čatović Decoration: Mevludin Džananović and Elvis Sijarić Set design: Ramo Pamuk Executive producers: Lejla Hasanbegović and Sabina Šabić Produced by: Nihad Kreševljaković and Dino Mustafić
Photography: V. Hasanbegović
Igor Štiks on Flour in the Veins
THE PAST IS LIKE A BOOMERANG
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he story of the play had been evolving for years. I wrote the first sketches during my stay in Chicago, where I met families from our country with a deep generational divide between them. The children not understanding their parents, the experiences and history they had brought with them to America. They were taking in the mythology of a world long gone, and the loss of that world, too. It seemed so unfair to me, to inherit all the traumas, yet live in the world in which there was no place for you to live and grow.
Perhaps the story begins with David, the youngest of characters, born in
the U.S., who asks his parents, uncle, grandma, grandpa, and all of us: Who are you? Who are you? What do we have in common? What is that burden of life that was passed onto me? Which made me deal with different generations in my family, their hopes, triumphs, failures. Such misconceptions and such clashes became the topic of the text. By that I mean emotional and ideological clashes – ideological inherently being motional, too, and emotional which necessarily become ideological – between different generations in the last hundred years or so, from World War One and World War Two through the recent war, but the time of peace as well, which was, as we all know, no less prone to conflicts. And I say text, because I didn’t know what form this piece would eventually lend itself into. The form of a drama, which at the time
was new to me, seemed the only natural choice. I tried prose, but it didn’t work. Some stories can’t be told the oldfashioned way. Instead, you need to allow the characters take the stage before you, let them do the talking or remain silent, confused. With all the interruptions and noises, the things unspoken, yet uncomfortably real, the desires, longings and disappointments resistant to the passage of time, the wounds hidden and then suddenly opening, the buried and unburied inner selves, the invited and uninvited guests, and, long story short, all that family gatherings usually entail. The past is like a boomerang, it always comes back at us. We have to teach ourselves to catch that boomerang before it hurts us again. Not in order to discard it and forget about it, but to prevent it from ruining our future.
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Flour in the Veins THE PLAY WE ALL HAVE BEEN YEARNING FOR
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Flour in the Veins is a play about a war-torn family scattered all over the world, which reunites, after twenty-odd years, in a city, in an apartment, one single night. Everything changed: the city, the country, the population, ethnic diversity, the streets, the faces, all except for the traumas, which neither time, nor change of place could heal. The traumas became the worldview, frame of mind, pattern of behavior. Over time, they become familiar and pleasing, while the escape from them becomes painful and unknown. The individual remains trapped in the trauma.
Photography: V. Hasanbegović
A SKETCH FOR THE PORTRAIT OF OWN SELF
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ne of the theater’s main goals is to support contemporary drama, therefore, a pre-premiere is not only an honor for a theater for being able to present a text for the first time, but also a responsibility to approach this new text with deep respect during the process of staging the play. The text Flour in the Veins is Igor Štiks’ first drama, and the fact that he had already established himself as a writer places even greater responsibility on the theater and the ensemble.
The characters in Flour in the Veins delve deep into the memories, discussing what happened, how it happened and how could it happen. They know better who they were back then than who they are now. So who are we after twenty years? – is a straightforward question that flies like an arrow into the painful memories of each and every individual. “Everything seems like a dream. Only the backdrop gets changed,” says Igor Štiks in Flour in the Veins, referring to the past events which shaped and determined the lives of his characters, while the dramaturgy of dreams and memories disturb the established dramatic sequence. By portraying a family – father, mother and their sons – the author paints characters whose fate, swirling in the maelstrom of
personal and historical events, almost mirrors that of a typical family from the area. Fears, hopes, disappointments and losses remain traces of former wars. Pangs of guilt, hurt feelings, anger, wondering, discomfort and begging for forgiveness define the postwar fate. Some remained in the besieged city, some decided to flee it, or were forced to, and today, after twenty-odd years, we return to it (usually because they no longer let us stay wherever we went) or we want to leave the city we once stayed in, or we eventually accept exile as a final solution. The characters in Flour in the Veins delve deep into the memories, discussing what happened, how it happened and how could it happen. They know better who they were back then than who they are now. So who are we after twenty years? – is a straightforward question that flies like an arrow into the painful memories of each and every individual. Perhaps that was what made this play so difficult to put together – the play that takes place over the course of a single night, at a dinner table where, for the first time after twenty-two years, a family gets together. Nonetheless, these self-imposed temporal and spatial constraints surely enabled the author to filter out the irrelevant, no matter how theatrically seductive it may have been, and open up the souls of his characters, in which we see ourselves, whether we want it or not. That sense of identification stayed with us throughout the course of the play. Resorting to various means of improvisation, the director Boris Liješević, together with the cast, reached down in the depths of memories and gamut of emotions, from love to anger, from disappointment to remorse, from guilt to forgiveness, enabling the actors to begin to live the fate of their characters, which slowly but surely was taking the shape of a sketch for the portrait of own self… I made a note at one of the rehearsals reading I’m no longer sure if they shape the characters or reveal their true selves… By: Dubravka Zrnčić-Kulenović
Photography: V. Hasanbegović
This is a play its characters have been yearning for for decades. A play of returns, meetings, speaking up, guilt, overcoming, solutions and, finally, reconciliations. In the Balkans, where wars shape the history, geography, economy, culture, politics and education, a trauma becomes a national treasure, identity, means of politics, tradition, and model of upbringing. This is a play its characters have been yearning for for decades. A play of returns, meetings, speaking up, guilt, overcoming, solutions and, finally, reconciliations. Reconciliation becomes a threat, for it requires confrontation, acceptance, new and unknown territories. Reconciliation proved to be a long process, which takes time, courage and maturity. By: Boris Liješević
Photography: V. Hasanbegović
Boris Liješević was born in Belgrade in 1976. In 2004, he graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad with a degree in Directing. The most important plays he has directed are Presence (Atelje 212), Greta, Page 89 (SNP Novi Sad), Dear Dad (JDP, Belgrade), Zverinjak (SNP, Novi Sad), Kid in Milk (Youth Theater, Novi Sad), Waiting Room (Atelje 212 and KC Pančevo), On the Occasion of a Seagull (Youth Theater, Novi Sad) and Elijah’s Chair (JDP, Belgrade). In 2013, he received the prestigious “Bojan Stupica” award for theater directing by the Association of Dramatic Artists of Serbia.
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Flour in the Veins
Izudin Bajrović, a suggestive actor, yet riddled with doubt during the process of creation while on his quest for profound meanings, says of Vladimir: Where did I go wrong? What should I do? I don’t know. I’m at my wits’ end. I’ve been so anxious to explain each step I take. The joy of the meeting becomes a warning sign. Will I be able to fix the wrongdoing… too many questions. I’m puzzled. Frightened. Always anticipating. It’ll get better, it’ll get better… the curse inherited. I’m somewhat tired. Empty. Alone. What does it mean to be a parent? Devotion? Dedication? A family is a precious gift, right? They say the experience is all that matters, the past is always with us. We’re a family. We love each other, understand each other, and are there for each other. And we don’t talk about bad things, the things that hurt. Actually, it’s me who doesn’t talk about them. They blame me for my brother’s death. They can say that to me. What does it mean? Had I stayed and gotten myself killed, everything would have been right then. And I don’t feel like going to that dinner, but Helena keeps pushing me to go. She wants to keep the family together. Why her? Well, she fucked it up in the first place. We’re back… Helena made me do it. It’s hard for David, too. He’s pissed off, doesn’t wanna talk about it. I feel he hates me. I thought I no longer belonged here, and now I feel as if I had never gone. My folks no longer get on my nerves. I’ve probably gotten old, though, I don’t feel like it.
NOTES FROM THE REHEARSALS Miodrag Trifunov, an actor in Shelter by Safet Plakalo and Dubravko Binanović, the first play ever staged at the SARTR, theater enthusiast, with a stern actor’s expression, says of Klement: This is one of the days when nothing seems to go right. Nothing seems to make any sense. And then you are awakened to the fact that you’re a parent, that your sons are grown men. Do I have a moral right to judge them? A bad night. I try to ignore it, but time has taken its toll. Vladimir and Helena are coming, together with my dear grandson David. They’ve been away too long. And Igor’s been gone for twenty years. I haven’t heard from him since. Strange, we don’t mention him in our conversations. And then, the moment of joy. My family is coming. Should I burden my grandson David with the past? Isn’t that what gives life its meaning? I have a feeling some things have left unsaid. Where to go from here? KLEMENT: I didn’t want to open my eyes. And I had to! It was all my fault. I had to protect you, and I didn’t! I should’ve seen where it was all going. Should’ve seen when it all started coming apart. But I didn’t want to believe that was possible. Just didn’t.
Kaća Dorić, played heroines of classic and avant-garde theater, character roles, with a special talent for comic, strong acting persona, emotionally precise, instructor and director, says of Nadia: I’ve been searching for the moment where my thoughts would begin, my feelings, too… I hope it would come, but what would then happen? What if they don’t come? Don’t know where to begin… my sons… NADIA: I’ve been living in silence twenty-odd years. I don’t want to die in silence. No way! Just so you all know!
VLADIMIR: I saved my skin. To want to live means to be a coward. And I wanted to live! Is that a crime?… I wanted to live in a place where “our” bones are not separated from “theirs”, where my surname or my bloodline won’t get me killed. Someplace else, where you can be someone else. Someplace else where there is no grand ideas and no picture of Grandpa Oskar! My son says I ran away from there when things got tough. No, not this time. There, you work your ass off for twenty years and think they appreciate that. You think the air is better. And then, when the budget didn’t work out as planned, you get canned first. Since we came back here, I think I’ve been suffering from shortness of breath.
Admir Glamočak, a mature actor, with a contemplative expression, precise when interacting with partners, instructor and director, says of Igor: I don’t feel well. I was watching a war documentary and saw people with scarred faces in a passage. And the Lav cemetery and endless tombstones. Like a museum of the dead. Nothing can wash our sins away, flush our brains, cleanse our souls. I’m restless. I’ve been trying for years to feel nothing. Betrayals… the dead… noise, I live with all that, and keep telling myself I’m fine. Why does it feel so good at the building rooftop? Probably because I can fall down there every second, and then all will be gone: no more love, no more father, no more pain. No more future. I will go inside, control my breathing and delve into their eyes. I won’t give up. Nor will I ask for explanations. I’ll take their pain away from them, swallow their happiness. Will I run away then, and remain silent forever? Helena is laughing, Vladimir going over his assets, Mother is a bit crazy, and David gives me a puff of his smoke. They make me lie. I’m traveling. I see a stewardess with Helena’s smile… a whisky and a pill for me, please. I’ll fall asleep, and maybe never wake up again. IGOR: The street names are not the same. I tried to memorize the new ones, still remembering the old ones. I observe the passers-by. Can’t recognize a single one of them. I wondered who will be the first familiar face I’ll bump into… Maybe that’s my punishment, to keep looking for the bullet that chose him. I can’t find it, Father. Though, even without the bullet, something had died then and there on that pavement: a foolish, vain, egocentric young man, who died there with his brother.
20 i kusur godina najtiražnija novina u bosni i hergegovini
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Flour in the Veins
Photography: V. Hasanbegović
Selma Alispahić, a champion of the SARTR, creatively and emotionally strong, always thorough and precise, exciting actress, instructor, says of Helena: Should I say it or not? A lump in her throat. I’ll have a coffee. If I could just hide in a hole. The dinner’s at seven. How did I end up here? They’re out of their fucking minds. She said… To wash David’s sweatpants. ON MY OWN! Send a message to Vladimir that I love him?!?!?! On my own!!! No way!!! I totally didn’t need this. We should’ve stayed home and watch TV. I’ll knock Valdimir down to size and I’m not sure if we’ll ever be the same again. Maybe we shouldn’t, after all. I’d love to see him being mad at me; this way I never know what’s on his mind. It should all go to hell once and for all. Maybe it would be for the best. David is attached to me, and if push comes to shove, we all know who he’s gonna side with. I’ve got nothing to lose. If I have to wait for Igor to return from combat every once in a while, fine with me. Then, there’ll be no more boring dinners with Klement and Nadija. To hell with all that, I’m not dead, I’m still alive and kicking. I wish I could love again. Don’t know if this shirt goes with jeans? Perhaps, I should wear a skirt. Suits my age. Bullshit… what’s happening to me? I have to tell David that Grandma and Grandpa don’t have Wi-Fi. HELENA: I did it all. Nothing to blame myself for. I had waited for you. I went to your brother in the States ‘cos he’d invited me, unlike you. We didn’t want to burden David with that. We wanted him to have a happy childhood. We wanted the best for him… I made Vladimir come back. I wanted my child to have grandparents. So we can visit like we did tonight. I wrote to you ‘cos I wanted my child to have an uncle. And brothers to have each other… We’re a family, we have each other! BH. TEATARSKI DNEVNIK
Jasenko Pašić, an actor with the SARTR, eager to turn every assignment into an artistic challenge, says of David: We’re going to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s. Mom says I should be patient and behave. Just be patient and behave. Sometimes I say what I don’t mean, and do what I don’t want. The more they want me to behave, the worse I get. Whatever they tell me, I’m against it, cause they’re boring and tiresome. I don’t know how to deal with them. I’ve got nowhere to go and nobody to talk to. They just don’t understand that I’m alone. And it’s not Grandma’s and Grandpa’s fault that they’re boring. I wanna go home! Vladimir says it will all make sense to me one day…then he pours some whisky and goes silent again. It’s not that I don’t want to know about the family, but they all seem so fucked up that I don’t know why I should care to know anything about them. I wanna go home! I though this all had to do with the return, but, no, I wasn’t happy there either. I need something else, but I don’t know what that would be. Somebody else, but I don’t know who. DAVID: Yes, we’re at the rooftop. That’s the only thing I’m certain of… When you’re above a city, like we are now, it’s as if you’re not there at all, right?
went to the South. He got married, became a successful tradesman and soon his son Klement was born. But, in 1941, Oskar’s shady roots (part German, part Hungarian, part Slav, part Jew) yet again determined his fate and for the second time he became a prisoner of war. He was loaded onto a truck. This time, it was a convoy of death.
WHO IS OSKAR?
His son Klement keeps his picture from 1914, and keeps telling his father’s life story to his sons, Vladimir and Igor, as well as his seventeen-year old grandson David, not realizing that the whole family, as if enchanted, has been eternally affected by this blow of fate and such cyclic historical events in which only the backdrop gets changed.
At 17 (in 1914) Oskar went to the Eastern Front. The Russians captured him and sent him to Tatarstan to a rich landowner, to cut woods for him. During the October Revolution, Oskar fought his way through Russia, through the civil war, deciding not to take either side. He returned home to a small town where nothing was the same as before. His father Pal found him a job, and Oskar
KLEMENT, observing a picture of Oskar: My father’s long gone now, but his eyes, these eyes painted a hundred years ago, filled with anticipation and fear… are still alive. They’ve been watching over us for the whole century, as if a warning sign we couldn’t read. These eyes saw an older, frightened Oskar being taken away for good…as if wondering our confidence that those days would never return.
It all seems like a dream. Only the backdrop gets changed.
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Flour in the Veins
STRUGGLING WITH THE REALITY WE DIDN’T CHOOSE From the Asymptote interview with Igor Štiks, conducted by Špela Močnik. In literature, the idea of place has been a strong driving force for many authors. You are a child of multiple nations: born in Sarajevo but having lived in Zagreb, Paris, Chicago and now living in Edinburgh. How does this experience influence the sense of place in your fiction? Extreme violence destroys existing places and cuts a person off from his or her past, a past that has not been allowed to develop naturally. When you experience this, the loss of what was actually there is combined with a sense of loss of what is about to happen, of what might have been. When the Bosnian war broke out, I was a 14-year old kid. Life had seemed to me full of promise. The shock I suffered was thus punctuated by that double (both imagined and actual) loss of place and the past that was attached to it. This was furthermore compounded by a sense of being kidnapped into someone else’s reality. I didn’t suffer alone. In the past 20 years, most people in Bosnia and elsewhere in the Balkans have been struggling with the reality they didn’t choose. I’ve come to learn that struggling often comes in different forms – acceptance, assimilation, mimicry, and exile, but also resistance. Regardless, the damage is done. My childhood has become a ‘lost land’ even if Bosnia is geographically still there. After going through this, it doesn’t matter if you later stay put in one place, because you’ve been irrevocably pushed into an exile from the reality, place and time you once knew. In other words, no one feels at home in these places any longer. I live, and often my characters live, between these different historical and geographic places. Temporal and physical displacement thus becomes the ‘place’ they spend most of their time in. Is your work as a whole a way of processing the Balkan war— understanding it in order to make sense of this tragedy? Certainly. It would be difficult to deny it. My novels deal with the topics easily associated with a traumatic event such as the Balkan war. Just imagine a 90-year-old person who has never left his or her home town, say, in some border region in the Balkans or Central Europe. That person, if happy enough to survive, must have lived in at least six or seven states, would had to have changed his or her official papers at least 10 times, all the while probably being bombarded with at least as many different political symbols. What’s more, that person must have lived under three or four different ideological regimes, and two or three different economic administrations, been governed in at least three or four different languages, and probably would have family members who hold different national identities today. These are the very same changes that my family and I have had to live through. It’s the very stuff of literature; the material with which fiction struggles and sometimes cannot even absorb.
Photography: I. Hrkač
As someone who speaks several languages and whose novels have been translated into several languages, do you think languages really shape the way we order our lives? I believe hybrids, nomads or bilingual people can provide an answer. Clearly, the logic and functions of a language can make it (im)possible for us to express certain things and thoughts. Its structure can help us to understand the world around us—just as it can constrain our understanding. By moving between languages and different linguistic places, your being can change. The way I view the world can therefore best be described as a personal Esperanto: a language that doesn’t exist as such but is nonetheless very real to me. Sometimes I wake up and can only name things in the Dalmatian dialect of my mother—maybe because it takes some time before the standard register kicks in. Other times, I can express things precisely only in French. However, I cannot write in this personal language as it only exists in my head. So, the very process of writing becomes an act of constant internal translation for me. It is a constant attempt to channel different personal ‘languages’ into, hopefully, an enriched prose of just one standard language. My Esperanto. There has been a surge of creative works that represent the trauma of the Balkan experience. What do you think of this trend? The relationship between war and literature is an old one, maybe even constitutive for literature. The recreation of a traumatic past through fiction – though this does not represent reality as it was – can have a powerful impact on people and their memory, often a much stronger impact than historiography. In spite of all the current conflicts in the world, the 1990s Balkan conflict is still strongly present as a milestone in contemporary history and artistic imagination, with Sarajevo especially symbolic of Yugoslavia and its destruction. It was indeed a conflict that wasn’t digested properly, intellectually or politically; it haunts us until this very day. For a very long time I didn’t want to deal with it head on. Only when I moved to Paris in the early 2000s did I feel a strong impulse to finally write about the war. Writing Elijah’s Chair was also a way for me to move on, in this sense it became a therapeutic activity. I think I’ve managed to translate the Balkan tragedy to the wider world precisely because there was nothing particularly ‘Balkan’ about that tragedy; it was a human tragedy that happened in the Balkans.
Photography: V. Hasanbegović
Igor Štiks was born in Sarajevo in 1977. He lived and received his education in his home town, as well as in Zagreb, Paris, Chicago, Edinburgh and Belgrade. His first novel A Castle in Romagna received the “Slavić” award for the Best Debut Book of 2000. It has since been translated into German, English, Spanish and Turkish. His second novel Elijah’s Chair (Fraktura, 2006) received the “Gjalski” and “Kiklop” awards for the Best Book of Fiction published that year in Croatia and it has since been translated into thirteen languages. The Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade staged a play based on this novel, directed by Boriš Liješević, which won the “BITEF 2011 Grand Prix”. His first book of verse History of a Flood (Fraktura) was published in 2008. With Srećko Horvat he authored a political essay “The Right to Rebellion – An Introduction to the Anatomy of Civic Resistance” (Fraktura, 2010) as well as the collection of essays Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism (Verso, London, 2015). His study “Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One Hundred Years of Citizenship” is to be published by London-based Bloomsbury. He is a research fellow at the Edinburgh College of Art. For his literary work and social activism he received the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Flour in the Veins is his first drama.
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Flour in the Veins SARAJEVO WAR THEATER IN SEARCH FOR PEACE Culture is a blend. Culture is a blend of different things from different sources. Orhan Pamuk
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ver since its inception, the Sarajevo War Theater SARTR has been making an effort to be not only a theater but an idea that cherishes the tradition in which culture, arts and theater are important tools in the struggle for a better and more just world. Our story begins on May 17, 1992, only fifteen days after a siege had been laid around the city, with every intention of taking its freedom away. In September of the same year, the Sarajevo War Theater hosted its first premiere – the play Shelter. Since then, we have been trying to be a territory free from any kind of fear. The focus of our work is always on the man, whether an actor, a character you watch or you – the spectator. So far, the Sarajevo War Theater has staged over eighty productions, some of which gained a cult status, such as Shelter, Ay Carmela, Longing and Death of Sylvia Plath, The Secret of Raspberry Jam, Animal Farm… All this time, we have been trying to be at the forefront of new ideas, a meeting point for various programs and, above all, dialogues between people. The idea behind the Sarajevo War Theater was to celebrate differences of the world we live in, and to be a place that fosters communication. In the past couple of years, the Sarajevo War Theater has forged strong partnerships with other theatrical companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo, the MESS Festival, and other friends worldwide. Last year, we ventured into two important coproductions together with Hebbel Am Uffer Berlin – HAU and Nottingham Playhouse. Regardless of the conditions we work in, we have been trying to not only preserve the dignity of our house, but theatrical art in general and our cultural reality in particular. We want to prove that what it all comes down to are dedication, hard work and creativity. And given the circumstances surrounding our early years, the Sarajevo War Theater certainly has valuable experience to build on. We are the living proof of the spiritual and cultural resistance to Fascism and aggression. Today, we cherish the memory of those days and work even harder to affirm the universal values. As such, we were and still are the bastion of principles and courage, which can stand up to the injustices and moral decay of the time we live in. The Sarajevo War Theater mirrors the reality, and the future, too. The future which sometimes appears bright, yet other times bleak. What it will be, is only down to us. One should never give up and surrender to hopelessness,
depression and pessimism. We are proud to be recognized as “the theater of soul”, and we would like to keep it that way. The people we work with are not only our colleagues, but our friends. Tonight, in coproduction with the MESS Festival, we present you our new play – Flour in the Veins. It was penned by the writer and intellectual at large Igor Štiks, and directed by Boris Liješević, currently one of the most prominent directors in Serbia. A glance at the cast promises a good show. Boris gathered up some notable actors belonging to different generations. From our theater, Selma Alispahić and Jasenko Pašić. Our guests, very dear friends and true professionals, are Kaća Dorić, Miki Trifunov, Izudin Bajrović and Admir Glamočak. Also on the team are Dubravka Zrnčić-Kulenović (dramaturg), Lejla Hodžić (costume design), Vedran Hrustanović (set design), Dušan Šegvić (music)... We gathered up together to prove that theater is still what it has always been – a basic human need! In its essence, even when it shakes us up, the theater is all about bringing peace to us! By: Nihad Kreševljaković Director of the Sarajevo War Theater
SARTR REPERTOIRE Igor Štiks: Flour in the Veins director: Boris Liješević Sarajevo War Theater and Scena MESS George Orwell: Animal Farm director: Dino Mustafić Doruntina Basha: Finger director: Sabrina Begović The Lamb / The Hen / The Eagle directors: Anica Tomić / Selma Spahić / Ana Tomović Scena MESS, BITEF Theater, Zagreb Youth Theater, in partnership with the Sarajevo War Theater Džejna Avdić: Mama 22 Theatrical Observatory Sarajevo War Theater, Sarajevo Puppetry Studio and Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo A Happy Evening in Sarajevo director: Dubravka Zrnčić-Kulenović Karim Zaimović: The Secret of Raspberry Jam director: Selma Spahić Sarajevo War Theater, in co-production with the Karim Zaimović Foundation, WARM Centre and Scena MESS Another Letter through Red Cross authors: Elma Selman and Sanela Krsmanović Scena MESS and Sarajevo War Theater Assembly director: Selma Spahić Sarajevo National Theater, Sarajevo War Theater, Chamber Theater ‘55 It was a Nice and Sunny Day director: Tanja Miletić Oručević Sarajevo War Theater and Scena MESS Jose Sanchis Sinisterra: Ay, Carmela director: Robert Raponja George Orwell 1984 Theatrical Observatory
Photography: V. Hasanbegović
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cena MESS is indented as a place of artistic freedom. It is a place where artists can explore new forms, question and deconstruct literary classics, write texts and host pre-premieres, make their own projects. It is perhaps, and above all, a space where they can take risks, because deep down inside we believe there is no progress in art without risk taking and venturing into uncharted territories. The results of which can be unpredictable and different, but never uninteresting or superficial.
Igor Štiks: Flour in the Veins director: Boris Liješević Sarajevo War Theater and Scena MESS
Scena MESS aims at creating an environment in which artistic teams working on plays can be put together based on the individual sensibilities of their members. Scena MESS does not have a permanent ensemble. Nor does it have its team of authors. Each play puts together a new team of artists.
Karim Zaimović: The Secret of Raspberry Jam director: Selma Spahić Sarajevo War Theater, in co-production with the Karim Zaimović Foundation, WARM Centre and Scena MESS
When we first established Scena MESS last year, we announced it as a utopian idea. A new theater in Sarajevo. Only a year later, we have our monthly repertoire, currently ten plays in it, and new projects scheduled for 2016. in addition to the pre-premiere of Flour in the Veins by Igor Štiks, directed by Boris Liješčević, and coproduced with the Sarajevo War Theater, we have scheduled for this year The Invisibles, directed by Nermin Hamzagić, Antigona, directed by Lenka Udovički, and in coproduction with the Ulysses Theater from the Brijuni Islands and CNT Ivan pl. Zajc from Rijeka, as well as an original project authored by Andraš Urban, and done together with the Chamber Theater ‘55. Scena MESS has staged plays in quite a few venues throughout BiH, thanks to the hospitality of our colleagues from BiH theater houses. Scena MESS, likewise, plans to return the favor, thus creating a meeting point between regional and international collaborations – a place that exudes diversity and praises otherness. And we are certain we will succeed in pulling this off. And tonight, at the Theater of Soul, the Sarajevo War Theater, we will be seeing a play directed by one of the best directors in the region, the monk of the theater, Boris Liješević. Fantastic actors and actresses, too, Kaća Dorić and Miki Trifunov, Selma Alispahić, Admir Glamočak, Izudin Bajrović and Jasenko Pašić. I’m so excited about it! What about you? By: Selma Spahić Artistic Director of the MESS International Theater Festival – Scena MESS
SCENA MESS REPERTOIRE
The Lamb / The Hen / The Eagle directors: Anica Tomić / Selma Spahić / Ana Tomović Scena MESS, BITEF Theater, Zagreb Youth Theater, in partnership with the Sarajevo War Theater
Another Letter through Red Cross authors: Elma Selman and Sanela Krsmanović Scena MESS and Sarajevo War Theater It was a Nice and Sunny Day director: Tanja Miletić Oručević Sarajevo War Theater and Scena MESS Heinrich von Kleist: Michael Kohlhaas director: Nermin Hamzagić Sarajevo National Theater and Scena MESS Dževad Karahasan: The Concert of Birds director: Aleš Kurt Chamber Theater ‘55 and Scena MESS Biljana Srbljanović: This Grave is Too Small for Me director: Dino Mustafić Heartefact Fund, BITEF Theater, Ulysses Theater, Testament Films, Chamber Theater ‘55, in partnership with Scena MESS Martin McDonagh: The Pillowman director: Luca Cortina Sarajevo Youth Theater and Scena MESS Almir Bašović, Almir Imširević, Doruntina Basha: Balkan Requiem director: Stevan Bodroža Bosnian National Theater in Zenica, Wien Kultur, BMUKK, Trembles Verein für freies Theater Hundsturm, Scena MESS Jesus authors: Babilonia Teatri Babilonia teatri, La Nef / Fabrique des Cultures Actuelles Saint-Dié-desVosges, Scena MESS
8
Flour in the Veins
FROM THE PLAY Photography: V. Hasanbegović
IGOR This music...reminds me of an urban legend. A famous jazz musician had a gig somewhere in Yugoslavia. Belgrade, or was it Zagreb...or Sarajevo... No, Sarajevo not for sure. He asked for heroin before the gig. A dealer appeared out of nowhere. The guy shot up then and there, and collapsed. They had to take him to the emergency room. Saved him by a hair’s breath. DAVID Overdose? IGOR No. Flour. (Giggling) Heroin cut with flour! (They all giggle) KLEMENT (Pensively) Flour in the veins! NADIA Just like us, eh? KLEMENT What do you mean? NADIA Our veins are full of flour. KLEMENT Our veins are full of flour? NADIA But unlike that jazz cat, nobody’s here to help us. Nobody’s gonna rid it from our bodies. DAVID It’s now being transmitted to kids, as a disease. HELENA And our days sometimes feel as heavy as iron chains. VLADIMIR And every day you steal off feels like a victory. IGOR Sometimes even the air hurts when it hits your lungs. KLEMENT And our hearts sometimes stop beating. NADIA Only to start beating again… wondering why they’re still beating.
PUBLIC INSTITUTION SARAJEVO WAR Theater SARTR – SARAJEVO, BIH Address: Gabelina 16 Phone / Fax: +387 33 66 51 89 Phone: +387 33 66 40 70 Email: teatarsartr@yahoo.com Web: www.sartr.ba
PUBLIC INSTITUTION MES – INTERNATIONAL Theater FESTIVAL – SCENA MESS Address: Maršala Tita 54/I Phone: +387 33 20 03 92 Fax: +387 33 21 19 72 Email: info@mess.ba Web: www.mess.ba
Director: Nihad Kreševljaković Marketing: Hana KaraDŽA Legal Department: Nermin Klapuh Accounting: Medina Aganović Secretary: Jasmina Mešić Maid: Senija Mujak
Director: Dino Mustafić Staff: Dajana Gurda, Lejla Hasanbegović, Ira Isović, Belma Jusufović, Mirna Ler, Aida Mujković, Bojan Mustur, Selma Spahić, Mirsada Škrijelj Public Relations: Una Bejtović, Emir Muhamedagić
Premiere Flour in the Veins April 8, 2015 Editor: Dubravka Zrnčić-Kulenović Design: Bojan Mustur Photography: Velija Hasanbegović Translation: Jovan ERANOVIĆ