WORLD THEATRE FESTIVAL 2009.
The 7th edition of the World Theatre Festival will be held in Zagreb from September 18 through 26 and will host some of the world's most celebrated theatre directors. For the first time Croatian audiences will be able to see works by authors such as Christoph Marthaler and Heiner Goebbels - German directors who set trends in European theatre. Belgian director and visual artist Jan Lauwers is an innovator oriented toward post-dramatic theatre, and Lev Dodin is an authentic continuator of the Russian dramatic tradition. Spiro Scimone, a dramatist, actor and director, is an original voice of the new Italian theatre.
The World Theatre Festival will open with Dodin's dramatization of Grossman's novel Life and Fate, a simple family story offering a vast panorama of the events and problems of the 20th and 21st centuries. In our everyday lives we still encounter modern guises of fascism, communism, nationalism, totalitarianism, extremism, cruelty, and lack of freedom. In spite of everything, people still continue to live, love, and hope. The play will be given by the Maly Teatr from Saint Petersburg.
ISBELLA'S ROOM, directed by Jan Lauwers and staged by Brussels' Needcompany, marks a momentous event in the past decade of the world theatre production. If LIFE AND FATE is a historical fresco depicting misfortunes of Gulag prisoners, Isabella’s Room is one woman’s confessional story about her life. All those who were important to her tell it with her. Many of them are dead: her parents, her friends, her lovers. Not only do they tell Isabella’s story, they also sing it. One rarely gets an opportunity to witness such an open, intoxicating and an inviting play.
Goebbels's play STIFTER'S THINGS, produced by the Théâtre Vidy Lausanne, is a work inspired by Adalbert Stifter’s writing process. The performance/installation takes Stifter’s text as a confrontation with the unknown and the forces that man does not master; for him the text is a plea for the readiness to adopt criteria and judgments different from our own, but also an opportunity to come to terms with unfamiliar cultural references, particularly in the domain of ecological disasters, which Stifter already envisaged with his usual eye for detail. This play without actors calls us to rediscover a forgotten emotionality, invites us into a world of mechanical musical instruments and magical landscapes created on stage.
In his piece THE ENVELOPE Spiro Scimone constructs an unreal world that leans toward paradox. An innocent passer-by is found guilty of a murder he didn’t commit, he is beaten up and knocked around with a truncheon, forced into making a false confession, finally killed, his body then hung from a hook and actually eaten by the horrific exponents of the authorities, accompanied by shots of whisky and group photos. A decadent image of power unfortunately goes beyond fantasy and becomes a caricatured representation of dictatorship deeply rooted in the images of certain inflated leaders on the world stage, hidden behind greasy smiles that we could easily liken to many well-known faces. THE ENVELOPE was directed by Francesco Sframeli, and staged by Compagnia Scimone Sframeli from Messina.
For two decades Christoph Marthaler has been one of the most prominent world’s theatre directors. Whether through classical literature or folk tales, his plays depict the world that we knew before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In his play THE FRUIT FLY produced by the Berlin Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg-Platz, Marthaler wonders whether it is possible to to rebuild the passion contained in opera and consequently draw conclusions about as yet unknown genetic information that may enable us to understand the present. Why do researchers study genetic material of all vertebrates – including those of humans and the species that has developed from them – by observing fruit flies? Marthaler’s world is a deep and reflective one, but it is also upbeat, comical, filled with life’s paradoxes. It is impossible to imagine contemporary theatre without his contribution.
Productions from Russia, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy will be staged at the Zagreb Youth Theatre (ZKM), Croatian National Theatre (HNK), Zagreb Puppet Theatre as well as Zagreb Fair.
Ivica Buljan and Dubravka Vrgoč
