Dedicated to Knut Geissler

 Scenario and directing: Nenad Colic

With: Jelena Martinovic, Marko Potkonjak, Maša Jelic, Dejan Stojkovic

Secenery and costume design: Ivana Colic

Executive manager: Dubravka Vujinovic

Poster and program design: Ivana Colic

Instructor of classical Indian dance: Violeta Purhmajer (Venurati)

Music: Traditional spiritual music of ancient India – Bhajan; ‘Svilen konac’ – Serbian traditional song; W. A. Mozart: Symphony No. 40; Prince: ‘Purple Rain’, ‘Te Amo Corazon’

Dances: Classical Indian dances: Bharata-natyam, Rajasthan

Text: H. Hesse – ‘Steppenwolf’, ‘Essays’, ‘Pilgrimage’; I. Heilbut – ‘Mission of Hermann Hesse in Our Time’

Literature: H. Hesse: ‘Demian’, ‘Narcissus and Goldmund’, ‘Siddartha’, ‘The Glass Bead Game’, ‘The Art of Idleness’, ‘Self-Will’, Collected prose ‘Happy Is the One Who Can Love’; K.Ristic: ‘The Trap of Possessiveness’

Premiere: 24.06.2006. Halle, Germany – Festival Stadt Deiner Liebe, Neues Theatre Halle, Kulturinsel Halle

Co-production: PLAVO theatre & Festival Stadt Deiner Liebe, Neues Theatre Halle, Kulturinsel Halle

Supported by:Festival Stadt Deiner Liebe, Neues Theatre Halle, Kulturinsel Halle, Belgrade City Council – Culture Department, Ministry of Culture of Serbia

Festivals: Stadt Deiner Liebe 2006 – Halle, Germany; Pancevo, Serbia 2007; Crnorecje 2007 – Boljevac, Serbia; Project Atelie 2007 – Gdansk, Poland; Openings 2007 – The Grotowski Institute, Wroclaw, Poland; INFANT 2007 – Novi Sad, Serbia; Cultural Centre Mladenovac 2007 – Mladenovac, Serbia; 20th anniversary of Theatre Specchie e memorie 2007 – Milan, Italy; Festival OFF Europa 2008 – Leipzig & Dresden, Germany; Festival 360° 2008 – Bielefeld, Germany; Two Open Weeks of PLAVO theatre 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013;

I SING LIKE A BIRD is a verse from Goethe’s poem “The Singer”. Fifteen years old Herman Hesse recited this poem while studying and serving in an evangelistic monastery when his tutor criticized him for reciting it too proudly and too freely. Young Hesse wrote it down in a letter to his parents from which it can be seen that this was one of the first barbs of the repression of the outer world, which was painfully taken by truth and freedom loving sensual being of Herman Hesse.

I SING LIKE A BIRD is an expression of our spiritual need. This is one more performance by Plavo Pozoriste that has been based on contradictions of the question of freedom. This time from the viewpoint of a European citizen whose life emits senselessness and confusion, insanity and dream, like the life of all the people who do not want to lie to themselves any more. Herman Hesse’s feeling of pain that threads its way through all of his works and reverberates through his life as a cry for civil freedom, was our inspiration and our comfort.

I SING LIKE A BIRD is an adventure of a group of artists who do not leave their ground but go on a pilgrimage following the footsteps of Herman Hesse and so arrive to the magic theatre where everything is possible, under condition that you previously leave your problematic personality in the cloakroom. It is possible to erase the boundaries between culture and spirituality, it is possible for joy to oppose to the centuries of fighting, it is possible for emancipation to develop, in spite of xenophobia and possessiveness.

I SING LIKE A BIRD is a story that leads to salvation. A writer encounters characters from his novels. They help him to experience inner change. So as to make this happen he must want the change and must go through all of his inner wide space. If he remains on the narrow piece of his being he is going to be ruined. Spiritual change is one of the most difficult human temptations. Its reward is growing up.

I SING LIKE A BIRD is a process of meditation within which we tried to influence the cliché of our mental and body system that has been shaped by coordinates of European tradition. Following the traces of our writer we also set off towards the East. We learned and acquired basic knowledge in the field of Indian traditional and spiritual music and Indian classical dances Bharata-natyam and Rajasthan. For us, it was an important acting and human experience. It helped us enter a different civilization space where we encountered many principles and laws we had known little about up to then. It all enriched our lives very much and changed our attitude towards the theatre work.

I SING LIKE A BIRD is a performance that started from the position of a citizen in the  process of individuation. Then it came to a magic realization of Hesse’s dream about the joint of the two worlds, the two civilizations. It continued its searching following the ways of devotion, ways of trust, ways of compliance. Finally it arrived to the laugh of immortality, laugh over one self.

Thanks to Herman Hesse.

PLAVO  theatre, 2006

Nenad Colic