Directing and dramaturgy: Nenad Colic
Actors: Masa Jelic, Ranko Trifkovic, Marko Potkonjak, Jelena Martinovic, Dejan Stojkovic, Nenad Colic
Scenery and costume: Ivana Colic
Pr manager: Dubravka Vujinovic
Photography: Milanka Balaban
Text: V. Woolf: ‘Three Guineas’, ‘The Waves’, Sophocle: ‘Antigone, A. Einstein – quotations
Music: Serbian traditional songs: ‘Grow up, Grow up, my Green Pine’ – written down by the motives of song from Homolje, north-eastern Serbia; ‘Turtledove was Cooing’ – from south-eastern Serbia, region Krajište, around Bosilevgrad; ‘Why does the Muddy Morava Flow’ – from north-eastern Serbia, region Crnorečje, around Boljevac, village Dobrujevac; ‘I was Telling you so, Mile’ – western Serbia, region Ivanjički Stari Vlah, village Srednja Reka; Elvis Presley – ‘Aloha Oe’, ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’, ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’, ‘Teddy Bear’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘Always On My Mind’; Saint – Saens – ‘The Swan’
Premiere: 1.07.2003. Belgrade, Cultural Centre REX
Production: PLAVO theatre
Supported by: Assembly of City of Belgrade – Culture Department, Open Society Fund, Swiss Cultural Program – Pro Helvetia
Festivals: Gradiska 2003 – Bosnia; MANÖVER Play Serbia 2003 – Leipzig, Germany; Tremafest 2004 – Ruma, Serbia; Zrenjanin, Serbia 2004; Theatrical Meetings 2004 – Olsztyn, Poland; Crnorecje 2005 – Boljevac, Serbia; Trnfest 2005 – Ljubljana, Slovenia ; Ex Theatre Fest 2005 – , Serbia; Kanjiza 2005, Serbia; Theatre – Meeting – Place 2006 – The Grotowski Centre, Wroclaw, Poland
It seems that sometimes finger of death must fall upon the roar of life
in order to stop this very life from crushing us.
Virginia Woolf
‘This performance is dedicated, first of all, to women of Blue Theatre, but immediately afterwards to everyone who doesn’t mind if we take a glance at the question of “respecting of great principles of justice, equality and freedom”. It is based on an attempt to put the essential phenomena of life and work of “the freest woman writer of England”, Virginia Woolf, as a pattern for a yearlong theatre researching process, as well as for the performance itself.
One of Virginia Woolf’s biographers in a comment for her novel “The Waves”, said: “This is the Book of Genesis which is not even apocryphal, which only moved from “sweetened symbol of the cross”. We also agreed with such a viewpoint, not only of one novel, but of the whole life and work of Virginia Woolf. To open the question of genesis of this world in which history so many horrible things and so much injustice happened and unfortunately it is still happening, as well as to open its system of values in secular and spiritual sense, and at the same time so lively to praise the beauties of that same world and to feel at the bottom of the being the most subtle spiritual impulses the way Virginia Woolf felt them – that was the limit to achieve. That’s why we also tried to make the Performance of Genesis which is not apocryphal and which didn’t even move from the symbol of the cross, which is only a different angle, which is in fact a fantastic seeing of the gospel in agitating thoughts and dreams of Virginia Woolf and in her affection for Sophocle’s Antigone as the brightest model from history of literature.
This performance tried to revive intellectual and moral attitudes of Virginia Woolf from her book “Three Guineas” in which she, by the words of the same biographer, stated some basic thesis of social, feministic and pacifistic theory which are completely out of military spirit of socialistic, feministic and pacifistic praxes, but so radical that no one have still reached them. In its essence this is an anti-war performance which waited for its moment to happen.
Nenad Colic, 2003