Битеф

Be lgrade Dra ma Theater

ZIVOT 8R.2 I GENESIS №2

Ivan Viripaev GENESIS №2

Directed by:

Anja Suša

Novica Antić

Translation:

Set Design:

Marija Kalabić

Costume design:

Maja Mirković

Composer:

Vladimir Pejković

Production manager:

Srđan Obrenović

Stage manager:

Dejan Popović

Daniel Sič (Actor in the role of the prophet John), Ivan Tomić (Actor in the role of God - Arkadije lljič), Milena Pavlović (Actress in the role of Lot's wife/Antonjina Velikanova/)

C ■

LOT'S WIFE: "...Ivan, the plot is an illusion of a meaning, and the meaning is intrinsically tragic" (Ivan Viripaev: Life No. 2) When I first read this script, various impressions stirred inside me. Delight, curiosity, confusion, delight again... Even before reading the play I had known that Viripaev was a marginal author in contemporary dramatic literature, and although I had expected that I would need to think deeply about “what the author wanted to say" it is difficult to explain all the thoughts that whirled in my mind while reading this play that is evidently the most radical of all that this author has written so far. The thing that immediately attracted me to this play is the active presence of the author, and his indirect addressing the audience in first person. Playing with the elements of personal and private in creating the dramatic structure. There was a feeling that, as the director of this performance, I also had that responsibility. Here I had a task not to create illusion, but to abolish it, to manipulate with it selectively, that is to use theatre not as a place for an escape from the reality but as a place in which the reality is to be met. Although the play is constructed around the biblical myth about Lot's nameless wife, and although it declaratively searches for the meaning and the gist of human existence, which is the essence of artistic inspiration from time immemorial, in my opinion it has very different aspirations than to relay the wrapped existentialist messages to the spectator. Actually, it offers freedom to the spectator/ viewer to, through the search for meaning that in this play is carried out by Antonjina Velikanova, think about the meaning of his own existence (the spectator also has an option not to use this opportunity), and at the same time it offers to the performers an inspiring framework for reexamining their means of expression, as well as the range of expression in contemporary theatre, in other words - their own existence on stage. Therefore, I think that this is not the play about religion, or mental illness, at least not only about that. That would be too simple and not too original. I see it as an auto-ironic and witty dedication to the theatre and all of its possibilities and preconceptions. This is, among other things, a reflection upon our expectations from the theatre, whether we stand on the stage or sit in the audience. AnjaSuša