ABOUT PERFORMANCE
Uglješa Šajtinac: What I wanted to say is that Banat is a story of people executed on the way to their homes. …What about my generation? Why do we have to pose that eternal question? Why were some executed and others weren’t? Why have I survived? Was it worth it? As one who is alive and here I will always say no. In many of those who are no longer among us there was more vital energy than in myself. But the vacancy has to be filled, hasn’t it?
Many are ready to interpret a happy ending as kitsch. But what kind of philosopher, artist, conversationalist are you if, with all that talk about how black things are, you don’t offer a way out? A happy ending really matters, because otherwise we would all go our separate ways without a need to see each other again. Or, as the song says, ‘I know we’ll meet again…’
(from the programme of the performance of Banat)
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ABOUT AUTHOR
UGLJEŠA ŠAJTINAC (born in 1971 in Zrenjanin) graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Department of Dramaturgy, in 1999. On this occasion he received the Josip Kujundžić Award as the best student of dramaturgy, and the Slobodan Selenić Award for the best degree drama, A Right to a Russian. From 2003 to 2005 he worked a dramaturge of the Serbian National Theatre (SNT) in Novi Sad, where he was the editor of the collection of new dramatic texts by young writers, entitled PROJECT 3. Dramas from this collection were performed as part of a festival also entitled PROJECT 3 which took place at the SNT in May 2005. Since 2005 he has taught dramaturgy at the Academy of Art in Novi Sad.
Plays Performed by Uglješa Šajtinac:
Huddersfield
TUTA Theatre Ghicago (2006), American rendition
With the new, American translation of the play he participated in New Dramatists’ literary workshop in New York in 2005 (New Dramatists is an organization collecting and promoting the work of playwrights coming primarily from the United States).
Yugoslav Drama Theatre (YDT), 2005.
The first performance of the play took place at Leeds’ West Yorkshire Playhouse in the English rendition, the only play by a Serbian writer on the official repertoire of a professional theatre in Britain.
Do You Speak Australian
Toša Jovanović Theatre in Zrenjanin, 2002
A Right to a Russian
Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, 2001
Prop-Manager
British performance – Festival of the Contemporary European Drama, Huddersfield, Great Britain, 2000.
Belgrade Drama Theatre (BDT), 1999
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REVIEWS
Banat, a sea of fields, the Tisa, Miloš Crnjanski’s mulberry and cherry trees, the Banat and Volksdeutcher people, war and revolution, handsome lads and even more handsome lassies, youth, growing up, introduction to life, portraits of people in their youth, love and fallout, passions and being impassioned, fanaticism and understanding, predestinations and faraway lands of imagination, young actors and a writer who once more conquers and surpasses his Banat descent and experience, a director from the zone of memory and melancholy… The landscape and repressed dramatics of Banat are suggested by the stage design by Jasmina Holbus, creative video by Boris Miljković and music by Isidora Žebeljan… Characters in the play are young Banat people who don’t exaggerate their efforts to prove and emphasise the fact. We can feel it in the melody of their speech, the occasional choice of words too. Director Dejan Mijač ‘plays’ softly, ever so softly, with no desire to mock, settle debts or caricature the tragic youthful obsessions and misguidance… The old master Dejan Mijač has clearly enjoyed working with young actors on the play in which he found a part, a small particle at least, of his own experience, the melody and scent of fields we left behind…. Almost equally successful were: Milutin Milosević (Svetislav), Nikola Rakočević (Dobrivoj), Jelena Petrović (Djudja), Petar Benčina (Ervin), Nenad Ćirić (Jozef), and especially Dubravka Kovjanić (Magdalena). Srdjan Timarov is notable as Matijas, but as if dropped in the midst of this play straight from the upcoming one by Uglješa Šajtinac, a play that we are certainly looking forward to, and with already confirmed, credible grounds for doing so. Costumes by Maja Mirković unambiguously recognise important traits of Banat protagonists and point them out. A production that is not as large as to be larger than yourselves and not small enough for you not to have reasons to see it. That is the life where I too have fallen, the poet would say.
Muharem Pervić, Politika
This dream team Šajtinac – Mijač – Žebeljan walked us through our memories and feelings, our doubts and everything we know and set it all in motion in a way that is painful and touching, candid and – sincere.
Goran Cvetković, Radio Belgrade 2
Two things were confirmed by the premiere of Banat. Firstly, that Uglješa Šajtinac is a playwright that will inevitably be a part of every future anthology of Serbian plays, and secondly, that YDP rejuvenated its ensemble successfully and painlessly. Director Dejan Mijač interprets the fates of people of Banat in a space defined by video-representation of Banat landscapes and a void in which the young ensemble of YDP were the star speakers. Their performance was, namely, a tightly woven score of soft tones of misfortune, confidently executed by Milutin Milošević, Petar Benčina, Nikola Rakočević, Jelena Petrović and the veterans (more or less) Dubravka Kovjanić, Srdjan Timarov and Nenad Ćirić.
Željko Jovanović, Blic
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CAST
