Crno zlato / Photo by: Dragana Udovičić
This year’s, 59 edition of Bitef will be taking place from 14 to 20 September under the slogan “Dare to Learn”. The Belgrade audience will have an opportunity to see seven performances from Argentina/Spain, Montenegro, Italy, Lebanon, Portugal, Slovenia and Serbia.
This year’s program was created by the President of Bitef’s Board and Curator Spasoje Ž. Milovanović who points out that the common denominator of this year’s selection should not be sought in the theme, style or poetics, but in the complexity of the reflection of the contemporary moment:
“The performances created in various circumstances regarding production and artistic traditions are not bound by aesthetic choices, political stance or a unified world view. What brings them together is a consistent rejection of simplified explanations, ready-made moral judgements and patterns which distil the complexity of the human experience into a single interpretation. The centre of almost all of the performances features people who share the same space, same origin, same community or the same experience, but are no longer capable of finding a mutual language to describe that world”, he explains in the Word of the Curator.
In the explanation of the selection he offers an insight regarding each of the performances, pointing to their specificities in theme and dramaturgy, as well as the unison manner in which they build this year’s selection.
Performance that will open this year’s festival is “The Medea Case”, directed by Diego de Brea, a coproduction of the Montenegrin National Theatre and Cultural Centre Bar. Commencing with Euripides’s tragedy, this production shifts focus from the event itself to the manner it’s talked about, the way it shapes judgement. Intertwining the contemporary partner relationships and the mythical story of Medea it poses the questions of responsibility, guilt and criteria we use to assess others.
The Main program will also feature “When I Saw the Sea” by the Lebanese author and director Ali Chahrour, a piece born in the immediate context of the bombing of Lebanon in 2024. Through the testimonies of the migrant workers trapped in the kafala system this production speaks of labour, isolation, violence and permanent invisibility.
“Anhovo” hails from Slovenia, written by Žiga Divjak and Katarina Morano, produced by Slovene National Theatre Nova Gorica. This documentary performance rises from the history of the place in the Soča valley of the same name, exploring how certain decisions continue to draw consequences long after being made, intertwining the past and the present, without imposing a singular interpretation of the events.
“Audition” brings the Portuguese collective Teatro Praga back into a space it was forced to leave almost two decades ago - the old warehouse of the “Miguel Bombarda” hospital in Lisbon, now rearranged and different, both architecturally and in the context of its role in the city. Just like the space has been altered, so has the collective - the one that’s returning is different from the one that left. “Audition” stems from precisely that gap between the memory of a place and the place as is today, using the form of the audition as a frame for confronting the past.
The Belgrade audience will also see “Frankenstein_Diptych (Love Story + History of Hate)” by the Italian company Motus, authered by Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande. The cult novel by Mary Shelley inspired two performances that function as a whole, exploring the mechanisms a community uses to set its own boundaries, determining who belongs and who is rejected.
Domestic production in the Main program will be represented by Dejan Dukovski’s “Black Gold”, directed by Oliver Frljić, produced by Belgrade Drama Theatre - a story that will, revealing slowly the family relations, old conflicts, debts and repressed memories, build a world where nothing is really stable: identities, family roles, social positions and interpersonal relationships constantly shift meaning.
The selection is complete with the performance “Kill me” by the Argentinian author Marina Otero, as it is the third part of her long-term project “Remember tolive” that features pieces “Fuck me” (2020), “Love me” (2022) and “Kill me” (2024). All three performances stem from her autobiographic material and her own psychiatric diagnosis, opening the theme of the relations between life, performing and their stage structure.
The complete program and more information about the performances at the 59 Bitef will be available at the official site bitef.rs, as will be all the relevant information regarding this year’s festival.
The patron of the 59 Bitef is the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade. Coca-Cola HBC, a partner of the festival of many years, has also provided support to this year’s edition of the festival.
