Despite the great excitement and apprehension due to the responsibility I felt when taking on the moderation of the Meeting the Authors last year, I gathered the courage to propose a change to the usual concept. The curators and organizers showed even greater bravery by entrusting me to implement these changes. After ten years of experience in mediation and researching such formats, I realized that freedom of thought and speech is directly proportional to the freedom of bodily feeling. The previous concept, where authors were on one side and the audience on the opposite side, conditioned one-way communication, resulting in authors appearing didactic while the audience remained in a passive position. The proposal was to reorganize the usual spatial relationships toward a more open, immediate, and intimate dialogue. The program's title - Meeting, implies the equality of multiple voices, so the challenge lay in how to arrange the present bodies in a way that would give everyone the opportunity to have their voice heard if they wished, while also allowing the possibility for someone to observe and listen if they found it more comfortable, and to leave room for reconsideration. A small and seemingly insignificant change turned out to be crucial in creating an intimate yet stimulating atmosphere, enabling relationships of trust, closeness, and goodwill to form among the participants of the Meeting. This choice undoubtedly had to be disappointing for the few participants who find security in clear and precise structures, but on the other hand, we saw how this approach encouraged many who found the more relaxed setting as an opportunity to personally address each other without fear of being judged. Memory, the only trace that remains after a performance, now includes the discussion about it, which, thanks to the revelation of layers of individual experiences and interpretative processes, lacks no performativity either. In this way, we achieved that the community of the audience and artists is created in a natural, organic way, which strives for transformative processes for all participants, which is, after all, at the core of the idea of the theatrical experience. We will continue in this direction this year as well. Welcome to the Meetings!
Ana Pinter, Meeting the Authors moderator
Ana Pinter is a theatre director, researcher, drama and theatre pedagogue from Belgrade, working within the artistic group Tri groša (Threepenny). Ana creates experimental, multidisciplinary, and participatory performance forms, focusing primarily on the audience, particularly children and young people, with whom she develops unique methodological approaches in informal educational programs "Little Theatre Experts" and "Young Theatre Experts." Ana has been involved with the Bitef festival since her student days and, since 2023, has been participating as a moderator for the Meeting the Authors programme. From the outset of her professional career, Ana has advocated for an open, free, and solidaristic independent scene, collaborating with numerous individuals and organisations both nationally and internationally.