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About author
MILENA MARKOVIĆ – playwright, poet, screenwriter. She was born on the April 9th 1974 in Zemun, Serbia and she has finished elementary school and gymnasium in Belgrade. She graduated from the Faculty of Drama Arts, Dramaturgy Department, in June 1998, with play Paviljoni, ili kuda idem, odakle dolazim i šta ima za večeru (Pavilions, or where do I go, where did I come from and what’s for dinner). This play she won a special award at Theater m.b.H. in Vienna and was premiered in 2001 in YDT, directed by Alisa Stojanović. After that, it was staged in National Theatre in Skopje (directed by Srđan Janićijević) and in Theater m.b.H. in Vienna (by Zijah Sokolović).
Book of poetry Pas koji je poj’o sunce (Dog Who Ate Sun) was published by Flavio Rigonat in April 2001 in Belgrade, and republished twice afterward.
Year 2002 she took part in the R.C.T. Summer International Residency in London with her new play Bog nas pogledao – Šine (God has looked upon us - Tracks), which was first produced in YDT, directed by Slobodan Unkovski.
It was also staged in Poznan, Poland, directed by Rafal Sabara. This production took part inSterijino pozorje Festivalin Novi Sad and won a special award for contemporary play.
In October of 2003 second book of her poetry, Istina ima teranje (The Truth is being in Heat), was published by LOM, Flavio Rigonat.
The YDT production of Tracks was part of the Festival of New Dramain Wiesbaden in 2004. Theatre Heute published the playin June of 2004.
Milena wrote a screenplay for a documentary The Miners’ Opera, directed by Oleg Novković.
Her play Šuma blista (The Wood Glitters) was staged for the first time in Schauspielhaus theatre in Zürich.
She won the prize"Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz" for the play Boat for Dolls.
German premiere of Tracks took place in Aachen in November 2005.
In 2005 she wrote script for the film Sutra ujutro (Tomorrow Morning) directed by Oleg Novković, produced by Zillion Film, Belgrade.
Premiere of Nahod Simeon (Simeon the Foundling) directed by Tomi Janežič was held on May 25th at Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad.
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About Director
SLOBODAN UNKOVSKI – Has directed productions across the former Yugoslavia, in Italy, Russia, USA, Belgium, Sweden, Greece...
His first direction in Yugoslav Drama Theatre was in 1982 with the play Hrvatski Faust (The Croatian Faust) by Slobodan Šnajder. Following year this production toured to Theatre of Nations Festival in Nancy. His directing for YDT include: Pozorišne iluzije (The Theatre of Illusions) by Pierre Corneille in 1991, Powder Keg by Dejan Dukovski in 1995 (YDT has participated with this production at eight festivals in Europe and in the world), Tracks by Milena Marković in 2002 and The Seagull by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov in 2003.
He taught acting and directing at post-graduate couses at several universities in USA.
Currently, he is a professor of Theatre Directing at the Faculty of Drama Arts in Skopje.
EROS, FINALLY
Milena Marković mingles morbid reality and fairytale heroines - Snowhite, Goldilocks, Thumbelina, Alice, and others – to show how all the little girls of this world are in fact initiated into the adults’ club through the fairytale, but not even in the chastest of dreams can this happen without lecherous slobbery and sweat that surround them…
Direct Hit
Insane dwarfs, cruel bears and frightening clowns pass through the stage, in order to show that childhood illusions and adult resignation dwell together and that the life of women and all of us is a story of evil and innocence, in which, as time goes by, white women’s blouses become creased by greasy fingers and soiled by blood, sperm and the breath of human incontinence. …
Slobodan Unkovski uses the so-called ‘jellyfish’ strategy in his plays, and for that The Doll Ship was an excellent inspiration. Nothing ‘happens’ in his performances, but everything lasts until the pieces of the brain hit the auditorium. In this way in The Doll Ship we see a demimonde of phoney lovers, bizarre bullies and petty sowers of evil, collectively sniggering at the first unprotected innocence which they are all going to spit out lifeless in the end because of some dark desire for fun. Since Milena Marković is sharp and tender, vulgar and subtle at the same time, the actors, using a combination of simplicity and icy expressionism, perform as realistically as it is needed to be magical, and as magically as it is necessary to remain evil. Do fairytales teach us anything but that life will turn out differently? Does life show us anything except that, apart from this chewed up and wasted one, there is some other life?
Realism with Reserve
That realism with reserve is well mastered by the Serbian actors. In the set designed by Meta Hočevar, which reminds one of a butcher’s shop, a cemetery and a drawing-room at once, some twenty actors parade before the audience. The stars of the evening were Voja Brajović, Bogdan Diklić and Branislav Lečić, but also (less known to the Croatian audience) Boris Isaković and Jasmina Avramović, who were the most convincing representatives of the school of acting in which realism is not used as an excuse for over-acting and in which fantasy becomes the means of sinister Brechtian humour.
Bojan Munjin, Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia.
IMAGES OF DESTRUCTION AND CRETINIZATION
The drama by Milena Marković is not only a variation, or a paraphrase of the fairytale, but the fairytale itself, eaten away by time, people, locusts, wars, ideologies, philosophies, and phraseologies, and in which the noble-hearted, the princesses and princes, have no part to play; neither has that third, clever son, who restors the violated order to the world and the mind. The ensemble of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, led by director Slobodan Unkovski, performs the drama by Milena Marković showing a lively and abundant feeling for the tragic without grandeur, the spiritual fall and vulgarity, for misery and hypocrisy, for the grotesque in which the very being of the fairytale disappears… Powerful and convincing, comic and tragic images and scenes, shapes and kinds of modern destruction and cretinization… An extraordinary cast of more than twenty actors… A performance deserving attention. Among the eight images you will find the one you especially like. In my case these are, first and foremost, The Swamp with Boris Isaković and Tanja Pjevac, and then Hansel and Grethen with Jasmina Avramović.
Muharem Pervić, Politika, 7 June 2006
A DOUBLE TRAP
Giving up, to a certain extent, even some important features in the writing style she has employed so far, Milena Marković, who is at the moment one of the leading and certainly the most interesting personalities in Serbian dramatic literature, has described in The Doll Ship the woman’s effort to define her sexual and personal identity, which is, in effect, the woman's existential drama, defined first of all by her sexuality…
Vladimir Stamenković, NIN, 16 June 2006
BOAT FOR DOLLS
The newest play by Milena Marković represents a change in her opus till now, not only thematically but also in style. Milena, known according her vehement, almost naturalistic style, to her newest play brings more and more poetical elements, and that unusual, original connection brings unexpected results. (…) One of the main director’s interventions was when Unkovski decided the heroine in each scene is played by a different actress. Thus, text becomes universal, separates from the concrete and becomes almost a drama essay. Different actresses play the heroine in various ways, although they still keep the general line of the performance and contribute to the excitement of the performed act. (…) “All stars” ensemble is rather inspired, but best critics deserve Boris Isaković, Bogdan Diklić, Tamara Vučković and specially Milica Mihajlović, who probably made her role in the most complex way, combining sharpness of speech and unusual, natural sensuality.
Boban Jevtić, YellowCab, June 2006
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Cast 
