VidaOgnjenović
DON KRSTO

CAST

ABOUT PLAY

VIDA OGNJENOVIC – DON KRSTO
Melancholy is the fundamental tone of the play Don Krsto. All plays by Vida Ognjenović are melancholic plays… (Kanjoš Macedonović, Kako zasmejati gospodara, Je li bilo Kneževe večere, Devojka modre kose, Jegorov put). Melancholy as voluntary exile, youth, passion, melancholy as migration, theatre, illness, melancholy as the light over a Mediterranean landscape, as a quest for a lost sound, as love....

In a melodrama, all characters are good by definition, and the central ones are destined for everything to go wrong for them, to be hurt by what's best in them. For this reason, Don Krsto is a state of the art melodrama. A stylised melodrama, a melancholic melodrama.

This is a play about foreign travels of a poet, a canon and a poet, but also a play about a great friendship (Krsto and Bruno), a friendship based on gift and loneliness and, most of all, a play about love. About the love of two brothers, two twin brothers, for one woman, for Lucija. And what a love story this is, Lucija and Don Krsto... Don Krsto is a play about love, because it is love that makes even the stars move in their orbs.

ABOUT AUTHOR

VIDA OGNJENOVIĆ Born in Dubočke near Nikšić, grown up and educated in Vojvodina and Serbia. Completed her primary school education in Vrbas and her high school education in Sremski Karlovci. Graduated from the Department of Literature of Faculty of Philology in Belgrade (1963) and Department of Directing of Belgrade Academy for Theatre, Film and TV (1965). Commenced her postgraduate studies in Paris, at the Sorbonne, and received her MA in theory and practice of directing at the University of Minnesota, USA (1972). From 1974 through 1979, she worked as an assistant professor at Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade. She was elected Head of Drama of Belgrade National Theatre in 1977 and remained associate director there following the completion of her term of office.
As a lecturer, she taught at universities in Los Angeles (UCLA), Chicago (UIC) from 1981-1982, and visited all major universities in the USA as a guest lecturer on several occasions (1985, 1991, 1997, 1999). She is currently a full time professor at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad.
Her work as a director comprises nearly a hundred theatre productions, as well as a great number of television and radio productions, many of which of her own plays.
She wrote a great number of plays that were staged and published on numerous occasions. As a director, she has worked with many theatres throughout former Yugoslavia (Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia), and has also directed abroad. She directed both local and international classic plays, as well as contemporary and new plays. She has received all major playwriting and directing awards, including October Award of the City Of Belgrade For the Art Of Theatre (1984), Gold Laurel Wreath for directing (Sarajevo 1985), The Vuk Award (1992), Sterija Best Play Award (1991), Joakim Vujić Award for the art of theatre (2001), Sterija Best Play Award (2002), Sterija Best Directing Award (2002).
Her published writings include prose and essays. Collections of stories: Otrovno mleko maslačka (Prosveta, Beograd, 1994), Stari sat (Prosveta, Beograd, 1996), Najlepše pripovetke Vide Ognjenović (Prosveta, Beograd, 2001), Izabrane i nove pripovetke (DOO: Dnevnik, Novi Sad, 2007). Novels: Kuća mrtvih mirisa (Prosveta, Beograd, 1995), Preljubnici (Stubovi kulture, 2007). Travel accounts: Putovanje u putopis (Zrenjaninska biblioteka, 2005). Plays: Melanholične drame (SKZ, Beograd, 1991), Setne komedije (SKZ, 1994), Kanjoš Macedonović (Oktoih, 1989, '94, 2004), Devojka modre kose (Ars dramatica, Beograd, 1994), Mileva Ajnštajn (Stubovi kulture, 1988, 2002), Jegorov put (Oktoih, 2001). Collected plays in three volumes: Drame I, II, III ( Stubovi kulture, 2000, 2001, 2002).
She has received many significant literary awards, including: Prosveta Book of the Year award (1994), Andrić Award for story (1995), Branko Ćopić Award for prose (1996), Laza Kostić Award for best novel (1996), Karolj Sirmani Award for stories (1996), Ramonda Serbica Award for prose (1998), Todor Manojlović Award for contemporary literary expression, Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša Award for literary work (1999), National Library Book Of The Year Award (2007). Her prose and plays have been translated into English, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and German.
She lives and works in Belgrade.

top

REVIEWS

Duality

Don Krsto Ivanović, a nobleman’s son, a canon and a town teacher, was born in Budva in the first half of the seventeenth century. At age 25 he leaves for Italy, and, parallel to building a career of a successful scientist, writes poetry and becomes a highly esteemed writer of opera libretti. Using this historical character of a great intellectual of the time, Vida Ognjenović writes a tale of any thinking man in any time, a man condemned to duality, dilemmas and eternally choosing sides. To leave or to stay, to search for answers in science or in arts, to fulfil one’s own life cravings or put on constricting garments of discipline, to give in to love or to secure oneself in solitude…
The scenes between brothers, exquisitely performed by Vojin Ćetković as Krsto and Ivan Bosiljčić as Tripo, are the strongest in terms of emotions, the scenes the play begins and ends with, thus making a cathartic whole. Duality is carried out through the character of a man with a thousand professions and biographies, an aspiring swindler and a top level expert at some things, Bruno, Don Krsto’s alter ego, of whom it is uncertain whether he exists or whether he is a mere illusion, whether he is someone who has truly tricked and mastered the truth or an embodiment of lie itself. The scenes between don Krsto and Bruno (seriously delivered by Igor Djordjević) are a treatise on the truth and are another, separate current in the play…
Every choice in life ultimately comes down to the proverbial truth of ‘both those who take it and those who don’t will regret it’. As well as to the fact that we are doomed to continually ask ourselves and the world around us the question of ‘Who are you?’.

Aleksandra Glovacki, Novosti, October 8, 2007

Ambitious and Monumental

Igor Djordjević plays the trickster and buffoon Bruno, almost as a Comedia dell’Arte harlequin who mocks the social order through his numerous tricks. His gestures and facial expressions are sharp and exaggerated, which has its function in convincing the gullible people of truthfulness of his charades, and which can also be seen as a cynical commentary on the general stupidity and naiveté that he drastically ridicules with his exaggerated playing…
The appearance of the stage in Don Krsto is luxurious and visually attractive (stage design by Juraj Fabry), as well as costumes that belong to the baroque era (costume design by Ljiljana Dragović). Music, heard between scenes or following the action of important dramatic moments, significantly emphasises the main emotions in the play – nostalgia and melancholy (music by Zoran Erić). The production of Don Krsto by Vida Ognjenović depicts the life of a complex person in an epically patient and melodramatically exciting way, a life that sublimates a series of universally significant problems, love, passion, morality, faith and national identity, conjoined in Krsto's anthropologic search of the essence of living. 

Ana Tasić, Politika, October 8, 2007

top