Laza Lazarević

THE KRAUT GIRL

Dramatised and directed by Ana Djordjević

Premiere: 15 March 2009 at 8.30pm, Bojan Stupica Stage
Duration approx. 1h 40’, no interval

Set Designer

ABOUT THE PLAY

Ana Djordjević: In the patriarchal world, interest, and even benefit, if you will, of the community is above any and all values an individual may hold. In such a society, morality equals being useful to the community and there is no petit bourgeois hypocrisy about that. I wouldn’t even find it interesting to tell a story about obvious hypocrisy, about immorality being portrayed as morality in public. The Kraut Girl is really a story about the need of an individual, born in a patriarchal community, to define themselves as an essentially free individual. This is a story about a man from such an environment who at one point wishes to be free. A battle rages within Misha between a patriarchal man and a truly liberated one who has his morality and his emotions, and love is what sets this battle in motion.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laza Lazarević (Šabac, 1851 – Belgrade, 1890) Studied law in Belgrade and medicine in Berlin. He worked as a physician. As a writer, he worked in the first phase of Serbian realism and with no more than nine stories became one of the most significant prose writers. His role models were Russian realists, but also the folklore storytelling tradition. The centre of his interest are social changes taking place within Serbian patriarchal society of eighteen seventies and eighties. Lazarevic focuses on individual-psychological and moral traits of characters who preserve traditional values, whilst social motivation and ethnographic details serve as a backdrop. With his realistic narration and lyrical stylisations, harmony of composition, concern for language and particularly introduction of psychological motivation, Lazarevic is considered to be the founder of Serbian psychological novel. Stories: Prvi put s ocem na jutrenje (First Morning Mass With Father), Školska ikona (School Icon), U dobri čas hajduci (Right on Time, Brigands), Na bunaru (At the Well), Verter (Werther), Sve će to narod pozlatiti (It Will All Be Blessed By The People), Vetar (The Wind), On zna sve (He's In The Know) i Švabica (The Kraut Girl) (unfinished).

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ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Ana Djordjević Born in Belgrade in 1977. Graduated from the Department of Theatre and Radio Directing of the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade.
Directed plays: Willow, based on Oscar Wilde (Mata Milosevic Stage); The Sling by Nikolay Kolyada (Belgrade Drama Theatre); Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare (City Theatre Podgorica); When You Grow Up You'll Be Me by Stevan Koprivica (Boško Buha Theatre); Crane's Feathers by Miroslav Belovic (Children and Youth Theatre, Skopje); House Between Earth and Sky by Ana Djordjević (Boško Buha Theatre); Andreas Sam's Train Schedule by Kis/Baletic/Djordjevic (JDP), Don Juan by Moliere (Bitef Theatre); Decameron by Boccaccio (Boško Buha Theatre); What The Butler Saw by Joe Orton (National Theatre Subotica).

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REVIEWS

Choreography of Chairs

This story about the conflict of love and the sense of duty for which the present has no understanding, not only due to the lack of the sense of duty, but also because of hardly being capable of love, is realised by the director in a modern and inventive theatrical language. At long last has  an almost realistic story been translated into a modern theatrical event with very little mystification. At the same time, the director did not shy away from elements of melodrama that may have been crucial for assuming responsibility towards the time she creates in.

Participants of this projects, most of all the two central characters, Radovan Vujovic as student Misha and Marija Vickovic in the role of Ana, were up to par. They are joined by comical Nebojsa Milovanovic as a German nationalist, charming Bojan Lazarov as a cynical Russian student, Milena Vasic as an interpreter of the traditional that knows how to understand love and discrete and emotional Bojana Maljevic as Klara.

The most beautiful part of this productions (along with the set designed by Vesna Strbac and costumes designed by Lana Cvijanovic, its poetic peak, was the choreography of chairs that actors rearrange on stage all the time, eventually translating them into the deathbed of the hero and his desire for the world.

Zeljko Jovanovic, Blic, March 19 2009

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