BARBELLO, ABOUT DOGS AND CHILDREN

Co-production of the National Theater in Niš and the National Theater in Pirot

THE PLAY WAS CO-FINANCED BY THE MINIŠTRY OF CULTURE AND INFORMATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA

Barbelo, About Dogs and Children

Barbelo, About Dogs and Children is a powerful, emotional story about human need and the search for love, meaning and hope in a time of hopelessness and evil, in which empathy and humanity die and disappear. Some characters manage to overcome archetypes and prejudices and fight for their freedom, while others, not finding a better way, acquire it by dying. This poignant drama about ourselves and our intimate truths warns and admonishes us to stop, look around and really see and know the people who make up our lives.

A WORD FROM THE DIRECTOR

Barbelo, About Dogs and Children is a dramatic ballad about loneliness, sadness, love that did not reach the right address, and therefore did not help those to whom it was intended to endure the heavy burden of existence. The souls of the heroes of this drama call each other in the thick fog of solitude, they wander through it, sometimes their only guide is the barking of dogs, the only beings who in such a particular world carry the principle of love and giving. In the landscape of urban estrangement, which Biljana Srbljanović paints in an unusually touching and poetic way, those who should be close, father and son, husband and wife, pass each other, but some new kinships arise, those that are chosen, those that are born from the connection that only the deepest sadness can create between people. The step-son and step-mother, through the fight with depression and sense of meaninglessness, become mother and son, the homeless man, through the love he shared with his dog, becomes a saint shining on the dystonia fresco of a dirty city. However, beneath all that, as in many other dramas by Biljana Srbljanović, deep, hidden systems emerge, which result in such difficult human destinies. We are not only prisoners of our individual destinies, we are also prisoners of a mentality, of learned helplessness, of fear of an invisible omnipresent enemy, of fear that makes us afraid to change, of a history that has taught us that individual happiness is less important than the dominant social and political narrative. Biljana Srbljanović’s piece is deeply engaging in an incredibly intimate and lyrical way, it talks about a society that is not even aware that it is made of unhappy, abandoned, love-seeking people, who have a hard time reaching out to each other. We tried to bring so much sadness, mixed with faith that one can still find happiness, in the most unexpected places, in this play.

Stevan Bodroža

Biography of the director

Stevan Bodroža

He was born in 1978 in Belgrade. He graduated theater directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in his hometown. He has been professionally active in theaters in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Austria for more than fifteen years. He worked at the Belgrade Drama Theater, Bitef Theater, the National Theater in Belgrade, Atelier 212, the Duško Radović Little Theater, the Madlenianum Drama and Opera, the Montenegrin National Theater, the Mostar Youth Theater, the Bosnian National Theater in Zenica, the Nestrouhof-Hamakom Theater and the Hundsturm Theater in Vienna as well as a number of other theaters. For nine years he taught at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade.

He directed the plays of renowned classical as well as contemporary writers. Some of the plays he staged are: “Medea, Material” by Heiner Müller, “Prometheus in Chains” by Aeschylus, “The Death of Iphigenia in Aulis” by Euripides, “The Learned Women” by Moliere, “Lady of the Sea” by Ibsen, miniatures by Samuel Beckett… From contemporary plays he directed the drama “Master” by Filip Lole, “Face of Flame” by Marius von Mayenburg, “Mali Geza” by Janos Haj, “In the Solitude of Cotton Fields” by Bernard Mali Koltes, “Weasels” by Bojana Mijović, “o.REST IN PEACE by Jeton Naziraj, Powdered Milk by Dragana Tripković, Pupoljci by Sanja Domazet (based on the poetry of Vasko Popa), The Junkyard by Kosta Peševski and many others. With his plays, he participated in numerous festivals, the most important of which are: Joakim Vujić Festival, MESS, Bitef Festival, Yugoslav Theater Festival in Užice, Bosnian-Herzegovinian Drama Festival, Montenegrin Theater Biennial… He is a two-time winner of the best director award at the Joakim Vujić Festival, and once at the Festival of Contemporary Bosnian-Herzegovinian Drama. He also received the award for best director at the Festival of First Performances in Aleksinac.

In the last few seasons, he has achieved notable cooperation with the “Vuk Stefanović Karadžić” Cultural Institution, namely on the performances “Casa Novak” by Tamara Bijelić, “The Tram called Solitude” (omnibus written by Mina Ćirić, Galina Maksimović, Maša Radić and Neda Gojković), “The sober house” ” (based on the dramas “Murlin Murlo”, “The Tale of the Dead Emperor’s Daughter” and “Slingshot” by Nikolaj Koljada),”… and others” (also an omnibus written by Mina Ćirić, Galina Maksimović, Maša Radić and Neda Gojković) and “With Satan or a good woman” Sanje Savić.

In Belgrade, he once participated in the founding of the Parobrod Theater.

He resides mostly in Belgrade.