In the Clearing

The play by Svetislav Jovanov and Dušan Petrović In the Clearing was inspired by Stevan Sremac prose works, the three of his stories in particular – Ibiš-aga, Puša’s First Sorrow and Second-Hand Market. This is an opportunity for a broader audience to meet the less known works by Sremac.

Placing the action in a forest, on the night of Pentecost at the beginning of the twentieth century and mixing the real and phantasmagoric characters from Slovenian mythology, the authors tell a metaphorical story of what it is like to be an actor, of actors’ constant struggle and essential love for art and the eternal theme of the huge spiritual wealth existing, hiding and sprouting in the jaws of material poverty.

A Note from the Director

The play In the Clearing was inspired by Stevan Sremac’s prose. Svetislav Jovanov and I have found inspiration for the production’s main event in the story of the Traveling Company, which deals with the fate of traveling actors at the end of the nineteenth century on the territory that has just been liberated from the centuries-old slavery under the Turks. Their problems, the existential ones, in the form of huge lack of resources, and the professional ones, those concerning the choice of an adequate repertoire for the audience who welcomes them with great reservation and distrust, seemed more than contemporary to us. In our production, the troupe of actors solves its troubles by acting the three stories of different genre written by Sremac.

About the Director

Dušan Petrović graduated in theatre directing from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade in 1992 and soon started working at the same faculty as an assistant. Today he is a full professor at the Department of Theatre and Radio Directing. During his career, he directed around forty productions in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Sombor, Subotica, Banjaluka, Zrenjanin, etc. He worked as the director of Serbian Drama at the National Theatre in Subotica for four seasons and for two seasons as the director of Drama at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad. The play In the Clearing is the first production he has directed at the National Theatre in Niš.

Photo: Nikola Milosavljević
Painting: VLADIMIR KRSTIĆ
Stage Speech: NATAŠA ILIĆ