SERBIA | SLOVENIA | BOSNIA | ROMANIA
Fabbrica Europa 2014
XXI edition

In the Balkans, the twentieth century was a time of new start-outs. And it is symptomatic that one short century – there on the Adriatic
(a sort of inland lake in our historical memory) – began and ended in Sarajevo: a pistol shot became a long cycle of dramatic wars.
That was the twentieth century!
A century of new start-outs, for after the shot in Sarajevo had toppled the world into its first global war, the West tried to start again
from scratch – yet it always ended up entangled in horrors, conflicts, differences without further soluble. Until the last war, which destroyed
the illusion of irregular socialism and which many saw as the final act of a disintegration commencing with the fall of
the Hapsburg empire. And we had to set out once more from there: from the bloody ruins of shattered illusions: both the Empire’s
aristocratic/enlightened illusion and Tito’s popular/bureaucratic one. New starts: that is the keynote of the lesson that reaches us
today from ex-Yugoslavia.
Although no-one can now claim to have lived through the whole, almost century-long travail, unquestionably this element
(the mandate to overcome a twentieth-century mind-set) is solidly grounded in the collective imagination of the Balkans. First and
foremost, it is a vast territory of young nations, forced by this very reason to fashion their new identities on the basis of
distant memories. This explains the vitality we have seen in Balkan culture for at least the past ten years. Tradition and new creation:
for them, this is practically an obligation! And in this umpteenth start-out the theatre plays an essential role: do you know anything more
traditional and at the same time more open to new creativity than the theatre? Do you know anything stronger than the theatre
in taking root in common consciousness to construct new imagination spaces? No, of course not. That is why observation of the Balkan
theatre, today, leads us directly onto the crossroads where the “old” twentieth century starts out for the future.

MEETING

Sat 10 May h 17:00 | Stazione Leopolda, Florence
in collaboration with Oxfam Italia

Balkans: past and present through the theatre and international cooperation
with Giorgio Ursini Uršič, theatre critic who lives and works in Sarajevo,
Sorinel Ghetau, director of Oxfam Italy for international cooperation in the Balkans, and and Tomi Janezic, theatre director (Serbian National Theatre).

THE SHOWS

	May 9 – 11 | Stazione Leopolda, Florence Serbian National Theatre THE SEAGULL national premièreTheatre performances can be bad and good, sometimes exciting, but they rarely develop into something we could call a unique experience… More
	May 10 – 11 | Teatro Cantiere Florida, Florence Slovensko Mladinsko Gledališče – Ljubljana DAMNED BE THE TRAITOR OF HIS HOMELAND! national premièreThis performance of Oliver Frljic attempts, through the inflation of death, through the incessant repetition of the unrepeatable, to emphasize a theatre mechanism that always remains a representation of a certain outside reality… More
	May 15 – 16 | Teatro Cantiere Florida, Florence Marius Manole / Alexander Balanescu / Felix Alexa DIARY OF A MADMAN national premièreDiary of a Madman is an unique performance, in which humour and drama blend together along with madness, which creates parallel worlds, taking over the main character’s mind, tormented by sadness and frustration…. More
	May 17 – 18 | Stazione Leopolda, Florence Kamerni Teatar ’55 Sarajevo HELVER’S NIGHT In an unnamed city, in an anonymous European country, Helver and Carla are hiding. As a civil war rages outside, they know that is only a matter of time before they are found… More

Tickets are available on www.vivaticket.it and and at sale points Vivaticket