The jury of the 11th INFANT, whose members were Irena Kresic, a critic from Belgrade, Ljuboslav Majera, a director from Novi Sad, and Zoran R. Popovic, a critic from Belgrade and the chairman, saw 17 shows from 25th June to 4th July 2005

     The selection offered confirms and shows as a creative fact the representative currents of the divergent searches of creators in the new theatre. Persistent creative efforts are aimed at deconstruction of the theatrical, prerequisites, as well as at inscribing creative uniqueness in the multiply developed text of the post-modern theatre history.

The jury has unanimously decided:

*** To award the prize for the most successful experiment – performance in whole to the authorial accomplishment ‘Phantomysteria’ of the Teatr Novogo Fronta from the Czech Republic/Russia.

True to their specific circle of the creative interests and solutions in their research, the Teatar Novogo Fronta in ‘Phantomysteria’ as an ambient happening in a garage space, under the starless sky, unravels the ‘great history’ and ‘remarkable faith’ of heroes – common, small people with their trivial dreams, but with preserved traces of humanity. Through the action which builds a direct and suggestively live and psychologically subtly underlined drama of the world, from an extremely apocalyptical angle, something meditative develops, simulating fantastical and showing it as the true reality. In the devastated space guarded by impersonal ‘world operators’, in the promoted ‘new paradise’ the theatre is trying to conceive its little game: lost magic of theatre play is called for and recycled in rudimentary language, pronounced as a bitter post-tale, a grotesque dance drama, a raging protest ballad, a poem of hallucination. In intellectual and stage development, the midnight mystery, through direct actions and means used, especially through/with the fire flames transcends to the illusion of the essence of the play hidden in a human who sacrifices himself in the search for liberation. Remarkable actors – dancers of gloomy visions of today (Ales Janak, and Irina Andrejeva) realistically and symbolically solve, blurred in their obviousness, interlaced and variously burdened relationships of love, passion, loyalty – emotions for the Other, who is different, thwarted by poverty, or the false glory of the cloned, the destroyed man, with a human flash not yet lost.

*** To award the prize for the most original research into one segment of the theatrical language to: The performers’ ensemble of the plays ‘The Fragments’ and ‘Inner and Outer Circles’ of the Serbian National Theatre New Dance Forum choreographed and directed by Olivera Kovacevic-Crnjanski and Sasa Asentic and Jens van Dal.
The unique style of the dance expression is enriched by a personal artistic strength emanating from the dancers’ bodies and developed in collusion with the spirit of the time’s rhythm – the dominating military speed, the antagonism of passion, where pain, attack, hit is transformed into the poetics of a theatric hug, a muffled touch, an almost abstract spirituality. Not at least hesitantly nor recognizably, but resolutely, boldly taking a full breath and in all aspects of discursive layers of the dancer’s body, the creating energy returns to the field of search and ‘uncovering’ freedom.

*** To award the prize for the most original research into one segment of the theatrical language to: Elena Panayotova, the director of the play ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ after F.G. Lorka performed by troupe Den Gri from Bulgaria for the outstanding combination of verbal and stylized expressive motion.
Designed as a research drama constructed in a dance language mosaic – Spanish flamenco, takoneo, clapping and a bold transposition of Lorka’s text into a music of silence, psychologically emphasized, ‘Alba’ steps into the moody currents of the theatre of ’the new Romanticism’, of a personal inner flicker of emotion. Elena Panayotova by her creative energy and well-thought over gesture of dramatist-director proves that the heroine of her play is a possible-realistic archetypal Alba.

*** To award the prize for unique expressiveness and aesthetic re-naming of forms in the border field between life documents and artistic artifact, social play and act with preserved conventions of theatre – stage art, to the play ‘Incasso’ directed by Bojan Jablanac and produced by troupe ‘Via Negativa’ from Slovenia and the Cultural Centre of Novi Sad.
Setting itself apart by their creative bravery, constructing images – pictures with live, acting figures – human bodies – creators of their own ‘stories of sin’ , this play, preaching a new dialoguity of life and art, deconstructs, brings a new view on catharsis in an arranged – reversed – negative – setting of physical – political – cultural observations. Aesthetisation is radically replaced with communication, theatrical approach drains out as a stage statement, things are tested but also a different, ‘new’ agreement between audience and performers is promoted.