The chairperson of the 36th INFANT festival is Irina Possamai, a theatre theoretician and dramatist from Paris, while the Jury members are Vladislava Vojnović, a dramatist from Belgrade, and Boris Liješević, a theatre director from Budva.
It was a great honour and pleasure for all of us to be part of the festival which is committed to promoting honesty and sincerity of feelings as well as courage of artistic expression, year after year. We live at a time of many profane social and artistic tendencies which are either enforced upon us from outside or chosen from our inner being. It is exactly why we are aware how rare and how important commitment to the Other and the Different is. Such commitment is not only important - it is beautiful in the widest aesthetical and ethical sense.
For this beauty, we wish to thank the wise and inspired selector of this year’s INFANT Jadranka Anđelić; also, we thank the round table moderator Zoran R. Popović for his enormous, always generous erudition and effort to take us a step further in understanding each seen performance, and thus a step further in enjoying it; we thank wholeheartedly the Executive Producer Simon Grabovac and his right hand Elza Vuletić for their dedicated work and permanent ‘presence’ in all festival events; surely, we thank all the ‘invisible’ people in charge of the stage, sound and lights without whom we would not be able to hear or see. Last but not least, perhaps even the most important – our gratitude to you – our audience. Each message - and it is the message that holds crucial importance in art - has its sender, its communication channel and its receiver. The audience of the 36th INFANT showed a creative interest and such a spirit that it awakes the deadened hope, but also announces new and new, alive tendencies in culture, which are so necessary.
In regard to the decisions, this year’s Jury openly, responsibly, even with pride, admits that their decision was not unanimous. Actually, the fact they were not unanimous is the way in which the Jury joined the general atmosphere, idea concept and the system of values of the phenomenon of the alternative. In the abundance of the performances of such high quality, it was not an easy task to make choices. Surely, a joint effort, mutual trust and understanding of differences helped us reach the final decisions.
And the decisions are following:
- The award for the most successful experiment, a performance as a whole, is given to:
The performance ‘Kurbas. Reconstruction’ by the independent performing group TanzLaboratorium, coproduction with Les Kurbas National Centre of Theatrical Art, from Kyev, Ukraine.
The award is given to them because of a rounded up treatment of all theatrical elements starting from the structure, through acting, the treatment of light and sound, set design and dramaturgy. A perfect balance between the bodily suffering and the joy of acting creates a new way of thinking about genesis, as a singular birth or ontological notion.
- The award for the most original exploration of one segment of theatrical language is given to:
‘Nothing Project’, by the Mirage Ensemble from Belgrade, Serbia
The Jury has concluded that the segment of theatrical language Mirage used is actually the innocence of acting and stage existence as a kind of a unique ritual. The authoresses are mediums of energy and emotions from the rational to the very hearts of the audiences. The rest of the show unfolds in each spectator, where there is a reversible process going on: from emotional to the rational. Ritual, however, in this case does not lead to a catharsis, and this lack of solution is a quality in itself and is not emphasised in the title by a chance, but on purpose.
- The award for a particular expressivity in the border areas between theatrical and other arts or creative fields in the widest sense, is given to:
To the performance ‘Microchoreographies’ by the Prodigal Theatre – Urban Playground Team from Brighton, Great Britain
Parkour is a term denoting the art of movement and overcoming obstacles, physical as well as other more subtle kind. When touched by Parkour artists all urban spaces found as they are – walls, stairs, railings and alike – start to communicate. Architectural elements communicate with bodies in motion, and with audiences. The Brighton Theatre consists of the Urban Playground Team, but also of all the young people from different social, often problematic communities the Prodigal Theatre meets. Its involvement in the border area is undoubted, since it starts from a border area, only to land in theatre later.
Thank you!
Jury:
Irina Possamai, Chairperson
Vladislava Vojnović, Member
Boris Liješević, Member
In Novi Sad, 3rd July 2009