PROGRAMME | HISTORY | ARCHIVE | PUBLISHING | SPONSORS | BULLETIN | CONTACT | AWARDS

Bernard-MarieKoltès is one of the greatest dramatists of the 20th century. His work is controversial, adored, refuted, and already classified as classic. Staging of this author always attracts great attention of the cultural public, which is exactly the reason why the Parobrod Theatre is opening its new, renovated stage by the first Serbian staging of this author’s play In the Solitude of Cotton Fields. This play has elements of a thriller; it is exciting and provocative like Koltès’s entire opus. Two men meet in the darkness of the night, on a street corner, and they try to conduct some secretive transaction. The author gives them archetypal names – Dealer and Buyer. They speak a secretive language, almost codified. Their relationship is intense and dangerous. What is the object of their transaction, what does Dealer want to sell to Buyer, what does Buyer hope to get from Dealer? This text provides many opportunities, offers the viewers a multitude of curious and breathtaking secrets. The cast consists of two young actors who are currently ranked among the best known and most engaged actors of the younger generation: Vladimir Aleksić, widely known as the host of the popular serial I Have a Talent, as well as for the film Žućko about the renowned basketball player Radivoj Korać, and Milutin Milošević, who has starred in a number of great films (The Phantom of Belgrade and St. George Slays the Dragon). Director Stevan Bodroža is well-known in the cultural circles of the younger generations with his productions playing on the Belgrade stages for years.

“A scared ‘saint’ (buyer) shies away from the ‘philander’ (dealer) as if not knowing that they are forever linked by desire, prohibition and chivalry in feelings... In Koltès’s work, a desire, of the kind that aspires to be broad-minded (but still has an awareness of being forbidden), in a simple yet hypnotic dramatic plot, appears as a metaphysical collection of a multitude of different desires, a series of poetic-philosophical speculations that can be imagined as a simply calculated gesture as well as a moment in which a caprice overweighs interest. Until a neutral time is established, some kind of equalisation where life and death are harmonised and affirmed. The heroes of Koltès’s verbal duel, regardless of how it was set in space, forever remain a homo duplex – always an action and intention, always a dream and reality, always one on the account of the other. Cruelty and sensuality, the same sensations yet always dual, like ultimately cold and ultimately hot, an image of a man who controverts his own self, reveals everything, becomes a symbol.”
Slobodan Obradović, dramaturge     

The ‘Parobrod’ Theatre was established within the regular programme activity of the ‘Parobrod’ Cultural Centre of Belgrade’s Municipality ‘Stari grad’ in November 2011. Due to the financial crisis and cuts to the budget for culture, the number of premieres was reduced in all theatres, causing theatre administrations to choose only the projects which are to attract large audiences and thus generate profits. All this led to a narrowing of the offer and the absence of artistic and creative risk, and without risk there is no innovation, and consequently no progress in art. It could be said that our repertoires are currently dominated by ‘playing safe’ and apathy, and it appears that the only solution to this problem could be establishment of some new, alternative theatrical stages. This was our guiding idea when we decided to open the ‘Parobrod’ Theatre stage where affirmed artists would get a chance to realise their ideas that due to their ‘noncommercial’ and investigative character cannot be realised in institutionalised theatres, as well as young, still unestablished authors who do not have, or so far have not had enough space and opportunities for their artistic expression.       

The ‘Parobrod’ Theatre opened with the premiere and simultaneously first independent production of the play The Board Beckett, which was created as a collage of several dramatic miniatures and two poems by S. Beckett.