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“For fifteen years now I have not accepted any awards. Neither awards nor anything else. However, most of them are quite cunning, so they ask first. But it is stupid as well, because then they have to find somebody else. Honour is pointless after all. It makes sense when a person has no money or when a person is young, or when a person is old and penniless. When a person’s income is sufficient, as mine is, then one doesn’t have accept any awards. Honour is a trinket, useless. I know only of terrible people who present them. When I only think of Canetti, standing there on the stairs in his froque, and the king is seated in front of an empty plate – nobody listened to him, the poor clown.
I have been nominated for the Nobel Prize twice, but they did not recommend me, the Germans did. It is especially interesting, when the German representative of the PEN Centre recommended me twice, because it seems he cannot find anybody else, and then he does not have luck. Only, I would like to get it, in order not to receive it, but you cannot refuse something which you didn’t get.
They are all only bad comedians. What can a man say to that, nothing, all the more because he knows them. That has to mean something. I cannot show up there and fight against something, and find my way there, and then see Fouse sitting there in his froque, supposedly, because I did not see that for myself, I only heard about it, at the opera ball in the box, this is not the way the things work, simply. One cannot do that.”
Thomas Bernhard, Taken from: Conversations – Excerpts, “Polja”, Magazine for Literature and Theory, Year LVIII, no. 482, July-August 2013, Novi Sad

 

Maja Pelević (Belgrade, 1981) graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade in 2005 and obtained her Ph. D. Degree at the Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Arts in Belgrade in 2012. Maja is a member of the New Drama Project. Her staged plays: ESCape, In Neutral Gear, Be a Lady for a Day, Belgrade-Berlin, Orange Peel, I or Someone Else, Jumpgirl, Hamlet Hamlet Eurotrash (with Filip Vujošević), Fake Porno and Fakebook (group of authors), Maybe We Are Mickey Mouse, Strange Loves, Consequences and A Fully Abridged History of Serbia (with Slobodan Obradović). In 2012, Maja implemented the project They Live – Searching for the Zero Text. She has written, directed and performed the play Consequences at the Bitef Theatre Festival in 2013. Maja won the following awards: Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz Award for dramatic work; Slobodan Selenić Award for Best Graduation Play; Sterijino Pozorje Festival Competition Awards for original dramatic text for Maybe We Are Mickey Mouse; Sterija Award for best dramatic text for Orange Peel in 2010.

Slobodan Beštić graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in 1987 in the class of Professor Predrag Bajčetić. He worked in the Yugoslav Drama Theatre (1987–2001) and then he transferred to the National Theatre. Roles (selection): YDT – The Awakening of Spring (Moritz), Nijinsky (Nijinsky), Salome (Salome); National Theatre – Hamlet (Hamlet), Iphigenia in Aulis (Agamemnon), Dangerous Liaisons (Valmont), The Bacchae (Messenger), The Possessed (Tikhon); other theatres and ensembles – Harold and Maude (Harold, BDT), The Possessed (Shatov, CZKD), Macbeth (Macbeth, MTM), Story of a Young Man and 1000 Angels (Angel, Omen Theatre), Hamletmachine (Horvat, NT Kikinda), Frida Kahlo (Diego Rivera, Opera and Theatre Madlenianum), German Shepard (Horvat, NT Kikinda), Peer Gynt (several roles, Schauspiele Theatre, Dusseldorf), Charlotte (Lotar, “The Steam Boat”), Dali-Picasso (Picasso, Bitef Theatre)… Beštić has also interpreted a number of roles on film and television. He has been attending advanced professional trainings both in the country and abroad.
Beštić works as a professor as well. He has taught acting and stage movement at the FDA and BK Academy in Belgrade, FDA Cetinje, at the Art Academy in Osijek.
He has received a number of awards and recognitions.

“Bernhard, having received numerous prizes – decides not to receive them anymore! To despise them. His cynicism comes after he, repulsed by the givers, had spent all the money. This is a retrospect snitching. Misanthropy fed on a hated ideology. But, it is never too late. Especially if you are Bernhard. To say, for example, that the members of PEN are stuffing themselves around the world. Slobodan Beštić does not interpret, but appears to be the one who gets to take them all through an ironic optics. An impressive Beštić. Why does he like choreography so much, when he is more complete in the theatre of words? A prize presentation ceremony without the prize winner, a table decorated with the EU flags where only bones are served – this is the most radical theatrical, and not only theatrical, scene of the team of three: Bernhard, Pelević, Beštić.” 
Branka Krilović, for the culture news of RTS, 7.04.2015

“The brave decision of the National Theatre to put a monodrama on its repertoire has brought multiple benefits. We have received a powerful warning and a first class artistic experience.” 
Dragana Bošković, Večernje novosti, 21.04.2015