Sour Blood
Podeli:
Ivona Marciuš
Marina Pejnović
Zdravka Ivandija Kirigin
Vid Hribar
Tomislav Maglečić
Ivan Duić
Dea Presečki
Vanda Petrović
Žarka Krpan
Cast
Ljiljana Bogojević
Barbara Rocco
Dea Presečki
Production: Croatian National Theater in Varaždin, Croatia
Duration: 70 minuta
Photography: Marko Ercegović
About the play
The play begins with the clamorous presence of a traditional Carnival mask, the Međimurje Naphanac. The mask is then removed, suggesting from the outset that what follows will reveal something “true” – stripped of disguises, masks, and self-pity.
The three women of Sour Blood – Grandmother, Mother, and Daughter – embark on their dramatic journey from a place of silence, each trapped within her own constricted mode of survival. The heroines’ past does not flow into the future they might have expected or longed for. Yet their story is greater than themselves. It is the timeless narrative of patriarchy, stretching both backward and forward through time, whose cruelty Ivona Marciuš perceives with remarkable precision as almost ritualistic. In the rift between what might emerge from within and what silence continues to accumulate inside them, we sense dramatic tension and its rhythm of anticipation. The voice that finally breaks this silence is entrusted by Ivona to the Daughter. It becomes the scream of an intimacy that is at once deeply personal and profoundly collective. In doing so, the three female characters merge into a single figure – for don’t the sacrificed fragments of a mother, or a grandmother, sometimes continue to grow within a daughter, allowing her to survive in a different manner? The Daughter thus comes to embody what has long been missing. By confronting the traumas and secrets that haunt people until death, she is attempting to reconstruct the chronology of her life through a return to a traumatic childhood, seeking a narrative that will finally make sense of it all. Such meaning can only be found through shared storytelling, through confession. At the same time, deeply ingrained patterns embedded within the collective consciousness are brought to light. Rooted in the language, iconography, and customs of the Međimurje region, the text of Ivona Marciuš, through its poetic force and carefully constructed emotional states, relationships, and situations flowing like underground currents, simultaneously activates universal dimensions of the historical discourse surrounding women’s place in civilization.
About the writer
Ivona Marciuš is a Croatian dramaturge, playwright and poet.
After graduating from high school in Čakovec, the young playwright Ivona Marciuš enrolled in the undergraduate Dramaturgy program at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. She has collaborated with the Pinklec Theatre Company, the Drama Studio „Prazan prostor“ in Podgorica, the Jastrebarsko City Theatre, and the Ankata Art Centre in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a dramaturg, she has worked on dance productions and radio dramas. She also has extensive experience in storytelling and copywriting within the media industry.
Sour Blood was originally written as a student project before receiving its world premiere at the Croatian National Theatre in Varaždin. Following its premiere, the play was translated into Polish and shortlisted for the Aurora Prize, a Polish award recognizing the best contemporary dramatic texts from Central and Eastern Europe.
About the director
Marina Pejnović was born in Zagreb in 1992. In 2018, she earned a Master’s degree in Theatre Directing and Radio Production from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb.
She is one of the most active theatre directors of her generation. Her directing credits include Odbrojavanje – na piru s Držićem i Nalješkovićem (part of the Countdown trilogy), Geranium, and Dubrovačka zrcala – tri struka lovorike, pelina i vrijesa at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival; To Clothe the Naked by Luigi Pirandello and Can’t Escape Sundays by Tena Štivičić at the Marin Držić Theatre in Dubrovnik; the devised production Sooner or Later at Zagreb’s ITD Theatre; the devised performance The Adventure of Broccoli and Garlic; The Index Finger Imposter, inspired by the animated series Once Upon a Time… Life, at the Croatian National Theatre in Šibenik; the devised project Krleža alla Gavella, created as part of the Festival „Miroslav Krleža“ at the Gavella City Drama Theatre; The Notebook of Robi K., which received the Best Director Award at the 2020 Fadil Hadžić Days of Satire Festival and the Golden Fairy Award for Best Director at the International Theatre Festival in Prijedor; and Conspiracy Theory at Satirical Theatre Kerempuh. She also directed Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orpheus and Eurydice as part of a collaborative university project involving three arts academies and the Faculty of Textile Technology.
Her productions for young audiences include The Bunny Seeks a Brook, created for ZiM in collaboration with the Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc in Rijeka and Malik Theatre, as well as Fly, Fly, a co-production of the Zagreb Youth Theatre and the Municipal Theatre of Braunschweig. At the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, she directed My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, The Welkin by Lucy Kirkwood, and the semi-staged world premiere of Berislav Šipuš’s opera The Last Intermezzo.
In addition to her stage work, Pejnović has directed several major cultural events, including the 2015 Croatian Theatre Awards ceremony and the opening ceremony of the 2020 Dubrovnik Summer Festival. She also directs radio productions for Croatian Radio, contributing to the programmes Radio Atelier and Radio Drama for Children and Young People on HR3 (Croatian Radio’s Third Programme).
Together with Matija Šakoronja and Paško Vukasović, she received the ASSITEJ Croatia Award for Best Dramatic Text for the play Hooligan, produced by Mala Scena Theatre.
