15

Oct 15 / 8 pm / Princely Serbian Theatre

Production: Creative production "Joca Art", Cultural center of Svilajnac and Bitef Theatre, Belgrade / Serbia

 

Duration: 110 mins

Photography: Marijana Janković The performance is based on the real historical meeting of two married couples: Tito and Jovanka Broz with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. This meeting took place on the island of Brijuni in the 1970s. Information about the meeting itself and the time the married couples spent together is available through very few written and videoed remnants in the Yugoslav media, biographical writings about the lives of the four historical figures, and in the form of short excerpts from Richard Barton's diary. All these materials will serve as inspiration and building blocks for the prospective performance. The making of the film Sutjeska was the main reason for this meeting and that is the only historically certified fact about the meeting itself. Everything else is a figment of our imagination. Specifically, the theme of the performance is imagining and exploring possible events and relationships between these four prominent personalities during a historical meeting. What are all the roles these four people play? What does it mean to perform multiple roles in a relationship with different people? What are our individual and collective identities, personal interests and social merits?

The dramaturge:

Once Upon a Time in... explores the possibilities of relationships between four people, reflects on the psychologies and relationships of two different married couples, their romantic relationships, the cruelty of vanity, the strength of emotions, destructiveness, possessiveness, etc. The performance examines the positions of power of the two couples, the power plays between men and their wives, between two men who exhibit their greatness in different social contexts, between women who exhibit their husbands' strength and greatness in public spaces, between actresses and actors, economic power between statesmen and warriors... What are all the roles these four people play? They are sons, daughters, lovers and mistresses, male and female workers, actors and actresses, famous men and women, people within the context that they define and construct and the context that brands them. Each individual in society, during their lifetime, performs a multitude of identities that are constructed within different contexts, and all these identities put together make up an authentic person. Dimitrije Kokanov