Obscene Days of Johnny Long Johnson

Based on the eponymous novel by Filip Grujić

11

October

Text

Cast

Oct 11 / 8 pm / Princely Serbian Theatre

Production: Novi Sad Theatre (Újvidéki Színház) / Sterijino pozorje (Serbia)

Duration: 90 mins / no intermission /

Seating capacity limited to: 50

About the performance:

He is an adventurer, brave, strong, seductive, narcissistic, witty, spoiled and vulnerable... adored by women and friends. He's Johnny Long Johnson! Speaking about Johnny, one of the most promising writers of the younger generation, Filip Grujić, says that his intention was to create a character full of contradictions. He is carefree and gentle, and at the same time impudent and scared.

“Through his way of speaking I wanted to portray our generation. Our humor is politically incorrect, the Internet memes are politically incorrect, but all around us is politically correct, the entire media space”. A great team of authors led by an already well-coordinated and successful director-dramaturge duo, Jovana Tomić and Dimitrije Kokanov, created a very attractive and witty play, which can really be seen as the voice of a generation.

Director about the performance:

The beauty of the character is that he is different things for different people, because he doesn't even know who he is; it’s the theme of the play, growing up. If we seek him out in literature, we will recognize the motifs and, or, the atmosphere of Roberto Zucco, perhaps Baal, in any case that of a young antihero, just like with Lagarce in It's Only the End of the World, or Kerouac… If we binge-watch Netflix, we will recognize Johnny in one of the indie arrogant, witty kids in "The End of the F***ing World," " Genera+ion", the list goes on. For me personally, Johnny is witty, brave, vulnerable, spoiled and, above all, impudent, and today that’s something we are really in short supply of.“

Comments on the performance:

"If an adventure like Odyssey were possible today, its protagonist is not a father looking for a way back home and to his family - but a"prodigal son"who, searching for his father –all the while opposing the "female" principle - strives to find himself. Starting from the insolent, disheveled, childishlywise miniature of Filip Grujić, "pulled" through the dynamic, cunningly "unbalanced" genredramatization of Dimitrije Kokanov, director Jovana Tomić, in cooperation with an imaginative group of collaborators and an agile cast of the Novi Sad theatre, proffers an intriguing example of such an "inverted quest" - a story of fatal wins and precious defeats."

Svetislav Jovanov, Nova.rs

"At the very beginning of the play, I feel and hear something of the atmosphere we find in the novels and stories of Slobodan Tišma, although the route of our hero that goes from Novi Sad, Gothenburg, Prague ... again back to Novi Sad, is above all Vegelian. Young Filip very accurately draws inspiration from his own Novi Sad literary heritage... "

Nataša Gvozdenović, Vreme

"The success of this book can be partly explained by the fact that the protagonist was modeled after the character who is close to the younger generations, but who, on the other hand, at its core inherits the trait that is attributed to his nameas a permanent epithet, and which is analogous to the essence of the domestic mindset–courageousness.”

Uroš Ristanović, Ekspres.net

Director: Jovana Tomić

Dramatization: Dimitrije Kokanov

Translated by: Robert Lenard

Set design: Jasmina Holbus

Costume design: Selena Orb

Music: Luka Major

Stage movement: Igor Koruga