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Theatre is the art that reacts most swiftly to various emerging phenomena in society. The world had hardly sensed that it was in an economic crisis, but the theatre already began to react to these developments. Sociologists, anthropologists, politicians, audiences, but mostly artists themselves are wondering whether the crisis of capital will be accompanied by a crisis in art? The people in theatre are also asking themselves this same question, and search their art for an answer – say Jovan Ćirilov and Anja Suša, selectors of the 43rd Belgrade International Theatre Festival to be held on September 15-25, 2009. Having appreciated, but also having felt the world economic crisis affecting its own financial structure, BITEF will this year have fewer productions to show than we are accustomed to. However, the selectors are making a point that these productions will be of the highest quality in respect to current developments in theatre here and abroad. The main programme includes seven foreign and two home productions, whose outstanding features and qualities are certain to make up for the reduced number of plays. However, Showcase has been scrapped from this year’s accompanying programmes’ list, and this was in fact the sole collateral damage BITEF will suffer this year.
BITEF will open with a piece called Sutra produced by the Sadler’s Wells Theatre of London in which choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui explores the wisdom of Buddhist sutras with Tibetan Monks from the Shaolin Temple. This spectacle is immediately followed by another great event – a piece called The Blue Dragon and the long-awaited Belgrade debut of Canadian writer and director Robert Lepage. A German production of a piece called Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band will close the festival. It, however, will be preceded by two remarkable productions, including puppets from Norway and Holland, a hit performance from Switzerland with children, a piece from Croatia in which it is impossible to discern who is playing because the play unfolds in the dark as well as two home productions: Milena Marković’s Brod Za Lutke (The Doll Ship), performed by the Serbian National Theatre and directed by Ana Tomović and Robert Musil’s Sanjari (Dreamers), performed by the Yugoslav Drama Theatre and directed by Miloš Lolić. This year, too, the chief sponsor of BITEF is Jat Airways.
 Two powerful figures, Anja Suša and Jovan Ćirilov, who is also BITEF artistic director, have become a successful selector duo.
They point out they both hold that theatre is a thought as well as an emotion and both strive toward new tendencies in the theatre. For his part, Ćirilov claims that in the duo’s successful cooperation BITEF stands to benefit more from the duo’s differences than from the things on which they agree. But, they both concur that there would not have been a BITEF this year had not Jat Airways "shown fantastic understanding and sense for the right thing." For starters, we ask Jovan Ćirilov:
How did you manage to make use of the world crisis to improve the quality of BITEF and put together a selection of such sound quality?
– When one comes across difficulties in life, one needs to know how to surmount them and make use of them to one’s advantage. There are fewer productions at BITEF this year, but we indeed are witnessing concentrated quality. We have a situation currently that, if someone asked me what I would recommend for them to see, – I would reply: You can’t go wrong whatever you choose.
Still, I insist – Which play would you recommend?
– I would go with the performance in which the actors remain unseen because it is played in the dark. Therefore, here’s a BITEF-esque answer: If you must choose only one, go see Odmor Od Povjesti (Vacation From History) played by a group from Zagreb called Shadow Casters. It is a performance not to watch, but a performance to experience.
 This year BITEF will, for the first time, see a piece by one of the most significant contemporary theatre authors – Canadian theatre director and playwright Robert Lepage. Mr. Ćirilov, this is someone you have long since wanted to see at BITEF. Please, tell us something about his appearance.
– The production is called The Blue Dragon, and Lepage directed and co-authored it. It dwells on the fate of Chinese Canadians, whom he also dealt with in his celebrated theatre production called The Dragon Trilogy. The Blue Dragon is his latest theatre production. We have the honour that Lepage is crossing the ocean just for BITEF and then returning. This is the only piece at this year’s festival in which someone can detect elements of realism, but what we have here is poetic realism. Still, this is such a marvelous piece of theatre magic that the form in which it is given cannot be seen as an issue. With the sheer power of their own experience, they have created something powerful and outstanding.
The sub-title of the 43rd BITEF is "Crisis of Capital – Crisis Art". Ms Suša, why has BITEF chosen this theme for the festival’s leitmotif?
– It was rather the other way around - this theme has chosen us. The current developments we are living through are much too conspicuous as to be ignored. Even as we were putting together the concept, it was clear what would be the festival’s main theme. By ‘crisis of capital’ is meant a whole system of values promoted by corporate capitalism as a foundation for a majority of societies in Western European civilisation, and to which we, too, belong. Taken in this way, this theme has been vindicated by all the productions we have chosen in this selection. ‘Crisis of capital’ implies not only the financial crisis but also a crisis of morality, a crisis of the system of values, it implies re-defining the system of values, and it is in this context one should appreciate not only this moment in time but the entire latter half of the 20th century, concluding with the era we are living in now. In this sense, the production called The Camp, which speaks about Auschwitz, may in a certain manner be perceived as our response to the theme.
The 43rd BITEF will offer mainly newer productions?
– Some are quite new. These include The Writer, a piece from Norway, The Blue Dragon, which arrives immediately after it was first-nighted, as well as the performance of Odmor Od Povjesti (Vacation From History) by Shadow Casters. Other productions have between two and three seasons behind them.
This would seem to say that theatre in Europe was responding promptly to the current economic and social developments in the world?
– I am not saying that geographical position plays a major role in the world today – explains Anja Suša. – These our societies in transition are only just beginning to adopt certain patterns of life and conduct the West has been living through a long time. It is therefore to be expected that they react faster to certain developments than we do because they have an enhanced sensibility as regards such problems. We have not yet reached a situation - like that in the States - when one loses so-called creditworthiness (credit history), one has all but lost one’s life. However, things are changing at the speed of light in this era. Things here are not nearly as dramatic in this context, but are nevertheless heading in that direction. This is why it is necessary for people to develop critical awareness of the social order that underlies the cause of troubles such as these.
The world crisis has been anticipated over the past several years, and did not happen all of a sudden. This, for instance, has resulted in heightened interest in Marx’s Das Kapital, which is one of the best selling books in the world over the past few years, as several films inspired by this work have been made, as Kapital-inspired manga comics have been published in Japan, let alone the fact that Das Kapital is being re-analyzed and commented on a massive scale. All this was excellent reason to invite to BITEF the German Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus production of Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band, which most explicitly speaks about our theme.
That’s true – adds Ćirilov, provoked by the subject. – The crises the idea of communism experienced were not inherent to the idea itself, their root being in the anthropological imperfection of humanity itself. This is an anthropological issue most closely related to the idea of anthropological pessimism, namely that man is an imperfect being and that this imperfection of his invites a crisis whenever he attempts to see through an ideology.
All the productions at this year’s BITEF are socially engaging?
– All of them – notes Ćirilov. – It is an established fact that even an abstract painting can be socially engaging. The play Waiting for Godot, for instance, is a politically engaging piece because in 1956 it maintained pessimism at a time when many societies banned pessimism. At this year’s BITEF, however, the productions are engaged in a direct way. So far we have more often encountered politically engaging realism plays, or at least those that had a plot – from Strindberg and Ibsen to Brecht. But now, all these socially and politically engaging productions bear a specific and unusual form, a highly refined exploratory form that is by no means abstract. This is, for instance, also the case with Das Kapital, The Camp and The Writer. They represent criticism of corporate capitalism and multinational companies. Two of them were staged with puppets. In one, The Writer, we run across an example of how Norwegians to this day consider their Quislings with gravity, but without rehabilitating them in any way. And over here, they are being rehabilitated, total nonsense. The theatre is not designed to be instructive, but when one knows how to listen and think then one can always learn something.
How would you describe our productions participating in the 43rd BITEF?
– There are two of them, and each in its own way has found itself in the focus during the past theatre season – says Anja Suša. – Much has been said about them, and professional circles have assessed them as striking and significant. It was important for us that they first of all be in harmony with the BITEF tradition, which primarily implies exploring and going beyond the usual clichés. There is no Showcase program this year, so a good presentation of home production within the main programme is very important. Apart from promoting two young directors, these domestic productions are also a further promotion of an internationally renowned but still young playwright Milena Marković. Both plays are visually interesting, so that those unfamiliar with our language can still find them appealing.
– It is in no way easy playing a one-hundred-percent verbal Dreamer – sets out Jovan Ćirilov – and that is the reason why this great title of international modernism may rarely be seen on the stage. And Lolić, just as we did with this year’s selection, turned a shortcoming into an advantage. He did not elaborate the mise-en-scene. Characters are discerned by the way in which they hold the microphone, it’s incredible. This is a case of slight-oscillation emotional minimalism... Thus, BITEF has invited a production attaining the greatest heights while under this great constraint.
Let us know a bit more about Sutra, which opens the festival.
– Sutra is proof that it is possible to blend the traditional, a civilization that is thousands of years old and the idiom of modern dance. The choreographer, Cherkaoui, who also appears as a performer, has succeeded in this. Apart from this fact, it is interesting and spectacular. Many young people in Belgrade like martial arts and in this performance they will be able to see just how closely related they are to philosophy – says Ćirilov.
What are the new tendencies in the theatre internationally? Jovan has said that each production in this year’s selection is an example of a new tendency in the theatre.
– That is correct – Anja says. – This catchword, with which BITEF was founded in 1967 – New Theatre Tendencies – may best be applied to this year’ selection because each production is truly very special, each makes use of a totally different language and means of expression. In the formal sense, they are all very different, as every possibility ever invented since the theatre came into being to this day were being made use of. In this context, this year’s selection shows the contemporary theatre is highly atomized, that is to say it is reduced to outstanding authorial poetics such as we have the opportunity to see in all seven international productions. Therefore, there is no dominant common denominator except in terms of subject matter. However, there are very powerful and impassive authors... Barriers have been removed. The contemporary theatre is taking the already recognized achievements and using them in a powerful, authorial manner. | 
