 According to BITEF Artistic Director Jovan Ćirilov and Selector Anja Suša, this major theater festival in the Balkans for the first time this year has no slogan.
– This year, we opted to test the idea of allowing the theater to speak for itself and on its own behalf, and allowing personal statements of theater artists – divested of the selector’s supplementary interpretation – to take precedence. The absence of a theme/slogan certainly is not, nor should it be perceived as, avoiding responsibility but should be taken as part of an anticommercial and anti-marketing strategy that goes along the ‘no logo’ aesthetics, Ćirilov and Suša noted.
The festival’s main program this year includes the following productions:
 Isabelle’s Room, Jan Lauwers (direction, text and stage design) and Needcompany, Brussels (Belgium). A production that immediately after its first night became a European 21st century cult production – the first of a trilogy from Belgian director Jan Lauwers. As famous Belgian actress Viviane De Muynck plays an anthropologist that approaches one after another art object from Africa and the Middle East, she evokes the present-day attitude towards history and different worlds.
The Deer House, Jan Lauwers (direction, text and stage design) is the third part of Lauwers’ drama trilogy inspired by the death of war reporter Kerem, brother of Needcompany’s Tijen Lawton, during the armed conflict in Kosovo. The production dwells not on facts but on the absurdity humanity has been repeating over the centuries.
Frankenstein-Project, is production directed by Kornel Mundruczo and Yvette Biro, Budapest (Hungary). In the perception of the authors of this remarkable Hungarian production, its authors alter the image of the classical monster from Mary Shelley’s novel (1818). He is not portrayed as put together by a mad scientist, but as the product of family and society. He is a tragic figure.
Tristi Tropici (The Sad Tropics), a production of the Virgilio Sieni Company of Florence (Italy), after Claude Levi-Strauss’ work Tristes Tropiques, served as inspiration to Italian choreographer Virgilio Sieni to translate Levi-Strauss’ perception of primal cultures of the so-called primitive peoples into symbolic language of his refined art about the essence of man’s existence.
 Anton P. Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is a production of the Deutsches Theater, Berlin (Germany). Great German director Juergen Gosch, who passed on earlier this year, left behind for us his testamentary reading of this Chekhov’s play. With this production, BITEF marks the 150th birth anniversary of the Russian literary classic. BITEF audiences would remember Gosch’s production of Macbeth, performed and awarded during the 41st BITEF in 2007.
Ko Bi Hteo Mamu Kao Moju (Who Would Want A Mom Like Mine) is a production of STANICA - Servis za Savremeni Ples (STATION - Service for Contemporary Dance) and the Duško Radović Little Theater (Srbija) in which choreographer and dancer Dalija Aćin is in continual search for new subject themes. The production is her autobiographical multimedia account based on footage of her five-year-old daughter, a documentary video depicting her daily routine with her daughter and her dances, as a parallel public life.
 T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. is a production of TR Warszawa, Warsaw (Poland), written and directed by renowned Polish director Grzegorz Jarzyna inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s novel and movie of the same name. Jarzyna takes up this unusual theme to turn it into theater of rare beauty that leaves no one indifferent.
Monument G2 is a production of Maska and the Ljubljana City Theatre, Ljubljana (Slovenia) directed by Janez Janša and Dušan Jovanović. This is Janez Janša’s second attempt at reconstruction of a production of his older colleague, Dušan Jovanović, only, this time, it is the reconstruction of 1972 production of Monument G performed during an earlier BITEF that also was the recipient of the official jury’s Special Award. This time round, the performers include the actress that played in the original production and a younger dancer.
 Euripides’ The Bacchae, a production of the Belgrade National Theatre, Belgrade (Serbia), was directed by Staffan Valdemar Holm, the renowned Swedish theater director and until recently manager of the Royal Drama Theater in Stockholm. In the printed theater program for this production of The Bacchae, Holm wrote that "there can be no tragedy without comedy": - The comic and amusing sections are there for the precise reason of augmenting the horror of tragedy... At the rehearsals we discussed the 1960s, about how everything was wonderful then – we had uninhibited sex, love, Woodstock, flower children... And then just a few years afterwards, we had the Vietnam War, the murder of Sharon Tate and the events involving C. Manson. Something that used to be very gentle, likeable and charming had transformed into brutality.
A.P. Chekhov’s The Three Sisters is a production of the Moscow Theater OKOLO – the House of Stanislavsky, Moscow (Russia) directed by Yury Pogrebnichko. In their quest for new readings of Chekhov, artists around the world were of late joined also by those from Russia who have abandoned Stanislavsky’s testament. Stanislavsky was the first to direct the plays of this baffling playwright. Yury Pogrebnichko has long since earned to appear before BITEF audience and staging Chekhov was a fine opportunity to see him at his best.
 This year, too, two awards were being handed out to the main program official selection productions: the Mira Trailović Grand Prix – for best production and the Special Award – for particular contribution to the art of theater. The BITEF audience award is being presented on the basis of poll results after each performance.
In addition to the main program, BITEF also has accompanying programs. These include the BITEF Polyphony, the BITEF on Film, the After Ten Party, the European Network of Performing Arts (ENPARTS), the Showcase, the Forums, the Exhibitions and Presentations.
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Jat Airways and BITEF
BITEF’s general sponsor is Jat Airways. This cooperation is an example of one of the most successful strategic partnerships between culture and the business sector in Serbia.
BITEF is funded by the Belgrade City Assembly, the Republic of Serbia Ministry of Culture, embassies and foreign cultural centers, donors and other sponsors. | | 
