AD: Slavisa Savic
Photo: Djordje Tomic
Client: Enparts
Year: 2009
Winter gardens
Theater play
ENPARTS (European Network of Performing Arts), one of ten biggest projects within the framework of the Culture Program 2007-2013, aims at creating permanent cooperation between the most representative performing art institutions in Europe. Seven European partners, Bitef among them, carry out this experimental five-year long project which offers support to new creations and improvement of artistic co-production. Under the auspices of the European Commission, ENPARTS advocates Europe which, as an intersection of diverse experiences, can attain unity exactly through the language of culture and arts.
About theater play:
During the wars in the last decade of the 20th century, approximately 700,000 of young educated people left Serbia, nowadays considered to be among the five countries with the most elderly population in the world and whose death rate is much higher than the birth rate. Furthermore, it has the highest number of asylum seekers in Europe.
In the course of the correspondence I have led with my friends who left the country, many of whom I do not even see anymore as if they have become utterly virtual in the meantime, I have come upon extremely interesting thoughts about their new lives, the cities they live in, their new friends, neighbours, their new loves, the politics…
I have read their thoughts about the past and the future of Serbia to whom they are the “fifth lost generation” (though it might sound unbelievable, Serbia went through five wars in the course of the 20th century), about the new Europe they live in, about their hopes and fears… And it struck me that I could turn the emails into a theatre performance! Not on the quest for a new homeland but for a decent place to live, the miniature confessions enclose more truth about our lives than it can be found in the majority of plays I am usually given to read.
About theater play:
During the wars in the last decade of the 20th century, approximately 700,000 of young educated people left Serbia, nowadays considered to be among the five countries with the most elderly population in the world and whose death rate is much higher than the birth rate. Furthermore, it has the highest number of asylum seekers in Europe.
In the course of the correspondence I have led with my friends who left the country, many of whom I do not even see anymore as if they have become utterly virtual in the meantime, I have come upon extremely interesting thoughts about their new lives, the cities they live in, their new friends, neighbours, their new loves, the politics…
I have read their thoughts about the past and the future of Serbia to whom they are the “fifth lost generation” (though it might sound unbelievable, Serbia went through five wars in the course of the 20th century), about the new Europe they live in, about their hopes and fears… And it struck me that I could turn the emails into a theatre performance! Not on the quest for a new homeland but for a decent place to live, the miniature confessions enclose more truth about our lives than it can be found in the majority of plays I am usually given to read.
