“The truth is, today I don’t know what I will do, and you don’t know what you will hear!”

Katerina Vrana has just stepped onto the stage of the Argo Theatre, and more than 150 people on the square are enthusiastically applauding, ready and curious to find out what the performance “In Development” looks like. In the new venture of the famous comedian, the audience has the opportunity to see “through the keyhole” the creation of a stand-up comedy. She herself will check the material she has collected, which may become part of her next work, and evaluate the reaction of the public.

The couple next to me are laughing heartily, a group of young people in the gallery burst into laughter every few lines, the two ladies in the front seats listen intently and selectively laugh. “I wanted to do it in the theater, not at home with friends, because the stage makes you try to find a joke, it makes your mind work harder, you take the temperature of the audience more efficiently,” he tells me after. end of show.

“I was very nervous,” he admits, “but I think everything worked out in the end. I liked it because the audience was very warm. I certainly think he listened more than he laughed, and the laughter should intensify a bit, not do the “belly”. She will form her best performance in the coming days, when she carefully listens to the recording of the evening – there was a cassette player on stage with her. “This will help me understand exactly how the audience reacted, as well as remember some of the improvisations that I came up with on stage.”

The idea of ​​this performance had been in her head since March last year, until in June she made the decision to bring it to life on stage. For the past two weeks, she has been “laying” her material. The central theme revolves around gender stereotypes. Due to the courage she faced with her adventure with health, which forced her to move around in a wheelchair and limited her vision and speech, she was praised as a “levent”, a “guy”. and other similar characteristics, she in her own way caustically rebels against the domination of a man – even in language.

In In Development, a well-known comedian pokes fun at gender bias and shows viewers how the show is built.

“Derbenderissa”

“Our language is very “given” to the masculine gender. When you do something like a man it’s good, when you do something like a woman it’s humiliating. We also need to stop treating each other as if we were one-dimensional. I love football, my father took me to the stadium when I was little. I know what offside is, of course, I don’t see it anymore because of eye problems (laughs). When I say this, everyone is surprised. A woman can be a flirtatious, and sexy, and Kaffir, and football, and a romantic, and a Nazi. All people have aspects.”

Of all the epithets he has heard, he says he prefers “derbenderissa”. She does not accept that women cannot do anything, she declares on stage. “They tell me that women can’t do stand-up comedy. Okay, I literally can’t (points to a wheelchair), but there’s nothing a woman can’t do except be a male urinal tester, she says to wild laughter.

On the show, she also discusses how the disability has affected her life, how it has changed her relationship with her body, what restrictions she faces in dating, in new relationships. “I want to convey all this,” he explains, “but in a light and funny way, I don’t want it to become a manifesto. I hope, of course, that it will serve as food for thought for people who have not been bothered by these questions.

The play will be in the “In Progress” state for three more Mondays (10, 17, 24/10), and then Katerina Vrana will let the material, impressions, thoughts and feelings ferment in her mind before giving it its final form and scheduling a meeting with the public , like “Derbenderissa” now, somewhere in December. In the meantime, she will be working on her show “Almost Died” in English and will then tour Europe from February to March of the new year.