Serbian director Kokan Mladenovic is familiar to Timisoara theatergoers. His first trip to the city, which this year is the European Capital of Culture, took place in 2013, when Mladenovic directed on the stage of the National Prometheus in chains. The performance found its textual support in its own script, written based on the famous play by Aeschylus.

The production began as if the screenwriter and director wanted to play freely, without the hindrances of the classical score, but as it turned out during the performance, Kokan Mladenovych’s motives were completely different – to turn to the ancient text. Aeschylus’ writings gave him the opportunity to construct a true essay on power and its transience.

Two years later, Mladenovych performed on the stage of the Hungarian State Theater in Timisoara Work of beggars. John Gay’s 1728 writings, which everyone knows, gave rise to the much more popular and infinitely more famous Works of three parallels Brecht. And this time, the director put the audience’s intelligence to the test, because in the package of a fun performance, created in a deliberately parodic way, political reflection is skillfully hidden, as well as the essence of increasingly sophisticated forms of expression. theater

A new comeback will take place on the same stage in 2017 with a show starting from the well-known Sonnet 66 Shakespeare, the opportunity to summarize large themes from the dramatic or poetic works of the great Will. In the foreground were, of course, the theme of love and the theme of power, as they are found in sonnet as in Othello, Richard III, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet.

I made this short recap of the Serbian director’s Timisoara descents because the show after birds Aristophanes is in obvious continuity with those already mentioned. Bringing the director’s interest to political topics, to how they meet in the theater, to how the theater interacts with the audience. Perhaps, but only obviously, the writings of Aristophanes are preserved only as an excuse. About matrices in which other dramatic texts are mixed (especially Waiting for Godot), poems of the 20th century (the performance begins with an anti-war song inspired by the words of the expressionist poet and playwright Dushan Vasilev, known throughout the world especially thanks to his poem A man sings after the war which mentions the tragedy of young people who, once the first great world conflagration is over, must find a purpose realized and marked by the fact that they are knee-deep in blood), or reflections, many of them in a parodic vein, on the relativity of democracy, not always comfortable thoughts about the theater.

In fact, Mladenovych, in his dual role as screenwriter and director, retains the exaggerated and burlesque techniques of the Greek play, Aristophanes’ penchant for caricature. Moreover, even a good part of his characters and moments. The idea remains intact that after great trials, such as war, people develop a desire to plan their lives, to create something good and strong. There were commentators of the ancient play who believed that the name Fr a philosophical allegory with a comic accompaniment it would seem to fit the works of Aristophanes better than the subtitle of a comedy. For his part, Kokan Mladenovic is developing a mega-bike with countless niches that seems to prove these commentators right. The dramatic text here is accompanied by a song (Irene Popovych and Serda Arpad), a dance (choreography: Andreja Kulesevich), at the beginning most of the characters have their faces covered, they move in the desired disorder, they carry their suitcases with a lot of weight, not knowing where to take them from. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro