Federico García Lorca's "Blood Wedding", directed by Igor Vuk Torbica, premiered on the stage of the Terrace between churches, proved not only to be a central event of the 32nd Grad Theater, but also a cultural one - a new play by one of the most engaged and awarded directors of recent years. year in the region gathered a large audience, representatives of the media, professional theater public and the theater establishment from Montenegro and the region, and was greeted with a standing ovation lasting several minutes.
The staging of Lorca's work, with which the drama program of this year's City Theater explores new, contemporary directorial readings of the classic, for Igor Vuk Torbica, as he stated, builds on his theatrical aesthetics, because his modern texts are thematically poorer.
"First of all, I am very satisfied with how the audience reacted to our performance, and I believe that it will be even better in the following performances. This is the first time I have worked in an ambient setting, and Lorca's work has a natural place here, in the Mediterranean, even though this is an ambient play. Because, by ambient performance, I understand entering the space, adjusting and using the space itself, and we somehow had to think of the scene itself. And by the way, I really like when I do something for the first time in my life, or with different people, as I had the opportunity to do at the City Theater."
When it comes to Lorca's work itself and the reasons why he chose a poetic word for his first direction at the Budva festival, Torbica said Danje's plays are not necessarily thematic, or even problematic in some key sense, but are always a question of some need.
"And the issue of need for me today is allowing emotions, allowing to be even pathetic if necessary, I don't mean pejoratively, and to be sentimental. In fact, let's allow something that is ethereal and poetic, and that already has dust thrown at it by our modern cynicism, to remove that dust and, in fact, give poetry a chance," said Torbica.
Lorca's "Blood Wedding" was co-produced by the City Theater and the Serbian National Theater from Novi Sad, and according to Milica Grujičić, who plays the Fiancee, the main character, the premiere audience was great, which brought her, as well as the other actors, a wonderful the feeling after working on a play that was not very easy.
"Lorka's "Blood Wedding" was a big deal, we have a few more nights of playing in Budva coming up, which will be a great pleasure for us. Because, with this performance, we wanted to remind people that love, feelings, forgiveness and poetry still have great value in human life, regardless of the fact that today teaches us that some other things are more important," Grujičić pointed out.
The young Montenegrin actor Pavle Popović, whom we saw in the character of Leonard, points out that for him the work on this play is very important.
"I won some things that I haven't been able to achieve until now, Igor Torbica led us phenomenally, he was by my side, as was the whole team of actors, and they helped me a lot. I think that with the role of Leonardo I pushed some of my acting boundaries, and I'm very happy about that. We collaborated wonderfully, colleagues from Novi Sad were great, completely dedicated to the show, and they welcomed us like family while we were working for them. We also welcomed them here in Budva, and I am completely delighted with this cooperation", said Popović.
For the actress Branka Stanić, who plays Leonardo's wife, the audience's ovations that greeted "Blood Wedding" were the result of understanding, good cooperation, the wonderful atmosphere in which they worked on the play, and especially, the dedication of director Igor Vuk Torbica.
"Somehow we all found ourselves breathing together, although now it all seems impossible to me, because we didn't have too much time that a project like this requires. The play is usually done for two to three months, sometimes in sequels, and the audience at the end again he didn't understand what she wanted to say. Especially Lorca was a great challenge, and we felt so safe and playful under the guidance of Vuk Torbica, and we couldn't wait for the premiere to show what we had done.
Vukašin Ranđelović, the tragic Fiancé in Lorca's work, believes that, above all, they told a fatal story about love, human destiny, revenge, forgiveness...
"Lorka's main heroes, each in their own way, want to escape from the world that surrounds them and the stereotypes they live in, but of course they can't, and that's their tragedy. Each character has their own personal drama, in the play we try to bring it to the fore in a direct and non-classical way. The fiance I play wants to get married, to leave his mother who is pressuring him, having lost her husband and older son, and with the best of intentions she is trying to prepare him for life. But he is suffocated by this excessive worry, and it is, in fact, his greatest personal drama, and not only that his fiancee leaves on the wedding day with the man she is in love with. That is why this Lorca story, which is characterized by fatalism, reminds of the Greek dramas in which nothing is determined by what is in a person, but by fate", pointed out Ranđelović.
For their roles, Varja Đukić (Mother), Ivana Mrvaljević (Tasta), Miroslav Fabri (Father), Draginja Voganjac (Neighbor and Death), Maja Stojanović (Maid), Dušan Vukašinović and Filip Đuretić (Woodcutters), and Nenad Caveman (Moon). Applause certainly goes to set designer Branko Hojnik, costume designer Jelisaveta Tatić Čuturilo, composer Vladimir Pejaković, and the audience will be able to see "Blood Wedding" on August 11 and 12 on the same stage of the Terrace between churches.
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