The 2nd edition of the "City Theater" festival will be officially opened on July 32 on the stage between the churches in the Old Town with the performance of the Bosnian National Theater from Zenica "Romeo and Juliet", directed by Selma Spahić.
The festival, which will last until August 20, 2018, takes place under the slogan "When the Moon Appears..." ("Bloody Wedding", FG Lorka), and as in previous years, the program will be realized through four segments: dramatic, literary , artistic and musical.
A total of 41 programs will be performed, including 14 drama programs, 12 literary programs, six musical programs, three art programs, and one scientific program.
This year, the main idea of the festival, as announced at the press conference, not only in the production part of the program, but also in the domain of designing the segment in connection with guest appearances in the drama program, will be the theme of contemporary reading of the classics, i.e. reading works of classical literature in today's time.
"Through all these segments, we tried to ensure that each of them answered the given topic. What is the City Theater's heritage and what should be singled out is the fact that it simply set goals for itself, and that is the case this year as well. We got used to the audience, and ourselves, to expect us to go further, to investigate what is current now, what should be dealt with at the present moment, when it comes to the performing arts, and that's how we got to the given topic", said the director of the JU. City Theater" Milena Lubarda Marojević.
President of the Council of JU "Grad Teatar" prof. Dr. Siniša Jelušić said that this year's festival will present the most representative of the area.
"Thus, the festival has a significant regional place. The idea is that the festival must acquire a dominantly international character, to be comparable to large festivals, first of all Mediterranean ones," Jelušić said.
The central event of this year's festival is planned for August 9, when the premiere performance of Lorca's "Blood Wedding" is directed by one of the best directors in Europe at the moment, Igor Vuk Torbica.
The play is being realized in co-production with the Serbian National Theater from Novi Sad, and it will feature a team of actors from the aforementioned theater and actors from Montenegro. At the same time, the motto of the XXXII festival, as well as the visual solution, were inspired by the text of Lorca's play, written in 1932, the first staging of which was directed by Lorca himself.
Classic works of dramatic literature are also the backbone of the guest drama part of the festival program.
On the stage of the "City Theater" there will be a play by the People's Theater from Belgrade directed by Jagoš Marković "The Grieving Family", as well as plays for children, so this year the youngest will have the opportunity to see a play based on one of Aesop's most famous fables "The Cricket and Ant", written by Marina Depolo based on the well-known fable, directed by Branko Ilić and with established young actors. The play was created as a Montenegrin co-production with theaters, which also deal with creativity for children and young people (NGO Youth Theater, "City Theater" from Podgorica, Herceg-fest from Herceg Novi and Cultural Center Kotor).
There is also the play "Barufa", based on Goldoni's "Fishermen's Quarrels" and an adaptation of the text by Predrag Lucić, and directed by Vito Taufer.
The music program opens with a concert by Vesna Pisarović with a jazz quartet on July 3, and the most interesting will be the guest appearance of Nigel Kennedy, who will have a concert on July 14, and the performance is realized in cooperation with the Tourist Organization of Budva.
The opening of the art program is scheduled for July 4, when the exhibition "Icon and Artistic Deconstruction" will be opened.
As for the literary program of this year's festival, as Svetlana Ivanović said, it follows the central idea of the festival to question the classics in a contemporary artistic text. It will continue with the practice from the previous period, presenting some of the most interesting editions published in the previous year in the region.
The Trga Pjensika program begins on July 6 with the guest appearance of one of the most important contemporary Serbian writers, Radoslav Petković, who will present the collection of essays "Columbus's Egg".
Na na Trg will host Vladimir Pištal, Borislav Jovanović, Filip Grbić, Nenad Šaponja, Marina Šur Puhovski, Dejan Atanacković...
A symposium entitled "Hamlet for the second time among Montenegrins" is scheduled for August 5 and 6.
Bonus video:
