The play "Macbeth" based on the work of the same name by William Shakespeare, directed by Nikita Milivojević, received several minutes of standing ovation and great applause after the premiere performance on August 16 at the Mediterranean Sports Center in Budva.
Macbet" was created by the association of five co-producers: JU "Grad Teatar" Budva, Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad, Belgrade Drama Theatre, ITAKA Art Center, Inđija and Újvidéki Színház (Novi Sad Theatre).
It is about the shortest, probably the "bloodiest" Shakespeare tragedy, and also one of the most popular Shakespeare plays for performance.
First performed in 1611, the piece tells about the murder of the king, and the events after it. The historical data in this work comes from the usual historical sources of Elizabethan times, predominantly Holinshed's Chronicles, but the work itself has very little to do with the historical data showing that the regicide was an admirable and capable ruler.
Macbeth is not considered Shakespeare's most complex play, but it is certainly one of his most powerful and emotionally intense plays. Behind the scenes of the theater, this play is said to be haunted, and many superstitious actors do not even want to mention its name, simply calling it a "Scottish play".
Nevertheless, the Budva premiere showed that Shakespeare's Macbeth is far from haunted, considering that this brave and risky interpretation of Shakespeare's work brought the entire cast of the play several minutes of applause and ovation after the premiere performance.
"Macbeth" is one of those plays that you prepare for years, but are also afraid of, said director Nikita Milivojević.
"Just as Macbeth longs to kill the king, but is also afraid of that murder. So I also got into this from the feeling that we could offer a completely new interpretation, in the sense of taking it apart and putting it together in a new way, while preserving the structure. In the process of work, he was a research related to dreams. The moment the witches tell him a prophecy, life becomes a nightmare for him, and the idea of the whole play is that nightmare. If you want us to talk about what we are living today, the diagnosis of this world would be quite a nightmare", he said and added that he was satisfied after the premiere.
"The premiere is always an uncertain adventure and in that sense I am very satisfied. Also, I'm happy because I did a visual performance that I've been preparing for a long time, that I've thought about a lot and that I really care about. It was not an easy task for the actors and after all I have a very good impression after the premiere. The performance counts on one experience of the viewer, on something that is less rational and more intuitive. Music, light and ambience work in the atmosphere of the nightmare we are talking about. At some point, the viewer should stop thinking and just surrender to the experience, which, if it draws you in, I think we're on the right track."
Actress Maja Stojanović said that the character of Lady Macbeth is one of the most desirable roles for all actresses that they would like to play during their career.
"We were all very proud and happy when we got the chance to do it. We divided it into stages, each of us has our own scene, and I think the audience was clear through which stages that character goes through and what overwhelms her. In the last scene, she dies in her sleep and that ties into the whole concept of dreaming. From the beginning we dealt with it, we recounted our own dreams, then we put them together through improvisation. We did not expect this kind of reaction, but I think the audience understood all the symbols", she pointed out.
Actor Gabor Pongo believes that this play is not only about Macbeth, but about two people who love each other very much, but are also arrogant.
"They are eager to have even more and to gain a position in society. Macbeth himself is quite complicated because he really tries to create a world without crime and murder, but that same world simply does not allow him to do so. He can't do otherwise, maybe he thinks he can, but reality forces him to commit all these murders in order to reach his goal," explained Pongo and pointed out that he was grateful for this process.
"Nikita has already directed a couple of times in my theater and I have never been in the division even though I have been in the profession for twenty years. I was very happy to work with him and I am very satisfied, I hope that this cooperation will continue. The work process was phenomenal, I am also grateful for the fact that I met wonderful colleagues and had the opportunity to work with them".
The director of JU "Grad Teatar" Milena Lubarda Marojević is extremely happy that behind the institution and the festival is another very successful premiere.
"It is a huge co-production, five theater companies are participating in this version of "Macbeth". Nikita Milivojević's work is known to the Budva audience, which is eager and full of expectations, which probably increases his nervousness and expectations because he knows that it is a demanding audience. When we set ourselves the theme of "Winning Freedom" at the very beginning, we thought first of all about the thematic framework of all programs, but it turned out, as it is impossible to predict events and how life and theater are impossible to plan, that we did a lot of research and conquered freedom by looking for new spaces. If we had not entered this closed space tonight, if our colleagues from the Mediterranean Sports Center from Budva, their management and employees had not been our hosts, we might have had to cancel the premiere. So we embarked on an adventure in which the entire theater apparatus was moved to a completely new space within one day, which was a big challenge for all of us. Judging by the reactions of the audience, I would say that it turned out very well", Lubarda Marojević pointed out.
Aleksandar Stankov, director of the Serbian National Theater, said that "Macbeth", after the successful co-production of the play "Blood Wedding", is the next co-production that shows how fruitful cooperation between cultural institutions in the region is.
"I hope that with this cooperation we will expand the network of institutions that can cooperate together. Given that the Serbian National Theater has other branches of art, we can expect and hope that this kind of cooperation will be extended to other sectors of our theater as well," Stankov emphasized.
In addition to Nikita Milivojević, who signs the adaptation and direction, and together with Željko Piškorić, the scenography, the author's team of the play consists of Amalija Benet, who is in charge of stage movement and music selection, Jelena Stokuća, costume designer, and Dr. Dejan Sredojević, stage speech.
The actors in the play are: Anica Petrović, Nevena Nerandžić, Maja Stojanović, Jelena Simić, Dejan Đonović, Branislav Jerković, Arpad Mesaroš, Marko Marković, Milan Zarić, Sonja Isailović, Gabor Pongo and Ivana Pančić Dobrodolac.
The play is on the program repertoire on August 17, 18 and 19 at the Mediterranean Sports Center starting at 21 p.m.
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