International Festival of Actors in Nikšić: On the third evening, the play "Ship for Dolls" was performed.

Listening to the impressions of the audience, as well as the answers of the actors, somehow it seems that the slogan of the 19th International Festival of Actors in Nikšić, "That's right (if you think so)" fully corresponds to the play "Ship for Dolls" of the National Theater of Bitolj "which, according to text by Milena Marković, directed by Kokan Mladenović, while Biljana Krajčevska was responsible for the dramatization and translation of the text.

The play, which was performed on the third evening of the competition, follows the life path of an artist, and each of the seven stages she goes through and which are represented by well-known fairy tales, evokes a unique initiation into the world of adults and the seven metamorphoses of her passive female principle.

It is the story of a "victim woman" who, on her own, or on the advice of others, chooses to remain silent, to ignore, to be morally and physically abused, who realizes that life is not a fairy tale and that, as Mladenović wrote, there are also " witches and evil wizards and dangerous monsters and that everything can be waiting for us, in some dark rooms at the end of the corridor, at the end of all this". But it is also a story about elections, about a world that is (not) for children, about existential gaps, about escape and search, about hope and meaninglessness, about emotion and brutality.

"The most beautiful fairy tales have no lesson, because they do not serve for comfort and excitement here - they prepare for death," wrote Marković, and "Ship for Dolls" is her most awarded text, a text that leaves no one indifferent.

"We had the opportunity to watch a theater piece that was really moving and in that dispersion of characters and actions, one can feel so many elements and motives, both theatrical, literary, mythological, and life, which really make a person thoughtful and to a key moment of catharsis," he said. is the artistic director of the Nikšić Theater and the president of the Festival Council, Janko Jelić, at the beginning of the conversation with the actors of the play "Ship for Dolls".

"It's about a woman who fights fiercely for her place, who has to be a wife, mother, housewife, and if she wants to succeed professionally, she has to work hard. We are taught from a young age to be servile as a woman. In a man's world, we try to achieve equality, but the reality is different. So we see in the play that the male seed is good, and if something is wrong with the child, the woman is to blame, if she can't give birth, it's the woman's fault again, if she's successful, then she must have slept with many people. We see all these characters in our everyday life, and if it weren't sad it would be funny," said Viktorija Stepanovska, who plays Goldilocks, Thumbelina, Princess, Woman in the play.

Ilina Čorevska believes that it is up to us how we will live - whether we will kiss a frog at one point and think he is a prince, or know that he is a frog and still continue to kiss him.

"You don't marry a woman who doesn't have the ability to change her destiny. She is a woman who is smart, who knows what she is getting into, and she does not enter intuitively but chooses to be in those stories in the context in which she is placed. That woman is not a victim, and the play tells about the present in which we live and everyone can find those archetypes in it. Life is not a beautiful story, and this play is a black fairy tale," Čorevska believes.

One of the lines in the play is that this world is not for children, because there are a lot of beasts there, as the little girl who opened the door of the forbidden room and entered a world where mom can't drive away the "scarecrows" so easily, and dad can't send the broken toys on a doll ship to some nice place.

"The question is whether we can protect our children. Can we warn them of what awaits them? Wanting to protect them too much, we don't leave them freedom", pointed out Valentina Gramosli, and her colleague Sandra Gribovska Ilievska added that fairy tales are beautiful, but life is not - it is cruel, difficult, it is a struggle.

"Free means someone who follows himself no matter what. I am not free", says a woman who is looking for herself in the play. How many free people are there today and what kind of world we are leaving to our children.

"Perhaps it is better that instead of whether this world is for children, we should ask whether we are leaving this world for our children. We are leaving an ugly world for our children, and that is definitely a problem," says Petar Spirovski.

His namesake, Petar Gorko, concludes that it is always a matter of choice.

"Choice is the most important thing. According to me, it is a choice to be a man - not to be a woman or a man, but a man".

So easy, and so difficult a choice, because there are enough people in this world, and the question is how many of them chose to be human.

In the play, for which costumes were made by Aleksandra Pecić Mladenović, stage design by Valentin Svetozarev, music by Dimitar Andonovski, and choreography by Andrea Kulesević, the actors are: Sandra Gribovska Ilievska, Katerina Anevska Drangovska, Valentina Gramosli, Viktorija Stepanovska Jankulovska, Ilina Čorevska, Marjan Georgievski, Filip Mirčevski, Živko Borisovski, Petar Spirovski, Martin Mirčevski, Ognen Drangovski, Petar Gorko, Nikola Projčevski and Nikola Stefanov. Vladimir Perelovski and Filip Ošavkov are in charge of the video projections.

Tonight on stage "The Bald Singer"

Tonight on the stage of the Nikšić Theater, the performance of the Tivat Center for Culture "The Bald Singer", directed by Jagoš Marković, based on the text by Ežen Jonesko, will be performed. In the play, which premiered this summer as part of the festival of the Mediterranean theater "Purgatory", the actors: Olga Odanović, Branko Vidaković, Dubravka Drakić, Momčilo Otašević, Sandra Bugarski and Branimir Popović.

"Just as, as a rule, there is no civilization that has not given birth to its own absurdities as a convincing confirmation of its duration; conformity, as an achieved level of relationship beyond which its understanding is impossible; finally, the rules and relations of communication based on the use and exchange of the so-called 'absolute truths' of language phrases and quips, on which the 'order and decency' of its environment is based, so we consciously sought the recipe and the right for a 'domestic' theatrical research of Ionesco's 'anti-drama' and seasoned with the peculiarities of Boka, convinced that in this way we are also paying her the homage she deserved", wrote Neven Staničić, who translated Ionesko's original text into the Boka dialect.

Staničić also writes the stage speech, the costumes were made by Marija Marković-Milojević, the stage design by Tara Lazarević-Kisić and the lighting design by Radomir Stamenković.