The city of theater is today a European cultural fact: The 38th edition of the festival begins

"I follow the growth of the Grad Teatar festival and to my great satisfaction today I can state that this festival has greatly surpassed the city and region where it was created. It is now a Balkan and European cultural fact and I am glad to be a part of it," said director Vida Ognjenović at the press conference held today in the "Budva" hotel on the occasion of the opening of the 38th edition of the Grad Teatar festival.

At the conference, the director of JU Grad Theater Milena Lubarda Marojević, chief editor of the program Svetlana Ivanović, director Vida Ognjenović, directors Haris Pašović and Vuk Ršumović and director of the City Theater in Podgorica, Ivona Čović Jaćimović, spoke about her.

The director of JU Grad Theater, Milena Lubarda Marojević, said that this press conference is special compared to many, for the reason that they rarely had the opportunity to host such an "all stars" team.

"The motto of this year's festival is a quote from the play 'Nadpop Kojović', written by Vida Ognjenović, and it reads: 'I am often visited by the distant future, you know.' When creating the program of this festival, we were guided by the vibrations that are happening, not only today in the theater, but in the world of performing arts in general, but also the topics that occupy the authors. We have an international and regional production and we concluded that the vision of the future does not necessarily have to be apocalyptic, but that we are the ones who form it. With the projects that we will have at this festival, as well as the thoughts that we will bring to it, we influence and work on how our future will look with the desire to be satisfied with the life we ​​liked", said Lubarda Marojević.

The director of the City Theater in Podgorica, Ivona Čović Jaćimović, thanked Lubarda Marojević for showing a sense of fostering co-productions and cooperation from the first day, which, as far as European standards are concerned, is the most significant story in terms of theatrical life and theatrical respect.

"We have a wonderful play by our permanent collaborator director Vida Ognjenović, which, I'm free to say, has been left to Milena and me as a child to keep, nurture and make it last as long as possible and the more we play it, the more we always improve it. We will try to jointly improve such cooperation, because institutional cooperation is very important for the survival of culture in Montenegro. Also, I am very much looking forward to the premiere in the ambient space on the stage between the churches on July 5", she pointed out.

The director Vida Ognjenović pointed out that every beginning of the City of Theater is an opportunity for her to feel great excitement and joy because she has been a longtime collaborator of this festival.

"This year, my and our play opens the festival with a new text that I wrote at the instigation of Milena Lubarda Marojević and Svetlana Ivanović, they supplied me with material, organized a symposium on Antun Kojović and got me interested in the ideas of Kojović, who is a historical figure and he lived and worked in Budva, and which, like this festival, went beyond the limits of this region and its era.

This is not a biographical drama, but a drama of those ideas that were represented by Nadpop Kojović, a doctoral student of the famous University of Loreto, a self-willed returnee to his hometown of Budva, where he lived and worked as if he were in Paris or some other big European place," Ognjenović said. .

In addition to this Budva premiere, the conference also announced the premiere of the play "The World of Possibilities", directed by Haris Pašović, who said that it was a great honor and pleasure for him to be part of the Grad Teatar festival.

"I love Budva and Montenegro very much. It's so wonderful when you look at this city from that perspective, I have to say that I feel proud. I'm a Yugoslav at heart and Montenegro is mine and Budva is mine and it's good to be there again at the festival We have been working together for several years now. 33 years ago we played the play 'Waiting for Godod' with Žarko Laušević and Miki Manojlović. It is exciting to work here again, we were in Budva last year The play "World of Possibilities" is a joint project of the Serbian National Theater from Novi Sad, the "East-West Center" from Sarajevo, the "Tala" Dance Center from Zagreb and the Budva City Theater idea, which is to look at the life of people with developmental disabilities and what their world is like. Our idea is that this play is a kind of inspiration for the establishment of a Balkan cultural center for people with developmental disabilities from the entire region, it is a utopia and a vision of this project", Pašović said, announcing the Budva premiere of this play, which is scheduled for July 14 at 21 p.m. on the stage behind the "Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša" elementary school.

Announcing another premiere of this year's Grad Teatar festival, the play "Nestvarni grad", director Vuk Ršumović expressed his gratitude for participating for the first time in a festival that greatly influenced his artistic formation.

"The scene of this play, i.e. guided audio walks are the entire Old Town in Budva, and the actors are actually the audience, they are the main characters of this play. The whole project was created thanks to the initiative of Milena Lubarda Marojević, we both immediately understood what it should be and how it should look. In contemporary theater, this project would be an immersive theater, it is actually an interactive theater that requires the audience to actively engage in interaction with reality. It's best when experienced without too much foreknowledge, but I have to emphasize that I really like the motto of this year's festival, because it seems like a paradox, how could the future visit you. In fact, I think that a paradox always hides a nucleus of originality, freshness, some new idea and spark, something that can change our experience of the world or conventional understandings. In our play, in which the theme is memory, there is a line that reads 'memory shapes our future'. The past and the future are connected very deeply in us, we may not even be aware of it, that we can call it up as a thought, but in fact it is like that", said Ršumović.

The premiere of the play "Nestvarni grad" is scheduled for July 27 and the maximum number of participants, i.e. 12 people in the audience.

Another premiere will take place on August 3 on the stage in front of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Stanjevići, and it is about the play "Protection", a comedy by Branislav Nušić, directed by Milan Nešković, and co-produced by JU Grad Teatar and the National Theater from Sombor. The editor-in-chief of the festival program, Svetlana Ivanović, who was also the moderator of the media conference, also announced a rich literary program.

"At the very opening of the literary program, we will have the opportunity to host Slobodan Šnajder, winner of the 'Stefan M. Ljubiša' award for 2021/2022. year, to whom the members of the jury, which consisted of Dragana Kujović, Saša Radojčić and Velimir Visković, will present the award, but also point out the poetic currents not only of Šnajder's prose, but also of dramatic literature. In addition, this year we will mark one of the most significant events for the culture of these areas, 530 years since the publication of the Crnojević Printing House's 'Octoi first voice', a jubilee that confirms its undeniable presence on the cultural map not only of Europe, but also of the world. "Aleksandar Jerkov will talk about the significance of the civilizational step forward of printing the first Cyrillic book, the Mediterranean and European context of this act of culture, as well as the tasks to which it obliges the generations to come," she revealed.

Milena Lubarda Marojević, director of JU Grad Theater, commented on the rich musical program.

"The beginning of the festival will be marked by cooperation with the Music Center of Montenegro through two big concerts. On July 10, the Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra will accompany Vlatko Stefanovski, performing well-known compositions in new arrangements under the direction of conductor Emin Džijan. After that, on July 19, after many years, we will again hear the virtuoso Roman Simović in Budva, also accompanied by the Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra. The festival continues its long-term cooperation with the conductor Bojan Suđić, who is preparing a program for this year's edition entitled 'Musical fireworks' performed by the festival choir. and the orchestra 'Virtuosi', and distinguished soloists. In cooperation with maestro Suđić, the audience of this year's festival will have the opportunity to listen to two giants of the international music scene for the first time. On July 31, the festival will host violinist, conductor and countertenor Dmitri Sinkovski, who will perform the famous 'Four Seasons' by Antonio Vivaldi. Towards the end of the festival, on August 22, on the stage Between the Churches, pianist Simon Trpcevski will hold a solo concert, performing works by Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev...", she said.

The art program will be marked by an important exhibition made in cooperation with the National Museum of Montenegro, the most important national institution in the field of art, Lubarda Marojević added.

"Guided by this year's slogan of the festival, which conceptualizes a constant focus on the future, we plan to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Petr Lubarda, one of the most important contemporary Montenegrin and Yugoslav painters, in a new way. The exhibition entitled 'Petar Lubarda – new framing' aims to explore the possibility of transposing artistic starting points and postulates through new technologies. The idea is to use the 3-D mapping technique to virtually present the most important phases of Lubarda's creativity through works from the NMCG fund in the area of ​​the Santa Marija in Punta church. We expect that the confirmed value of Lubarda's creativity will also open up in new semantic aspects, defined by the synergy of the given space, confirmed poetics and the possibility of mediation and reception of art through new technologies. The authors of the exhibition are Filip Mikić, author of the video work, and Snežana Ivović and Miloš Marjanović, art historians," concluded the director of JU Grad Theater.

Milena Lubarda Marojević and Svetlana Ivanović were recently in Germany at the Assembly of the European Federation of Festivals, and Milena represented Budva and the festival.