"Treasure Island" conquers Budva: A magical pirate adventure under the moonlight

On the stage between the churches in Budva's Old Town, as part of this year's Grad Teatar festival, the premiere of the theater play "Treasure Island" took place last night, a co-production of the Grad Teatar and the Belgrade Small Theater "Duško Radović". The play is based on the famous novel Roberta Luisa Stevenson, and in adaptation and direction Kokan Mladenović.

The audience witnessed an exciting and dynamic interpretation of the famous adventure classic, adapted for stage performance and for a younger audience, but also for all those who still have the spirit of childhood within them. Through great acting, playful set design and imaginative costumes, the scene between the churches was transformed into a real mysterious island, full of suspense, maps and buried treasures. The ensemble of the play consisted of: Olivera Bacić Dragićević, Marijana Vićentijević Badovinac, Miloš Samolov, Aleksandra Andđelković, Nikola Malbaša, Nikola Kerkez, Nenad Radović, Mihajlo Đorović, Goran Balancević, Mina Nenadović, Bogdan Bogdanović, Strahinja Blažić i Mladen Vuković, who held the audience's attention from the first to the last scene with their energetic performance. Applause on the open stage, smiles and children's exclamations of delight testified to the success of the premiere and an unforgettable adventure intended for the entire family.

Director Kokan Mladenović said after the premiere that the entire vision of the play is based on children and teenagers, and expressed satisfaction with their response.

"Unlike the original, the context in which we placed this material follows a 12-year-old girl, a teenager and a rapper who writes her own music, who wants to talk about herself in that way, to self-promote herself like these kids today who watch all those TikToks and YouTubers. And so on, with all that arrogance of life in the viral sphere, she enters a terrible original story that she draws from Stevenson's novel and understands through fighting pirates, through travel what friendship is and what hatred is, and what courage is and what taking responsibility for one's own life is, and realizes that each of us still has to experience our own journey and our own excitements and that being trapped in the world of phones and computers does not mean that we will form as people if we do not experience our own adventures. Practically, the entire play, as we imagined it, should be one big invitation to travel and adventure for all the children we address," said Mladenović, adding that the setting of the scene between the churches is ideal for playing this play.

"This scene is ideal for a story about pirates. We are technologically superior there in Belgrade, with some hydraulics and the wonders of that renovated 'Duško Radović' theatre that we use a lot, but here you travel by sea while it rustles, you talk about fortresses, cities, islands on something that is already built of stone, the moon shining above the sea. It is an ideal setting for this play, it is simply precious that we are playing a sea pirate story right next to the sea and I think everyone is happy to be here."

Lead actress Olivera Bacić Dragićević said she was very emotional after the premiere because her daughter was in the audience.

"That was kind of my gift to her when I specifically accepted to do a children's play. My great happiness and pleasure is meeting Kokan Mladenović, our greatest director. The process has been very exciting for the last few months, he has been writing the text, bringing rehearsals for six hours a day, we really entered the whole story with him and saw him off. Our first experience at the City Theatre and on an open stage, I didn't have to look anywhere for inspiration because we are playing in the middle of the sea, everything contributed to the story itself," said Bacić Dragićević.

Actor Miloš Samolov said that the play deals with the questions we ask ourselves, despite the fact that it is a play for children.

"We don't underestimate children as an audience, but we really try to make them think, to assess a little for themselves what it's all about and why it's all the way it is. Children are an audience that doesn't lie. They are honest, when they're bored, they'll leave, if they're angry, they'll shout, if they like it, they'll laugh, they'll be happy, they'll applaud, so they don't hide their feelings, unlike us, who are like an audience, so in that sense it's difficult to play for children, if we keep their attention, if our story is acceptable to them, if they can accept it, then we've succeeded. And it seems to me that we've succeeded in that. At least we really enjoy playing. It's a very difficult play, it's very complicated, it has a billion steps and it wasn't easy for us to fit in," said Samolov, revealing that he and Kokan Mladenović have a long-standing cooperation.

"My first play in my life was with Kokan Mladenović, back in 1991, in Dadovo, Belgrade. Kokan is a very demanding director, but it seems to me that we started to enjoy the play and to surrender to that ship and those pirates. This scene between the churches is fantastic in terms of the sea and those waves that give an additional atmosphere to our pirate ship and our island. However, it is difficult physically. The scene is much larger than ours in 'Duško Radović' and simply tonally one has to deal with all those problems. However, it seems to me that this scene contributed to making our play even better." For actor Strahinja Blažić, this was his first performance at the Grad Teatr.

"I'm very happy about that, I came here as a spectator. I've watched some plays before at festivals, but this is the first time I've participated and it's really beautiful. The theme of the plays fits very well into this environment. The novel was a reference point, and then Kokan placed that novel in a context in which young people currently live. I think that novel is phenomenal, but it has to be in some context of the time in which it is being performed on stage. Maybe this is a play for children, but from the beginning we had access and talked to Kokan that we must not underestimate children in any way. Especially this current generation that is so informed, so exposed to information, knows so much that we respected them throughout the entire process, both through how we formed the characters, and how we dealt with the theme of the play," said Blažić.

Repeat performances of the play "Treasure Island" are scheduled for July 9th and 10th on the stage between the churches at 21 pm.