Production: Tivat Culture Centre (Centar za kulturu Tivat)

Jean-Paul Sartre: DIRTY HANDS

Director’s note:

This drama of psychological realism deals with the conflict between political ideology and personal ethics, setting the thesis of “clean” thought against that of “dirty” action.

Through his storytelling, Sartre underscores the existentialist stance that the individual is radically free yet also fully responsible for their decisions, and that both the left and the right can become equally dogmatic.

Our production speaks precisely about the principles of action – both of political life on a broader scale and the shattering of the personal ideals and illusions of a young revolutionary in turbulent times.

This is a fusion of political drama, existentialism, realism and an engaged style, posing the question of how far a person may go in their convictions, and whether it is possible to remain “clean” and yet still change the world. He decided to move its action from London to the Bay of Kotor, into the apartment of a genteel Kotor family, and to transform the British stiffness of the drama’s original characters into a Mediterranean lightness – and the fjaka (languor) so characteristic of the inhabitants of our bay. A key role in this was played by the translation of the play into the Boka dialect and its adaptation to local circumstances, a bold undertaking by Neven Staničić.

– Jug Radivojević