Vuk Bošković: THE NEW ERA
PRODUCTION: BITEF Theatre, Beograd

LOCATION: Fortress Minor, Mali Brijun
DURATION: 1 hour, 45 minutes

ABOUT THE PLAY

In front of us is an interesting theatre exploration of mechanism of the Transition which started with war crimes and brought profits to the selected few. That kind of moral relativism is not tolerable. Collectively and individually, we are stuck between the revolution that didn’t happen and evolution that won’t come. That creates anger and hatred, society without democracy which creates the world of obedient pragmatists, people without compassion and honor.

That is a horrible business and political deal between the executioner and the victim, signed and certified by the new society’s elite.

Understanding of Transition in the heads of new “elite” and their advertising operations turned in to some kind of “garbage bag” in which they put everything that is wrong, everything that is not in line with political norms and God’s plan. As soon as someone thinks differently, if they don’t want to adjust, they are put in that garbage bag, and things move along. Criticism is a disruptive factor in these new countries where fear about survival is dominant force, which is in itself a consequence of polarization and economical and social insecurity.

That fear is used every day in political practice through methods of corrupt state. Logic is, everything can be bought and sold and the person is the cheapest goods. Worst thing is that we accepted that as a state of things. This is a story about the man of integrity that didn’t survive Transition.

New Age is a cemetery of ethical idealism.

(Dino Mustafić, director)

Things changed. And we can’t go back. That opens a lot of questions. First and foremost, have the last decade and a half of Transition in the Balkans become totally meaningless? Are we moving and changing (no matter how slow and lazily) just so we can join the world that doesn’t exist anymore? Are we aware of that at all? Is this assumption wrong and 2016. was just a lot of noise and no signal? Regardless, it is time to settle some scores. Balkans societies are still in Transition. They still haven’t left world of war, crimes and evil from where they started, and they haven’t yet arrived in the free, western society. Any maybe, when and if we arrive there, we will find just a cadaver of one big and for 60 year very successful idea. Regular, everyday people took part in everything. Both in war and in transition. They were victims, war criminals, witnesses, tycoons, workers, loners, potential emigrants, unemployed, managers, rapists. We were, and we are absolutely everything and everyone. And most of the time, we talked how nothing depended of us. Even though that wasn’t and will never be true. We lived, we live and we will live together and we will do to each other everything that we did in the past. This play and this production are about all these things. About us, about world, about elections in America, elections in Serbia, about migrant crises and its consequences. About wars that happened but are not talked about even though they scream from the subtext of daily life. About people that left and those that will leave. About us, who intend to stay here but don’t really know why. About chaos that surrounds us.  About New Age.

(Vuk Bošković, writer)

 “This is an attempt to provoke discussion about the topic: which artistic means are needed and (un)available for us to use to talk about horrors that happened to us, in a correct (satisfactory) way.“
DNEVNIK, Igor Burić

“Personal dramas of characters are ways through which horrors of fault lines of societal changes are exposed, cruel challenges of our times which broke our value system. People are forced to forget their humanity in their fight to survive.”

“This production is powerful in the end because of suggestively acted and horrifyingly recognizable situations, and brutal modernity of themes in which audience can easily connect to.”
POLITIKA, Ana Tasić

„New Age“ in based on an abominable effect of societal changes (all encompassing muddle) on everyday (weak) human beings, who are in the tug of war between their limitied abilities and their enormous appetites for power and money…“

“Mirjana Karanović, powerful actress, played two of this kind of women: a manger with a secret biography frightened that it will become known because she was a whistleblower, not because of the truth, but self-interest , and also, a professor, women without big ethics considerations.”

“Boris Isaković, as a brash politician/war criminal and as humiliated professor/bookseller, was deliberately written as a same man, in two different life situations.”
NOVOSTI, Dragana Bošković

“Main part in this deeply disturbing and artistically exciting production was played by our cruel reality. This is a vivisection of our lives. Literally!”

“There is no catharsis. It you make a deal, you will survive. If not…tough luck!
BLIC, Tatjana Nježić