The Budva “Theatre City” festival will be held this year for the 35th time. This year’s festival programme will be realized from July 10 to August 20 at the locations in the Old Town of Budva, as well as in the amphitheatre of the Holly Trinity Monastery in Stanjevići. The programmes will start at 9 PM, and during 41 days of the festival over 45 theatrical, literary, musical and fine arts programmes will be shown.
The motto of this year’s festival is “Revival”, which is the essential guiding idea in the creation and realization of this year’s festival, together with the most important need which is the need of the encounter between artists and their audience.
The drama programme will premiere a new theatrical production of the festival, the 76th in a row, but the audience will also have the opportunity to see an overview of our productions that marked the period from 2018 to 2020, among which are three plays that deserved great attention from both the audience and the professional public. In addition to our festival’s productions, we will show selected guest performances that are played on the theatre stages of the region.
The play “The Green Felt of Montenegro”, a co-production by the Budva “Theatre City”, Belgrade Drama Theatre and the City Theatre in Podgorica, is based on the dramatization of the novel of the same name by Momo Kapor and Zuko Džumhur written by Stevan Koprivica. The director of this play is Nikita Milivojević, the author of some of the most important theatre productions in the history of this festival. The premiere performance of this play was originally planned for the XXXIV festival. However, due to the circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the play will finally be premiered at this year’s festival, after which it will be played during this year in Belgrade and in Podgorica.
The festival will be opened with the play “Blood Wedding”, a 2018 co-production by the Budva “Theatre City” and the Novi Sad Serbian National Theatre, a play based on the work of Federico García Lorca, directed by Igor Vuk Torbica. In addition to this, the audience will have the opportunity to see “La Celestina”, a co-production by the Budva “Theatre City” and the Yugoslav Drama Theatre in Belgrade, based on the play by Fernando de Rojas, adapted by Maja Todorović and directed by Milan Nešković, which premiered at the XXXIII festival. Last year’s festival co-production, “The Use of Man” based on the novel by Aleksandar Tišma, directed by Boris Liješević, co-produced by the Budva “Theatre City”, “East-West Center” in Sarajevo, “New Fortress Theater” in Čortanovci and “Újvidéki Színház” theatre in Novi Sad, will be performed at this year’s festival as well.
In the guest program, we will show some of the most important theatrical achievements of this country and the region in the past two years.
In the amphitheatre of the Stanjevići Monastery we will show the play “Capricide”, a play produced by the City Theatre in Podgorica, based on the text by Vida Ognjenović and also directed by her. Our audience has been waiting to see this play for some time, since it was supposed to be performed for the first time at the “Theatre City” festival in 2019, but it was postponed the first time due to bad weather conditions, then again last year, 2020, when the programme was postponed due to COVID-19 related epidemiological measures.
The dramatic adaptation of the novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink “The Reader”, co-produced by the Belgrade Drama Theatre and the Beo Art Agency in Belgrade, was done by Fedor Šili, and the play was directed by Boris Liješević. The festival audience will have the opportunity to see the play this August. The Belgrade Drama Theatre will also present the play “Twilight of the Gods”, a dramaturgical stylization by Ivor Martinić, based on Luchino Visconti’s 1969 famous film screenplay, while the directing, adaptation, scenic design and music selection undersigns Jagoš Marković.
The repertoire will also include a new play by the Yugoslav Drama Theatre “My Husband”, based on the literary template of the same name by Rumena Bužarovska, directed by Jovana Tomić.
This year, the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb will present the play “You Know Who I Am”. Ivan Penović is the author of the text and the director of this play, which, among other things, covers the story about the fate and challenges of the Zanović brothers at their encounter with Europe in the second half of the 18th century.
“Marta and the Seven Fears”, by the KUFER Theatre Company/KunstTeatar Performance Art Theatre in cooperation with the association BoliMe in Zagreb, a play based on the text and dramaturgy by Ivana Vuković, directed by Natalija Manojlović, thematizes the challenges of a modern twenty-year-old girl growing up, covering indirectly the subject of the mental health of the young people.
We will present two plays for the youngest audience: the play “Slipper Keeper Kitty”, based on the story of the same name by Ela Peroci, dramatized and directed by Davor Dragojević, produced by the City Theatre in Podgorica, and the play “Boy With a Suitcase” by Duško Radović Little Theatre in Belgrade, directed by Damjan Kecojević, based on the text of Mike Kenny. The play is about a twelve-year-old boy who is forced to leave his home and embark on a long and dangerous journey to the “promised land”, carrying his greatest wealth in a suitcase – bedtime stories told to him by his parents.
At the closing of the festival, we are planning to show the “Balkan Spy”, a play by the National Theatre in Belgrade, based on the famous text by Dušan Kovačević, and directed by Tanja Mandić Rigonat.
This year, we have reserved two terms for the off-program, during which the students of the Budva Acting School will show what they learned in the previous period.
Bojan Munjin, a journalist and theatre critic, was, this year as well, the expert consultant for the drama programme.
The selection and realization of the music programme this year are conditioned by variable epidemiological measures, so a total of four open-air concerts will be held, as well as four more in the Santa Maria in Punta Church.
This programme segment will start on July 12 on the Square of Painters in front of the Old Town, with a concert that will be realized in collaboration with the Tourism Organization of the Municipality of Budva. This will be a performance of the choir and orchestra of the Radio Television of Serbia, under the baton of maestro Bojan Suđić.
Then, on the stage Between the Churches, another dear friend of the festival, the guitarist Vlatko Stefanovski, will perform within the “Vlatko Stefanovski Trio”, that will, on this occasion, present a new album by this band.
We are also honored to have the opportunity to hear the famous violinist Stefan Milenković once again at the festival, whose career beginnings we remember here at the “Theatre City”. Stefan will perform the famous Orff’s oratorio “Carmina Burana” with the string orchestra “Camerata” from Novi Sad, in a new arrangement by the composer Ana Krstajić.
The celebrated Montenegrin pianist Bojan Martinović will also hold a solo concert on the stage Between the Churches.
At the very end of the festival, we will have the opportunity to hear the young double bass player from Budva, Vasilije Gagović, with the accompaniment of Jelena Vukićević Vukmirović.
This year’s special music programme is a programme called “The Podium of the Young”, dedicated to the young hopes of the musical world of Budva, who acquired their first musical knowledge in the Budva Music School, and then continued their education and training in schools and academies in this country and abroad. The selector of this programme is the pianist and music pedagogue Nikola Vučković.
The opening of the fine arts programme is scheduled for July 13, when, in the Santa Maria Church, at 9 PM, the exhibition “COMEBACK, From the Contemporary Montenegrin Art Scene” will be opened, and it will last until August 20, 2021. The author of this exhibition is the painter Đorđije Boljević.
This year’s literary programme will be organized in several thematic units, and it will begin on July 14, at the Square of Poets with the presentation of the monography published by the Public Institution “Theatre City” “VOICE OF VIRTUE – Igor Vuk Torbica at the festival Theatre City, Budva”, an edition dedicated to the collaboration of this institution with Igor Vuk Torbica, but also dedicated to the understanding of the importance that he had for the theatrical reality of Budva and Montenegro as one of the most talented directors of today.
We will talk with the architect Slobodan Bobo Mitrović (author of the monography “Architect Josip Slade Šilović, Architectural Works in the Principality of Montenegro 1877-1900) about the history of construction in Montenegro, since Josip Slade also made a draft for the building of the Royal Theatre “Zetski dom”, the oldest theatre in Montenegro.
On the Square of Poets, we will also mark two important dates for the history of literature, 200 years since the birth of Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky and Charles Baudelaire. PhD Jasmina Ahmetagić will talk about the art of storytelling and understanding the world and man in the works of Dostoyevsky, while PhD Vesna Elez will speak about Baudelaire’s “Flowers of Evil”.
In the domain of social theory, we will present the book “Myths of Our Time” by the Italian philosopher, sociologist and psychoanalyst Umberto Galimberti who, in a slightly different way, re-examines the value system of modern times, looking at it from the domain of prosperity of an individual and society in today’s world in accordance with humanistic principles.
While reviewing contemporary literary production of the region, we will pay attention to the prose literature of Enes Halilović, Igor Marojević, Slavica Perović, Maša Kolanović, Stefan Bošković and Draško Sikimić, the poetry of Stanka Stanojević, Andrija Radulović and Aleksandar Ćuković, as well as contemporary dramatic literature of Montenegro through the work of Aleksandar Radunović.
During this year’s festival, we will dedicate a special cycle to Budva’s cultural heritage, specifically the life and work of the canon, teacher and chronicler of the city of Budva, Antun Kojović. On that occasion, an interdisciplinary gathering dedicated to his life and work will be organized. The participants of this gathering will be Zlata Bojović – academician of the Serbian Academy of Sciences & Arts, Siniša Jelušić, – academician of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, Nenad Vuković – academician of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, Branko Letić – academician of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Republic of Srpska, PhD Miodrag Jovanović, MA Božena Jelušić, Vida Ognjenović, director, Dušan Medin, master, in co-authorship with PhD Zlata Marjanović and Stanka Janković Pivljanin – doctoral student in the history of literature.
At the closing of the XXXV festival on August 20, the “Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša” Literary Award Ceremony will take place. According to the decision of the jury members, Mihajlo Pantić, Nadežda Čačinović and Slavica Perović, the 2019/2020 Award winner is Radoslav Petković.
“Theatre City” Press Service