Awards for Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? at 43 rd Fadil Hadžić Days of Satire theatre festival in Zagreb

This evening’s award ceremony marked the end of 43 rd edition of Fadil Hadžić Days of Satire theatre festival in Zagreb.

The jury made up of Dražen Čuček (actor, jury president), Dubravko Mihanović (playwright and dramaturgue) and Bojana Radović (journalist and theatre critic for The Večernji List daily) awarded the best director award to Bobo Jelčić for his handling of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michael Fengler, produced by Yugoslav Drama Theatre.

The jury justified its decision with these words: “By bridging media and epochs, social orders and social conditions, on the blueprint of a work by Fassbinder for foundations, rose a production that seamlessly brings together the intimate and the political, delving deeply into the vulnerable centre of all human beings, no matter who they may be or where they might be from, because fragility is something we all have in common. The director shaped this production very convincingly by using the theatre as a meeting place, that of wonder and empathy, drawing us slowly into this ‘story without a story’ which, when it ends, leaves us speachless. It seems as if we are watching a comedy only to suddenly discover we are in the middle of a tragedy, in an attempt to face up to a man we see ourselves in and who has done something so understandable.”

The Mladen Crnobrnja Gumbek award for best male actor went to Boris Isaković for his portrayal of Herr R.

“Agitated and confused, neurotic and in pain that has been seeping into him from the very beginning of the play, alone in the knowledge where the pain comes from and why, unable to articulate what it is that prevents him from reaching his full potential, whether it is the society, the family, the friends and colleagues or if it is himself alone, wondering about the source of the emptiness that all of us find ourselves in, an emptiness that swallows everything it comes in contact with, this actor is a true samurai building his character firmly believing that less is sometimes really more and that the unspoken is just as important as the spoken, the repressed as important as what you show. His Herr R. goes on living inside us long after he has left the stage, a kind of threat, albeit theatrical – though quite possibly a real one,” is what the jury said in their decision.

autori fotografije su: B & B