Rehearsals began today at the Yugoslav Drama Theatre of Belgrade Trilogy by Biljana Srbljanović, directed by Ivan Alač. The cast includes Ognjen Nikola Radulović, Darko Radojević, Maja Čampar, Nikolina Vujević, Đorđe Mitrović and Miloš Macura. Set design by Ivan Alač, costume design by Srđan Perić with Ljiljana Mrkić Popović in charge of voice coaching. The author Biljana Srbljanović was present during the first rehearsal.
Belgrade Trilogy was Biljana Srbljanović’s graduation play and it won her the first ever Slobodan Selenić award in 1996, established that same year. The play premièred the following year on the stage of the Bojan Stupica Theatre and was directed by Goran Marković. The première cast included Dragan Jovanović, Nikola Đuričko, Radmila Radovanović, Tamara Vučković, Bogdan Diklić, Katarina Gojković, Goran Šušljik, Nebojša Milovanović, Bojan Dimitrijević, Mara Radulović and Ksenija Zelenović with set design by Dušan Otašević, costume design by Jelisaveta Tatić and original music composed by Zoran Simjanović. The première production of Belgrade Trilogy took part in the Sterijino Pozorje theatre festival, a theatre festival in Poland and at the European Drama Biennial in Bonn where it drew a lot of attention both to our theatre and to the work of Biljana Srbljanović. The production had a guest performance at the Small Scenes Theatre Festival in Rijeka, as the first theatre production from Serbia to take part in a festival in Croatia, after the break-up of former Yugoslavia, in Ljubljana and the last ever performance took place on the stage of Bojan Stupica theatre in 2004.
According to the playwright herself, Belgrade Trilogy is an “autobiography of the whole city”. The three tragi-comical stories from Prague, Sydney and Los Angeles respectively, show the lives of former Belgrade residents who now live the lives of stateless immigrants. They are all brought together by one New Year’s Eve and a young woman who remained in Belgrade.
Belgrade Trilogy by Biljana Srbljanović has been performed around the world in around 30 different productions (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United States, Scandinavia…). It was also published in the German magazine Theater der Zeit. Besides German, the play has also been translated into English, French, Arabic, Italian, Romanian, Danish….
Photo: YDT