The Grand Prix for best production of the 15 th ‘Joakimfest’ International Theatre Festival held in Kragujevac went to Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michael Fengler, directed by Bobo Jelčić. The jury justified its decision with these words:
“This production is a well rounded, polyphonic multi layered, emotional and humorously collective stage undertaking. Reinterpreting a film and converting it into a different medium is no mean feat, especially into a well integrated and individualistic stage production where the only thing it shares with the eponymous film is its unique energy. This is how the cast were able to achieve a synchronised and perfectly rhythmical collective performance. What they managed to achieve is individuality of character that stands in perfect synchronicity with the overall rhythm and the cathartic interaction on stage.
Each aspect of the production provides an ideal springboard for the continued state of mind of the main character in relation to everyone else on stage: his alienated soliloquies, pressed speech and recitative that stand in contrast with the sense of loss, of the unspoken, of incomplete imagery and unpredictable statics which occasionally breaks into sudden bursts of dance escapism – only to explode in commonplace murder.
The political problems and those of misunderstood humanity in this production have been transformed into the absurd and tragi-comical which simultaneously resonate with us and are reflected in the art of the leading actor and the unexpected choices in his performance tactics.“