BILJANA SRBLJANOVIĆ
LOCUSTS
Directed by DEJAN MIJAČ
An influential TV show presenter is meeting his new acquaintance – a young woman who is also a clairvoyant, with the intention of using her powers to gather information about the lives and future plans of the political elite. A respectable surgeon and his pregnant sister decide to get rid of their old, senile father by leaving him by the side of a motorway, somewhere outside the city, with no documents and only one suitcase. A retired university professor, with a passion for playing the lottery, hires his own weakling of a son as a chauffeur in order to protect him from the consequences of his shady past.
These are just some of the disturbing stories which, as the drama evolves, will begin to overlap and intertwine into a grim and menacing vision of a society undergoing a period of great change and yet still strongly influenced by the decisions and values of the previous generation which refuses to relinquish its authority.
The production of Locusts won five Sterijino Pozorje awards for best new play (Biljana Srbljanović), best director (Dejan Mijač), best music score (Isidora Žebeljan) and two awards for acting (Renata Ulmanski and Isidora Minić). During the same edition of Sterijino Pozorje theatre festival, the Critics Round Table described Locusts as the best production of the festival. In addition to guest performances in Ljubljana and Zagreb, Locusts was also performed at festivals in Wiesbaden (New Plays from Europe festival), Rijeka (Small Scenes Festival) and in Thessaloniki (Premio Europa). Thanks to this play, the prestigious German theatre magazine Theater Heute selected Biljana Srbljanović as the best playwright of the year in a foreign language.