About This Project

“A Few Messages to the Space”
“Adresa Svemir – Nekoliko poruka”
Wolfram Lotz

Translator: Bojana Denić
Dramaturgy: Teodora Marković
Set Design: Ylva Norlin
Costume Design: Maja Mirković
Composer: Igor Gostuški
Light Design: Benjamin Fjellman
Movement: Damjan Kecojević
Photo: Neda Mojsilovic
Stage Manager: Katarina Vojnović
Set Design Assistant: Uroš Ranković
Cast: Mladen Andrejević, Milutin Dapčević, Danijel Sič, Aleksandar Vučković, Nikola Malbaša, Jelena Ilić, Milica Sužnjević
Production: Bitef Teatar, December, 2021.

“A Few Messages to the Space” is not my first encounter with the wondrous and vast universe of Wolfram Lotz.

A few years back, I was lucky enough to direct his text “Ridiculous Darkness” at the City Theater in Helsingborg, Sweden. And a few years before that, Bojana Denić, my friend and a dedicated translator of contemporary German literature into Serbian, sent me Lotz’s text “Einige Nachrichten an das All” with a warm recommendation to read it because, as Bojana told me, he is a fantastic writer we a rayed to hear about and who would be a good choice for my artistic sensibility.

Of so many good contemporary texts in German, which Bojana had generously shared with me over the years (many of which really corresponded to my sensibility) – this one stayed with me the longest. After the first line in the introduction to the text: “Fuckers, we are in an explosion!” – it was clear to me that one day, as soon as the opportunity arose, I would definitely direct it. I didn’t bother too much with thinking about when and where it would be, although I secretly wished it would be in Belgrade, which at that time, for several reasons, which I will not go into here, was unattainable for me. A few years later, Bojana translated the text into Serbian, and during that time I mostly worked in other languages, believing that I would stage this text, as well as many others in the last ten years, in another country and in another language – for another audience. Thanks to the long-term persistence of Filip Vujosević and the tectonic change of plans caused by the pandemic, the opportunity arose to direct the play at the Bitef Theater again, almost 10 years after my last performance in Belgrade. As we discussed several other titles, we both, almost simultaneously, remembered Wolfram Lotz and this text. After many years from the first reading, I picked up the text again and after the first few lines, it was clear to me that we no longer had to search for the”right” title.
For me, this project is more than returning home, as after many years, I am finally directing in my own language again – it is, in fact, to paraphrase Lotz from his “Speech About the Impossible Theatre”an impossible return home in the name of a better future and moving forward into the past. The past I can’t remember clearly any longer. But I still hope that in an impossible theater, everything is possible, even reality.
And yes – we are still in an explosion.
Boom!