🎭 Theatre
FESTIVAL CLOSING – MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
📅 31. August · 20:30
Cast:
Authors and collaborators:
Musicians: Marko Matić (accordion), Alan Bošnjak (trombone)
Director’s Note
“The Member of Parliament” was written by a young and rebellious nineteen-year-old. We know how insolent and sharp the pen of that young genius of yours was, who, shortly after writing “The Member of Parliament,” spent two years in prison because of a poem in which he angrily railed against the authorities. […]
But Nušić is our contemporary, because evidently nothing has changed from Nušić’s time to the present day. Although the play was written one hundred and fifty years ago, it is still all very entertaining and comical today, and whether we like it or not—as beneath the comedy, criticism and a portrayal of the villains who seize power and pursue it, not out of concern for the state and the people but for their own sake, burn relentlessly and insolently. […]
The relevance of the play, here and now, is painfully obvious and would be difficult to conceal, even if one wanted to. But for me, since I practically live here in Serbia only while I am working on a production, that universal dimension is also important, one that in Nušić never abstracts away from concrete topicality—not only here or in my country, but also in everything we see today in almost all parliamentary democracies. […]
In the theatre, regardless of the era indicated by the costumes and the set, what we see on stage is always happening here and now, so we placed this production directly within such a context as well. As our entire globally urbanized world is turning into one large village, we could place our characters in such a more urbanized and universal environment. In the work of a brilliant writer such as Nušić, universality speaks through the greatest social, political, and even theatrical and artistic concreteness. […]
Nušić, like all great playwrights, whether Molière or Dušan Kovačević, leads his heroes and their fates along the edge between tragedy and comedy. Through such a shift, the characters gained much greater credibility, weight, vitality, drama, and, ultimately—even comedy.
- Dragan Mićanović
- Sloboda Mićalović
- Srđan Timarov
- Miodrag Dragičević
- Nataša Ninković
- Aleksandar Đurica
- Branko Vidaković
- Marta Bogosavljević
- Goran Šušljik
- Zoran Cvijanović
- Lazar Nikolić
- Lazar Đukić
Authors and collaborators:
- Production: Yugoslav Drama Theatre Belgrade
- Director: Vito Taufer
- Set designer: Lazar Bodroža
- Costume designer: Suna Kažić
- Composer: Šimun Matišić
- Text collaborator: Vesna Radovanović
- Stage speech: Ljiljana Mrkić Popović
- Lighting design: Siniša Čupić
- Sound design: Srđan Popov
- Stage manager: Olivera Milosavljević
- Prompter: Goran Mladenović
- Organizers: Vladimir Perišić, Andrija Urošević
- Assistant costume designer: Smiljka Babić
Musicians: Marko Matić (accordion), Alan Bošnjak (trombone)
Director’s Note
“The Member of Parliament” was written by a young and rebellious nineteen-year-old. We know how insolent and sharp the pen of that young genius of yours was, who, shortly after writing “The Member of Parliament,” spent two years in prison because of a poem in which he angrily railed against the authorities. […]
But Nušić is our contemporary, because evidently nothing has changed from Nušić’s time to the present day. Although the play was written one hundred and fifty years ago, it is still all very entertaining and comical today, and whether we like it or not—as beneath the comedy, criticism and a portrayal of the villains who seize power and pursue it, not out of concern for the state and the people but for their own sake, burn relentlessly and insolently. […]
The relevance of the play, here and now, is painfully obvious and would be difficult to conceal, even if one wanted to. But for me, since I practically live here in Serbia only while I am working on a production, that universal dimension is also important, one that in Nušić never abstracts away from concrete topicality—not only here or in my country, but also in everything we see today in almost all parliamentary democracies. […]
In the theatre, regardless of the era indicated by the costumes and the set, what we see on stage is always happening here and now, so we placed this production directly within such a context as well. As our entire globally urbanized world is turning into one large village, we could place our characters in such a more urbanized and universal environment. In the work of a brilliant writer such as Nušić, universality speaks through the greatest social, political, and even theatrical and artistic concreteness. […]
Nušić, like all great playwrights, whether Molière or Dušan Kovačević, leads his heroes and their fates along the edge between tragedy and comedy. Through such a shift, the characters gained much greater credibility, weight, vitality, drama, and, ultimately—even comedy.
Schedule
August 2026
31
mon
20:30