This is not so much a review, but rather a reflection on a new production that opened on Saturday at the Stables.
The reason I can only reflect on it is that I directed a production of Family Stories: Belgrade two years ago. It was such a labour of love that went on for so many years that seeing it again after I had presented the work was extremely strange.
Written by Belgrade based writer and lecturer Biljana Srbljanovic, Family Stories: Belgrade is one of my most favoured pieces of theatre text that has emerged out of post-war Yugoslavia. In an article that I wrote for Arts Hub at the time I said that "Srbljanovic’s plays are uncompromising, violent and beautiful. She writes with an arrogance that both respects and abuses her audiences. And for a director, sets a challenge to create theatre from a buffet of conflicting and imperfect choices."
And I still think that's true.
In the article I also explained the enormous struggle that both I and Bojana Novakovic went through to get the Australian premiere up. Bojana is the translator and co-director on this more recent production.
Very little has changed with the text since I workshopped Bojana's translation and I believe that it is still a wonderful play that deserves to be seen far more often. (That could be said for a lot of other plays that have emerged from non-English speaking countries).
But naturally, the protective little director in me had problems with this new presentation particularly with the characterisations of the four characters.
The difficult thing about Family Stories: Belgrade for Australian audiences is that there is very little reference points for them to grab hold of. Unless they are well-read on the events that happened during the Balkan Wars and Slobodan Milosovic's dictatorship it is an extremely surreal play that can easily fall into that apocalyptic genre of plays that we see so often coming out of the UK.
But Family Stories: Belgrade isn't an apocalyptic play, it is very much a satirical piece made up of short scenes where four adult actors play eleven or twelve year old children who role-play adult characters. The adult characters that the kids play come from an array of Serbian stereotypes and political figures framed by the crisis of events that happened around Milosovic's reign.
The trouble that you face with an audience so far from the setting is that so many of the references are lost. The most poignant reference lost is with the character of Nadezda, the character that plays a dog and is largely silent for most of the play. Nadezda when translated from Serbian means 'Hope'. But if you translate her name there are obvious problems.
A possible way of getting around that is to aim directly for the theatricality of the piece and to explore the beauty of the opening stage direction of the play;
The characters in the play are children, They age or get younger according to what is required in the stories. There’s no need for anyone to marvel at this.
The actors, on the contrary, are not children. They are grown ups who play children, who in turn play adults. There’s no need for anyone to marvel at this either. There are plenty of other things for people to marvel about.
It is important to remember that these the characters aren't that young and at eleven or twelve would have a great capacity to role play the adult figures and stereotypes. Add to the mix the element of adult actors playing the kids and you have a fascinating theatrical experiment that can shift and change unexpectedly from the three different realities.
I felt however that this recent production didn't fully explore those different realities and played an over simplified straight bat in characterising the kids as younger and cognitively less mature beings than they are.
The other problem that the production faced was utilising the theatrical elements of surprise that the play has to offer. I believe that this had more to do with the Stables space that could be a little small for four kids to run around role-playing all these different scenes.
As well, the character who is the temperature gauge on the production, Nadezda, should be more available to the audience and help them through the reactions to the scenes. In the Stables space, all to often her back was to the audience or she was lost within the limited sight lines.
It's a problematic play with so many options and in no way do I think that I have the answers to it. It is such a relief that the Griffin is brave enough to put on plays like this. In fact, it would be safe to say that this year's selection has been one of the most interesting and adventurous for a long while. Family Stories: Belgrade is no different and it's a text that really is quite wonderful.
Until 8 November.
SBW Stables Theatre
10 Nimrod Street Kings Cross
Bookings 1300 306 776
2 comments:
I am so enormously excited about seeing a local production of the Family Stories. I didn't know you had done one, but then, sometimes it seems everyone has. It's one of the most beautiful texts of the century, I think. I wonder how it will hold in translation and transposition.
Biljana's stage notes (why doesn't English have the word didaskalija, by the way?) are quite marvelous, aren't they? I wonder if anyone would be up for producing a more recent work of hers. Family Stories has become a historical piece, almost.
Funny what you say about the space.
The production I saw in Croatia was in the corner of an abandoned factory, of that massive communist type, that was used for an arts festival. I don't think it's been converted into anything since, it's probably still just an empty space someone occasionally carts some art into. But it worked wonderfully. You could imagine children, those or any, really sneaking into a ruined factory near their houses, to play mum&dad. It was a vast, vague, empty space.
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