Milena Marković
The Doll Ship
Directed by Ana Tomović

("Pera Dobrinović" Stage)
premiere - 24th September 2008

Actors: JASNA DJURIČIĆ, DRAGINJA VOGANJAC, MILICA GRUJIČIĆ, RADOJE ČUPIĆ, NENAD PEĆINAR, RADOVAN VUJOVIĆ

Musicians: Ksenija Bašić, Milan Nenin, Lazar Novkov, Lav Kovač, Siniša Mazalica

VIDEO CLIPS AND PHOTOS

The first two dramas of Milena Marković, "The Pavilion" and "Tracks" display qualities which testify of maturity of one entirely self-conscious mode in the landscape of the modern Serbian drama. Most important qualities are certainly the rejection of the ideologically based world (through intimate stories of spleen, rage and hollowness of the urban youth), and transfer of drama characters from the level of (most often psychological) re-presentation into the field of direct and sensual presence.

Third drama of this author The Doll Ship (2005) spreads this innovative charge, entering into critical and erudite-based confrontation with fair-tale archetypes. Dominant strategy of this play is discovered in the development of relationships between ritual matrix of the action (at which the plot of the fairy tale necessarily points) and the absolute request of the Heroine for self-realisation. It is from this very tension that new, allegorically marked dramatic time is born. Regarding the plot structure, multi-shaped and multi-named Heroine-at least in the introduction of the seven fairy tale archetypes-is initially represented as a seemingly passive character, with a very strictly set function.
If every of the indicated tales were moulded completely, we would find ourselves before a relatively simple case of the modern play entity dilemma, through the process of ritual initiation. Milena Marković, however, in every one of these varieties disturbs the logic of the plot, as well as the symbolical hierarchy of the meaning; the story halts, twists, comments and changes into a meta-topic. And, definitely not in the last place, it alters the archetypal, most often passive denominator of the female character. Such process gradually transfers initiation into its opposite, and closed time chain of archetypal story becomes a place for fragmented embodiment of one (potentially) absolute Wish – more correctly- always unrepeatable and always incompletely absorbed moment.
With strengthening of the "chain" of associative images, we realise that maturing is not in question-it is the displacement of the dramatic character. This is the next strategic component of Ms. Marković, the difference of fields through which the character moves, allowing for the changes of genre. The switch from cynical melodrama (Snow White) to the satirical parable on snobbery (Goldilocks), or a shift from expressionist tragedy (Kingdom of Darkness) to a fantastic grotesque (Hansel and Gretchen), and even more the incompatibility of their illusionist levels, make that every usual ritual string of events becomes incidental: time is merely a tension between the formula and the wish.
Moreover, this tension is irreversible and ironic; if this was not the case, why would the heroine cover the allegoric and not biographical distance between the Girl in the opening and the Witch in the closing scene? Instead of reaching the Same by means of the ritual, with allegoric editing she reaches the Other; this type of embodiment in one allegoric time-where rebirth is only a new, temporary death-supports the heroine's anguish, but also disables her from identifying with any form of complete, final meaning.
In director's reading by Ana Tomović, the basic meaning and poetic refractions in The Doll Ship are perceived not only as a character crisis of the heroine, but also as a fruitful reason for the diagnosis of the crisis familiar to her, inseparable from the contemporary sensibility-the crisis of artistic expression. The directress starts from the personal conviction that the perspective of "post-dramatic" may be found only in the infra-dramatic –as a discovery of the quintessential tensions between fragmented nature of drama and time/space continuity, between the allegoric constants of Ms. Markovic's play and the entire (often non-verbal) potential of liberated dramatic speech. From such backgrounds stem the two effective and multi-meaning aspects of directing methods: on one hand-hyper-baroque saturation of the stage comes into conflict with the ascetic loneliness, almost programmed isolation of the characters. Within such context, Brechtian layers of musical anti-drama-where actors dynamically cooperate even when they are outside of the immediate melodic matrix-not only add the ironic layer to allegoric content, but debatably point at the possibility of new, risky and provocative synthesis of the genres.

Milena Marković, playwright, poet. Born in Zemun, on April 9, 1974. Graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts 1998, having presented her drama titled Pavilions, or Where I Am Going, Where I Come from and What's for Dinner.

In December 2001 she won the special prize for the drama Pavilions at the m.b.h. Vienna Theatre. Pavilions premiered at the Yugoslav Drama Theatre in Belgrade, directed by Alisa Stojanović and, the same year, at the National Theatre in Skoplje, directed by Srdjan Janicijević. In October 2002, at the m.b.h. Vienna Theatre, the same drama premiered, directed by Zijah Sokolović. Her second play God Had Mercy on Us - Tracks which earned her a Royal Court Summer Residency for Emerging Playwrights in London, was also published in "Theater heute", and staged in Poland and Germany.

The drama Tracks was awarded a Special Prize at the Sterijino pozorje festival.

In October 2005, she won the "Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz" prize for her plays.

Her drama The Doll Ship had its world premiere in June 2006 at the Yugoslav Drama Theatre in Belgrade, directed by Siobodan Unkovski, and her latest play Simeon the Foundling, awarded at the Sterijino pozorje festival, had its opening night in May 2006, at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, directed by Tomi Janežić.

Ana Tomović
Born in 1979, in Belgrade. She attended the Philology Grammar School. She graduated from the Belgrade Faculty
of Drama Arts, Department of Theatre and Radio Directing, in the class of Prof. Egon Savin and his assistant Dusan Petrovic. She directed the performances: Creeps by Luz Hibner in the Belgrade Drama Theatre (2004);
Golden Angle (an omnibus project Belgrade Stories 4) by Ljubinka Stcjanovic in the Students' Cultural Centre (2000); Duck by Stella Feehily in the Kraljevo Thetre (2005); halFlajfby Filip Vujosevic in Atelier 212 (2005); Casanova's Return by Arthur Schnitzler (dramatization of the novel) in the Serbian National Theatre (2007);
o Go My Man by Stella Feehily in the National Theatre of Sombor (2007). She took part in the Joakimfest and in the Tenth Yugoslav Festival in Uzlce, in 2005, with the play Duck; in the Sterija Festival in 2006 with the play halFlajf. She is the winner of the Joakimfest 2005 award for the best directing, for the play Duck.

From 1998 to 2005 she was a member of the editorial office and an editor of the BITEF Bulletin. She was awarded the Goethe Institute scholarship for study visit to the International Forum of Young Theatre Creators in Berlin, in May 2006, in the scope of the theatre festival Theatertreffen. She is also dealing with the theatrical pedagogy.