MEDIATHEK

The Doll Ship - One of the most successful and most original Serbian productions of recent years, this is the unusual, poetic and emotional story of several characters who pass through the world of well-known fairytales (Rapunzel, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Hansel and Gretel etc.). However, the play’s heroes are no longer children, and they perceive the fairytale world differently. Their journey is full of clashes between the grotesque and the tragic, and becomes something of a rite of passage into the adult world. The original directorial approach creates a production full of reversals, musical dynamism and excellent performances.

REVIEW

“The Doll Ship – The play is composed of a prologue and seven scenes, connected by songs. Most of the scenes have been created as original versions, paraphrases or pastiches of traditional stories. The heroine changes her name in each of these scenes: Little Sister, Alice, Snow White, Goldilocks, Thumbelina, the Princess, Woman and Witch.

This jigsaw puzzle of classic fairytales does not, however, resemble the world of a child’s imagination, but a surreal, nightmarish maze through which the main character wanders for her entire life. Milena Marković once again explores the position and role of women in the contemporary world. The production, directed by Ana Tomović, won the Grand Prix at Sterijino Pozorje 2009, while the play itself won the award for best play at the same festival.

…the key to understanding the author’s dramatic method can be found – although only to a certain extent – in her poems. On one hand the play contains unusually constructed lines that correspond to the apparent roughness and rawness of her verses, as if they were exact replicas of everyday talk (…) while on the other hand there is the author’s ability to destroy particular elements of reality from the inside in an original way, and r emodel them (…).

In this drama we can recognise what we all (consciously, or more often unconsciously) search for; we can become entangled in the obscure ground waters of psychoanalysis, we can be amused by the Jungian revelation of the reverse side of archetypes, we can read in them interpretations of the paths that new European drama has found into its scenes. However, such interpretations will surely chip away the poetic power of this drama – as always happens when we try to interpret good poetry.”

(by Aleksandar Milosavljevic)

“In her play – fourth in the order of appearance – Milena Marković researches both the possible profile of a typical ‘heroine of our time’ and one of the most popular conventions and the most difficult for thestage setting, that of the fairy tale. The Doll Ship is a dramatic text in which the tragic, farcical, and grotesque intermingle; since this drama is at the same time an original ‘journey’ through Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretel and other classic fairy tales of the western tradition, this project blends modernity of expression and first-class writing.”

(by Svetislav Jovanov)

“The richness of the directorial palette and the eruptive force of the play are unthinkable without the charismatic Jasna Đuričić. She imbues everything with energy and furiously carries the entire crew with her. As the multi-heroine of the piece, she is the embodiment of mature hypersensibility and a dancing nymphet whose imagination is hard to satiate.”

(by RTS, News 2)

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