Bollywood

The musical Bollywood, written and directed by Maja Pelević and produced by the National Theatre in Belgrade, has been selected primarily due to its innovativeness and the fact that it represents a form of "political theatre" different from what we are used to seeing in Serbia today. This seemingly easy, nonchalant and comically coarse form of "trash musical", which ingeniously toys with kitsch iconography, strings out a completely surreal and yet very realistic imagery of Serbian reality in transition. Moreover, these images are also typical of other economically, politically and ethically ravaged eastern European societies: devastated socialist factories, foreign investors’ speculations, xenophobia, the humiliating position of "cultural workers" who, however, show an utter lack of class consciousness and any other consciousness whatsoever. Without any kind of preaching or enforced ethics, this performance presents a story of a great Bollywood production house which comes into a small east-European border town filled with ethnic tensions caused by the presence of refugees waiting to get into the European Union. The production house came with an idea to buy and convert into one of its studios a closed factory from the socialist period, a building now used by a local theatre whose actors see this unreal investment project as a unique springboard for their international film career.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

Life of citizens in a small town near the border is interrupted by sudden news: a great Bollywood producer is coming to buy a small factory and open a big Bollywood studio there. This would result in many job opportunities, which is something that does not happen often is such a small town. The sudden news brought excitement amongst actors in the theatre, who decide to organize a recital, thus hoping to increase their chances of getting roles in a future Bollywood spectacle. The town is united by a common idea and collective enthusiasm, but life takes its own course - full of unexpected events. Through this fairytale-like utopia of Bollywood’s arrival to our country, a story is told about all of us and about the things we are prepared to do when a better future becomes a prospect. Bollywood’s arrival thus becomes the background for a story about collapse of industry, xenophobia, disreputable privatization process, false worlds, while everything has been portrayed through song and dance under the slogan ‘if they don’t have bread, let them eat cake.’

THE AUTHOR

MAJA PELEVIĆ was born in 1981 in Belgrade. She graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade in 2005 and obtained her Ph.D. Degree at the Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Arts in Belgrade in 2012. Maja is a member of the New Drama Project. Her staged plays: ESCape, In Neutral Gear, Be a Lady for a Day, Belgrade-Berlin, Orange Peel, I or Someone Else, Jumpgirl, Hamlet Hamlet Eurotrash (with Filip Vujošević), Fake Porn and Fakebook (group of authors), Maybe We Are Mickey Mouse, Strange Loves, Consequences, A Fully Abridged History of Serbia (with Slobodan Obradović) and The Invisible One. Her plays have been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Norwegian, Polish, Slovakian, Czech, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Ukrainian and published in numerous contemporary national and international anthologies. She has worked as a dramaturge in over 20 theatre productions and has dramatized several novels and written texts for four musicals. In 2012, with Milan Marković, she implemented the project They Live - Searching for the Zero Text. In 2013, she has written, directed and performed the play Consequences at the Bitef Theatre Festival. In 2015, she staged My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard in the National Theatre in Belgrade. In 2016, together with Olga Dimitrijević, she staged Freedom Is the Most Expensive Capitalist Word. Maja Pelević won the following awards: Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz Award for dramatic work; Slobodan Selenić Award for best graduation play; Sterijino Pozorje Festival Competition Award for original dramatic text for Maybe We Are Mickey Mouse; Sterija Award for best dramatic text for Orange Peel; and Award of the UNIMA Competition for best original text for The Invisible One for puppet theatre. Maja Pelević lives and works in Belgrade and Bečići.

FROM THE REVIEWS:

In the musical Bollywood, kemp has become a way to inform us, in a hilarious, kitschy, openly silly manner, typical of quasi-politics, that we are ruined, but that we should somehow save ourselves from existential melancholy and from death of sadness; that we should, through cynical, elegant, clumsily sung ditties, and with cunning musical parodies performed with silly enthusiasm, find not only general and public, small and big deaths of equality, fraternity and unity, but also our own boogiemen of sycophancy, greed for power, and incompetence.

Zorica Premate, Politika (Cultural supplement)

The fact that our small town near the border (?) is visited by a 'circus' of Bollywood production, and the fact that the actors and the manager of the local theatre see an opportunity to present their recital and thus increase their chances of appearing in a hit film (a topic used many times on stage) is not the most important aspect of the author's intention to confront the audience with a mirror - and not a distorting one, but the one that is true to reality.

Dragana Bošković, Večernje novosti

The author, therefore, stays true to her social activism in theatre, but in terms of directing, she shifts it to kitsch which does represent a true measure of our reality. The blend results in a performance which you will enjoy but which will make you aware of the noose around your neck. The text does not have strong structure and plot, but represents a combination of contemplation and analysis of various topics, wrapped in a fragile story of theatre which sees its salvation in an imaginary Bollywood producer for whom they prepare a recital that is supposed to fascinate him.

Aleksandra Glovacki, Radio Beglrade Program 202

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

THE AUTHOR

FROM THE REVIEWS:

Gallery