loader image

ARTERARIJ

NA DNU OCEANA POSTOJE NEKI SVJETOVI

Duration: 75 min
Director: Romano Nikolić
Playwright: Olja Lozica
Performers: Anita Matić Delić i Frano Mašković
Producer: Tatjana Aćimović
Photographer: Mario Delić i Sanjin Kaštelan
Production: arterarij
 
Premiere: November 5, 2022

About the Show

The play “There are some worlds at the bottom of the ocean”, produced by the Arterarij Theater, was created based on the motifs of Eurydip’s “Medea”, where collected documentary material on cases of infanticide is decently incorporated into the performance fabric of the play itself.
The main protagonists of this play, as in the original template, are still Jason and Medea. However, in the vision and direction of Roman Nikolić, Medea is no longer a sorceress, the daughter of the Colchis king Ajetus, nor is Jason the leader of the Argonauts.
In the modern world, they are an ordinary and almost unremarkable married couple. They do not hold any public and socially responsible duties. They are not burdened by the social roles and functions given to them by inheritance. They are a married couple with two children who live in a family house with a beautifully landscaped garden in the very center of the city. However, like the heroes of Euripides, they are also a married couple whose “love” through a combination of accumulated life experiences has brought them both to a breaking point, more precisely to a divergence in their vision of the future.
Into this labyrinth of a rich and complex love relationship, viewers are led by a complex metaleptic narrative framework, which Romano Nikolić subtly builds by colliding intense acting creations with poetic images in the setting of a ruined, abandoned family house. All kinds of memories mix seamlessly in that space. Moments of the present are mixed with moments of the past. Unfulfilled dreams, unspoken remarks, complaints, but also many memories of love, happiness, fulfillment and mutual trust are mixed. Contemporary Jason and Medea are established in this space of marriage games. Both bitter in their own way. Both brought to the brink of self-questioning that leads to an identity crisis.
What does it even mean to establish and build yourself based on a relationship with another? Or how to
modern Medea said “Who am I – when I am only me? When I’m nobody’s wife
nobody’s mother, daughter. Who am I – when I’m just me? And was it ever just me? Who
I actually – I? Who am I without you and me? Who am I without – us?”
Olja Lozica, playwright

Gallery

From the Press

Romano Nikolić created Medea for the 21st Century
With this performance, Arterarij confirms its status as a (small, independent) theater that
he boldly tackles topics that everyone else is silent about.
…This intimate space works powerfully for a play that broke down all the walls of the theater, because the audience (there are only twenty-five of them) literally breathes into the faces of the actors, it is a guest in their living room, a voyeur of the tragedy. And they are a married couple with a child, well-to-do people who can afford a house with an apple tree and a slide in the garden. They are also people who love each other, who are not together by chance. And yet everything leads to tragedy. How and why? Where is that human firing point? These are the questions that this play explores. Olja Lozica has created sentences from seemingly everyday sentences, so common in domestic communication, that are a signpost for both happiness and the greatest misfortune. There are literally oceans in every man and some unfathomable worlds in him, says the play. And it scares, because what if Medea’s tragedy can happen to us too?
Frano Mašković and Anita Matić Delić confirm themselves with these roles as two truly great actors, and the champion of Kerempuh is also a great surprise in a big dramatic role. They have the most difficult acting task here, because nothing protects them from the audience, and they turned that to their advantage. They are so focused on each other that they get real acting power out of it; each of their emotions is sincere, conveyed with the right measure, deeply experienced…
You watch them and you have to believe them. Their tragedy shakes you to the core, because each of us has been in their shoes. They left us, cheated, and we left, cheated… With this performance, Arterarij confirms its status as a (small, independent) theater that bravely grapples with topics that everyone else is silent about. They thus become a kind of voice of conscience, not only for the theater, but also for society as a whole. Playwright Olja Lozica in the play “There are some worlds at the bottom of the ocean” wove a signpost for the greatest disaster.”
BOJANA RADOVIĆ