Sisters

Based on A. P. Chekhov and F. G.  Lorca:

Preview (press):  26th February 2009., Rijeka,  7.30 pm
Opening night: 27th February 2009.,  7.30 pm
Repeat: 28th February 2009., Rijeka,  7.30 pm
Repeat: 18th May 2009., Rijeka,  7.30 pm
Repeat: 19th May 2009., Rijeka,  7.30 pm
26th June 2009.  PATOSoffIRANJE, Smederevo, Serbia
September 2009.  CITF, Chuncheon, South Korea 

Concept, director, dramaturge: Zvonimir Peranić
Costume designer: Kristina Nefat
Composer: Enver Krivac
Movement director: Ivana Peranić
Make-up artist and stylist: Ksenija Nakić-Alfirević
Light designer: Dalibor Fugošić
Sound technician: Arexx
Technitians of scenography: Petra Kožar, Iva Santini, Koraljka Jukić
Stage manager: Hrvoje Mijočević
Hosting: Ivana Butković

Performers: 

Tamara Debeuc, Gordana Kovačević, Bojan Novaković, Ivana Peranić, Sandra Žuvela

Vocal interpretation:

Adela: Nina Viškanić
Amelija: Hana Dagostin
Bernarda: Lara Ritoša Roberts
Ivanka: Mirta Vranješ
Irina: Jelena Lopatić
Martirija: Maja Stepančić
Maša: Gordana Brkić
Olga: Nikolina Deranja
Poncija: Gordana Kovačević
Višnja: Ana Bogadek
Vojko: Hrvoje Tojčić

Performance Sisters was inspired in the first place with dramatic texts that in the history of modern drama represent important dates. These are The Three Sisters by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) and The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca (1898-1936).  

Chekhov, one of the pioneers of modern dramaturgy, stands at the end of the fertile period of Russian realism and at the beginning of a new epoch in the development of Russian literature. His dramas are dramas of mood without strong conflicts and actions, based on the finest movements of the human soul. Chekhov wrote The Three Sisters in 1900 and the premiere was in 1901. His work has attracted Constantine Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko who staged almost all of his dramas in Moscow Art Theatre. Otherwise, a doctor by a profession, Chekhov organized the help for hungry peasants, condemned abuse of power, protectionism and corruption, but he was never politically engaged.

On the other hand we have Lorca to whom theater is not and can not be anything other than emotion, and poetry - in a word, action, and gesture. Lorca, already deep in the Modernism, Symbolism, Expressionism and Surrealism experimented in theatre and rebelled against realistic and commercial theater, but also against the social order in general. The House of Bernarda Alba is his last play written in 1936 just before the beginning of the Spanish civil war. It was performed for the first time in 1945 in Buenos Aires, while his citizens should have waited until the end of the regime of Francisco Franco till 1964 in order to see it for the first time on the stage of Madrid Goya Theatre. Franco’s government attempted to destroy the memory of Lorca by destroying all his works, and references to his name was forbidden. Since he was among the first victims of the Spanish civil war, Lorca quickly became the symbol of victims of political repression and fascist tyranny.

In the characters of Spanish and Russian sisters lays universal human drama – a dissonance between personal dreams / desires / fantasies and the reality. Sisters’ lives are full of fantasies about better life that will never be realized, or perhaps once in the future. In their life there are concrete oppressors or circumstances that restraint, oppress and stifle their freedom and their potentials. In the performance the diversity of expression, geographical locations and temperament, in its essence is connected with the component of time - duration and being – expectation on the one hand of experiential Chekhov and on the other of intuitive Lorca.  

Therefore, besides Chekhov’s and Lorca’s sisters, the performance was inspired with modern 'sisters' from the Department of Culture of the City of Rijeka (Head of Department Ivanka Persić and leading expert assistant Višnja Visnjić-Karković) and all the leaders of countries, cities, villages and families who have taken the natural right to do what ever they feel like to (among others Mayor of Rijeka Vojko Obersnel). Topics such as oppression, passion, conformity, the influence of men on women, got in the modern context new actualizations, as well as the relationship between artists and politics and the influence of politics on arts and artistic activity. By analogy, in the process of deconstruction of the above drama texts, the third element was added: statements of the head people of Rijeka and the Department of Culture, which created a new framework for interpretation and re-enactment of the Sisters. 

The final text has been placed as the form of music, radio drama, sound or thought that performers than interpret and live on stage through movement and dance in associative images of atmosphere.

Apart from the text, music and actors, an important element in creation of the atmosphere and mood, have costumes and scenery as a dynamic form of emotions and a portrait of the state of mind.