Sanja Mitrovic
/ Stand Up Tall
Productions

Sanja Mitrović propels us into a sensitive and political interrogation not ofthe “truth” of’68, to which we should restore its missing narratives (of Eastern Europe in particular), but of our own abilities (and limitations) to write stories and create documents. (…) At the same time, she reveals how enactment pervades all forms ofrepresentation – be it those ofa televised documentary, a heroic and monumental discourse, a heartfelt and immanent act ofspeaking, or even a film like Viva Maria!, a little bit flawed, a little bit forgotten, but still providing a fair share ofchildishness, romance and fiction which, it must be admitted, we also need to believe in for a new spring to happen. (…) The creative revival of documents in Mitrović’s show has no redemptive or corrective aims. It is not only turned towards the past which needs healing, but displays a concern with what’s to come by committing itself, ifwe may say so, towards the creation ofexhibits for the future. This requires more than a work of memory; it requires an acute practice of attention connecting images with which we are in contact and which we already know will not make history.

It is a wistful, episodic work featuring performers from France, the former Yugoslavia, Russia and Spain; each episode examines revolutions and the backlashes to them. 

The whole show appears as a fresco demonstrating that so-called “revolutions” which have swept over the last few decades have resulted, at best, in provoking more or less significant societal changes, and not much else. (…) Mitrović’s direction happens to be permeated with laughter. She constantly navigates between, on the one had, an indisputably documentary aspect, which refers to testimonies and images of events invoked on the stage, and, on the other, a play built on dynamism of actors, who swiftly change from one role to another and posses the physical and mental energy for authentic performances which keep intact the lighthearted pleasure of childhood. There is abundance of ideas and a variety of scenic procedures. Dimensions of space change with each sequence. 

The alteration between almost journalistic testimony and quirky performance gives the piece a rhythm which does not run out of steam – thanks to the energy of the actors – and a depth of field – thanks to the use of the camera. Beloved by contemporary theatre, in recent years camera has often taken central place, sometimes unconvincingly or even unnecessarily so. Here, it is used intelligently. On the one hand, the camera refines the stories through emotion which emerges from the brutality of being filmed. On the other, it laughs, fondly and without contempt, at cinema which wants to make everything sexy: war, death, revolution. 

(…) The director and the actors allow us to understand a vision of their art: if it wants to make viewers think, theatre must not take itself too seriously. (…) In this sense, the piece does not offer a smooth outcome, a “representation” of the revolution, but a process of reflection which dissects and explores through language, dance, the body, fiction, the real. And this may be a lesson which echoes the Brechtian concept: to awake critical consciousness, the audience must not be a mere spectator of a perfect image but a witness to a set of ideas which unfold on stage. That is the pleasure of going to theatre, to be presented with a question rather than an answer.