The theater play "Emigrants" is housed in the Drama Theater

Press conference for "Emigrants" in the Drama Theater

The new acting Director of the Drama Theater - Skopje, Maja Veljkovic Panovska, announced at her first press conference that the play "Emigrants", premiered as an independent theater production, will have its further performances as part of the repertoire on the stage of the Drama Theater.

The play "Emigrants" had its premiere performance on December 29, 2022 in the setting of the Cultural and social space "Centar-Jadro" in Skopje. Based on the text of the famous Polish playwright and satirist Slawomir Mrozek and directed by Zoja Buzalkovska, the play features actors Damjan Cvetanovski and Grigor Jovanovski. The actor Martin Manev worked on the stage design for the play, while the production as well as the design of the poster and the program were by Pavle Ignovski.

After the premiere, the play moved into the Youth Cultural Center for a short period, and after the decision of the Drama Theater Arts Council to take it under its wing, from the premiere performance on March 18 onwards, "Emigrants" will be performed on the small stage of the Drama Theater.

At a press conference held at the Drama Theater on March 15, in addition to acting director Maja Veljkovic Panovska, director Zoja Buzalkovska, actors Damjan Cvetanovski and Grigor Jovanovski, as well as lighting designer Martin Manev were present.

The director Buzalkovska explained that she accepted with great pleasure the invitation from the actors Cvetanovski and Jovanovski to stage the play "Emigrants" with them, because from her student days she remembers a fantastic performance of Mrožek's text with the actors Senko Velinov and Gjorgi Jolevski, directed by Vlado Cvetanovski. The premiere of that play was in 1992.

For staging the new play "Emigrants", the two actors applied to the Ministry of Culture and received a total of 2022 euros with the Annual Program for 2.200. "An independent stage - hot as hell", ironically noted Buzalkovska, because with those funds the play was to be prepared and all obligations based on scenography, costuming, scenic and graphic design and author's fees for five people, three of whom are with the status of unemployed. However, in order for the performance to succeed, it had to be housed somewhere, and it is a fortunate circumstance for the team that the Drama Theater will allow them to survive on its stage.

– With the work in independent production, you can't have any passion, except the satisfaction in what you do. You are practically at a loss, except for enjoyment, because no one is "hanging" over your head and telling you what can and cannot be done - said Buzalkovska.

She accepted the work on the play because of the topicality of the topic, because every third person thinks about migrating somewhere outside the country. She sees the whole process as an extraordinary provocation for an already experienced director and two infinitely gifted young actors in the creation of a brutally realistic story that could be hers and theirs at the same time.

Trapped in a makeshift room in the basement of a building in a large European city, the two emigrants AA, an intellectual with a political background, and HH, a simple-minded man from the countryside, a manual worker, hid from the world, buried in their own fears, complexes, accumulated memories, projections about themselves and assumptions about themselves as other people's projections, expectations that they must not let down. Overall, the play "Emigrants" is a cross-section of a society in decay, a society of lost souls.

At the press conference, actor Damjan Cvetanovski expressed hope that after the "home" in the Drama Theater, the play will be able to be held on stage for several years.

His partner in the play, Grigor Jovanovski, said that it is a great honor and pleasure to work with great devotees of the theater, who make unreserved sacrifices to make a good play, while regarding the topic, he pointed out that, unfortunately, it is very current in our society. and a large number of young people leave here almost every day.

- Unfortunately, Macedonia is becoming a country of old people and incompetent people, but for us, as young people, what remains is to fight for the environment, to change it as much as we can for the better, and theater is our way, that's what we we know how to do it and that's why we set up "Emigrants" - said Grigor Jovanovski.

(The text was published in "Cultural Press" number 171, in the printed edition of the newspaper "Sloboden Pechat" on 18-19.3.2023)

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