Performance

Once upon a time there was a stone
Once upon a time there was a boy
Once upon a time there was a child
A boy
Who never found an I…

The Stone Prince - Hening Mankel

 The Stone Prince is a story about a thirteen-year-old boy with a mental illness, caused by a family tragedy and poor living conditions. After he suffers a nervous breakdown at age sixteen, his hospitalisation becomes inevitable, and, as hope for his recovery dims, he becomes the embodiment of the metaphor of the stone prince. Nevertheless, he manages to escape the abyss he has found himself in, with the assistance of a patient doctor, who helps him faithfully on his road to recovery. The play was based on Elgard Jonson's 1986 novel, The Stone Prince, or Galefyrsten, an autobiographic testimony about the author's difficult childhood years, his hospitalisation and hopeless chances of recovery, until the arrival of therapist Barbro Sandin. She spent twelve years working with the severely disabled Jonson, managing to gain his trust and pull him out of his isolation into the outside world. In 1989, author Hening Mankel used the book as an inspiration for the screenplay, though the screenplay is not simply a dramatic adaptation of Jonson's novel – as it functions more like a very long poem, with no division of text into acts and stage instructions. It was in 1994 that the screenplay was produced for the stage for the first time by director Marc van der Velden and set designer Julie Forchhammer, at the La Balance Theatre.

Director

Director and dramaturge Marc van der Velden was born in the Netherlands in 1956, and got his degree in theatre from the University of Utrecht’s Academy of Performing Arts. He worked as a director and actor in southern Italy for two years, before moving to Denmark, where, together with his Danish wife Lotte Faarup, he established La Balance Theatre. The theatre soon became one of Denmark’s leading troupes, staging modern, poetically and visually powerful plays for children and teens. The merge between the La Balance Theatre and the Corona Dansteater (Corona Dance Theatre) in 2005 led to a unique project – the first National Danish Ensemble for Children’s Theatre, which was commissioned for a period of four years. Alongside theatre direction, this merge also allowed the troupe to focus more on research and international cooperation (such as the one launched with the Duško Radović Little Theatre), as well as organise the Springfestival, an international festival of children’s theatre, in Copenhagen, in 2007 and 2009. Van der Velden has also received numerous awards for his directions, while many of his plays have been staged in different theatres around the world. His latest direction is a modern opera, based on H.K. Andersen’s fairytale The story of a mother. He is currently working on a silent play entitled The  Beach, which will combine puppets and living actors on stage.

Theatre

The DUŠKO RADOVIĆ Little Theatre was established on 27 May 1948 under the name Pozorište lutaka NR Srbije  (Republic of Serbia Puppet Theatre), while its first production, Pepeljuga (Cinderella), directed by Predrag Dinulović, premiered on 23 October 1949 at the Palas Hotel.

The Little Theatre is one of the most notable and reputable children’s theatres in Serbia, with a repertoire including both plays for child audiences, as well as for young people in general.
The basic artistic orientation of the theatre is focused on projects that, in essence, deal with educational, social, and most of all, urban topics. By introducing such issues as children’s rights, tolerance (multi-ethnic, multi confessional, multi cultural tolerance), the right to be different, the ability to accept and respect our mutual differences, the theatre tries to contribute to the cultural networking of children of different nationalities, thereby promoting the further development of diversity and tolerance.