Performance

“Will we ever be happy again?” This was the question that the German people asked themselves after the end of the Second World War. At the onset of this millennium, a large part of the Serb population is faced with the same question. The Germans had called this moment “zero hour”, as a way of symbolically expressing their wish for a new beginning. This proved to be an illusion, because it is impossible to escape history – so that an arduous process of confrontation remains inevitable.

Will You Ever Be Happy Again? is structured with the help of a series of performative situations based, among other things, on children's games, primary school classes and sports competitions. The performers' individual and collective memories reveal the play's narrative archetypes, such as the relations of “good vs. evil” and “victim vs. criminal”, but also reflect situations in which these opposites can easily be switched around. The German performer uses the memory of his family from the period of after the Second World War and during the Cold War. The Serb performer, on the hand, goes back to her own childhood in the 1980s, remembering the ethnic strife and the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and ending with the recent memory of acquiring Dutch citizenship. Being each other’s counterpoint, and mutually expressing their different cultural and historical backgrounds, the two performers try to address the issues of how we represent ourselves, how we see others, and our need to find ourselves in others’ eyes.

Will You Ever Be Happy Again? strikes a balance between documentary material and its interpretation in theatre. By using a range of forms, from directly addressing the audience, to allusions and quotations, to relying on an indirect use of historical images and poetic expressions, the performance moves between exploration and ritual play, creating imaginary comparisons between two counties and repeating History, which in any case always seems to be repeating itself.

The play Will You Ever Be Happy Again? is part of the ZAJEDNICA SEĆANJA (COMMUNITY OF MEMORY) project at the Centre for cultural decontamination.

Director

Sanja Mitrović was born in Zrenjanin, but has lived and worked in Amsterdam since 2001. She received a degree in Japanese Language and Literature in 2004 from the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, as well as in Mime from the Amsterdam Academy of Theatre Art in 2005, with the play Dhanu as her final thesis project. As a member of the Croatian theatre and dance company Montažstroj, and its Dutch partner, the Performingunit Troupe, she has partaken in the productions: Istina ili smeš (Truth or Dare, 2000), Užasna riba (Horrid Fish, 2001) and Tko je? Vojcek (Who is it? Woyzeck, 2002), which have had guest performances at festivals around Europe. Her cooperation with director Borut Šeparović peaked in 2004 with the solo production Encikopedija mrtvih (Encyclopaedia of the Dead). Mitrović has also performed in Nikola Bojtler's production The Entrance of a Ghost in 2006, and in Olivier Provily's Spring (2008), which was specially designed to be performed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Her most recent work as a directress includes the plays Shame (2006) and Books Once Read Make a Good Bullet Proofing (2007), both produced at the Gasthuis Theatre in Amsterdam.

Theatre

The Centre for Cultural Decontamination was established in 1994 with the aim to start, among other actions, also a civil protest against the Slobodan Milošević regime. Since then, the Centre has organized over 2,000 programs – plays, exhibitions, protests, public discussions, lecture series and joint actions. By being involved in culture and their community, the Centre has worked to counteract nationalism, xenophobia, lack of tolerance, hate and fear. The Centre is situated within the Veljković House Complex, the warehouse and other buildings of which had been in a state of disrepair until 1995, when the Centre for Cultural Decontamination moved in and started reconstructing it.

In the 1980s, the Het Veem developed into a workshop, production house and a laboratory for exploring contemporary theatre mime, and is, as such, the only theatre in the Netherlands that focuses specifically on mime and its possibilities. Its founders are Igor Dobričić, Chris Leuenberger, Diego Gil, Jenny Beyer, Karina Holla, Katrina Brown and Olivier Provily. This theatre produces over 120 plays each year.