Director

Aleksandar Popovski was born in Skopje, Macedonia in 1969. He graduated from the Department of Film and Drama of the “Ćiril i Metodije” University in Skopje. He studied with the best, world renowned directors, such as Stole Popov and Slobodan Unkovski. His productions include: Marius Ivaskevicius's Closed City (produced at the Teatro Stabile Sloveno, Trieste); Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (at Zagreb's Gavella City Theatre); Ovid's Metamorphoses, an adaptation and dramatization (KUG, Graz); Slavko Grum's Events in Goga (SNG Celje); Elen Peg's New Friends (National Theatre of Northern Greece, Thessalonica); Ana Lasić's Antirides (SNG Ljubljana); Moliere’s Don Juan (the Skopje Drama Theatre and Ohrid Summer Festival); Biljana Srbjanović’s Alice in Wonderland (Atelier 212); A.P. Chekhov’s Three Sisters (Bitolj National Theatre); Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Turkish Language Stage, Skopje Minorities Theatre); Martin MacDonagh’s Pillowman (SNG Celje); A.P. Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (Belgrade National Theatre); Georg Buchner’s Danton's Death (Teatro stabile di innovazione del FVG, Udine);  Dracula, based on the novel by Bram Stoker, adaptation and dramatization by Aleksandar Popovski and Dejan Dukovski (SNG Maribor); Don Quixote,  based on the novel by Cervantes, adaptation and dramatisation by T.Kosi/J. Vencelj/A. Popovski (SNG Maribor); Dejan Dukovski’s Balkan Is Not Dead (Drama Theatre, Skopje); Dejan Dukovski’s The Powder Kegg (Kerempuh Satire Theatre); A. M. Coltes’ Roberto Zuccho (Atelier 212), Goran Stefanovski’s Wild Flesh (Drama Theatre, Skopje), and many others.

Performance

The text of the drama “Candide, or the Optimism” represents of an adaptation of Voltaire's novel, with the same title. The play was directed on the basis of a dramatization by Jan Cziviš, Alena Vostra and Jaroslav Vostry, which was then translated from Czech by Tihana Hamović. The adaptation contains excerpts from Voltaire’s novel, as well as from his Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary).

 At a time when illusion was imposed upon us as the general condition of our country, theatre had the task to burst that fake bubble, to show us reality as it was. Today, the illusion has been abolished. And with it, our system of values. Without a system of values, everything in life appears black or grey. Candide attempts to find a light in all the darkness. We can call this quest for light an illusion. But the quest for light in our life, even if we call it an illusion, is extremely important. Without it, we don’t exist. Illusion is like the soul. Illusion is the soul, and what remains is the body. We can also come up with another word: hope, emotion, imagination, dreaming…Long forgotten categories, every one of them. We have abolished the category of imagination because, in this pragmatic world of ours, it has no useful value. What is the price of imagination? We do not know. And therefore it has no value. My silent revolution is an attempt to bring people back to the terrain of emotion, which they will recognise in my play, and which they can then search for in their own lives. (Aleksandar Popovski)

 Theatre

The Yugoslav Drama Theatre was founded in 1947 as a representative theatre of the new Yugoslavia. Many of the most significant actors from the cultural scenes of Sarajevo, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Split, Ljubljana and other cities were invited to take part in the establishment of a cinema, which would become for Yugoslavia what MHAT had become for Russia. Well-known director Bojan Stupica, who boldly challenged censorship in Yugoslavia, and gave its police a handful, was appointed to the forefront of the Theatre as its artistic director. He and critic Eli Finci laid the foundations of its repertoire, with the aim of placing the Theatre at a very high literary level. This would remain the main orientation of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre to this day, with the later addition of the element of the stage, which was given equal status to the literary dimension. Though the spirit, significance and prestige of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre are well-known to older generations, they have, in a distinct way, also come close to audiences who shaped their taste for theatre from the mid 1980s onwards, at the time when Jovan Ćirilov, in his fourteen seasons as manager of the Theatre, had established the JDT as the theatrical representative of a new stage expression, in the former Yugoslavia and beyond. These values have resisted the pressure of History and its merciless effects, and have survived the boot of the mighty Spirit. On 17 October 1997, the Yugoslav Drama Theatre was engulfed in flames, but was resurrected once again on fortunate and vital foundations.