Banja Luka's Theatre Fest opens with every seat sold out

The hall where you watch and the hall where you sense are not always the same hall, and this year the Banja Luka audience decided, before the curtain even rose, to sit in the one where you sense. The National Theatre of Republika Srpska opens the 28th edition of the Petar Kocic Theatre Fest on Thursday, June 4, and the detail that usually arrives at the end arrives here at the start: every ticket is gone. The festival regarded as the most important theatre event in Republika Srpska has begun, in effect, as a full house waiting for its occasion.

The competition opens with The Singing and Silence of Sofka Nikolic, staged by the Semberija City Theatre from Bijeljina, a title that already carries the tension between voice and quiet. Six productions from across the region are in the running, and the slogan of this edition, From Play to Safe House, steers the whole selection toward a single subject: the position of women, from the play on stage to the place one flees to.

What does the competition selection bring?

This year the choice leans toward contemporary dramatic writing, which for a regional festival is less the expected move and more the brave one. The curatorial arc runs from play to shelter, and within that span sit both a piece about a singer and a piece about a woman whose home has become a danger.

Two regional productions draw particular attention among the announced titles:

• Safe House, performed by the Gavela City Drama Theatre from Zagreb
• Lady Nola, produced by the Serbian National Theatre from Novi Sad
• The Singing and Silence of Sofka Nikolic, the Semberija City Theatre production from Bijeljina that opens the competition

Three cities, three theatres, three ways of placing the same subject, a woman and the space offered to her or taken from her, before an audience. The festival circle here turns not around stars but around text, a decision that does not please everyone, yet is remembered.

More than a competition

Theatre Fest is not only a string of evenings on the main stage. The accompanying programme opens on June 4 with Space of Play, an exhibition of stage-design art by Dragana Purkovic Macan, a show that treats scenography as a language of its own rather than a backdrop for the actor. It is a gesture by which the festival reminds us that theatre is also made by hands the audience rarely sees.

The fact that everything sold out before the first evening says less about marketing and more about an audience ready to sit down in front of a subject that is not easy. The festival runs through June 10.

Can a theatre programme devoted to the position of women change anything beyond the auditorium, or is it enough that it at least speaks of it?