Bitef 2026 Opens After Losing Six of Seven Plays

When we first wrote about the 59th Bitef, only the dates and the slogan were known. Now something harder to fit into a preview has emerged: of the seven plays that made up the original lineup, six pulled out over the summer, and days before the opening the festival is left with a program that overlaps with the spring announcement at exactly one point.

That point is Black Gold by Dejan Dukovski, directed by Oliver Frljic and staged by the Belgrade Drama Theatre. Everything else is new. In place of the productions from Argentina, Lebanon, Slovenia, Montenegro, Portugal and Italy that made up the first version of the program, the lineup now includes plays from Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, Turkey and Tunisia, alongside a Serbian production that opens the festival and a Russian one placed in the accompanying program. The selector remains the same, Spasoje Z. Milovanovic, and so does the slogan, “Dare to Know.” Almost everything beneath it has changed. The festival runs, as announced, from September 13 to 20 in Belgrade, across the stages of Atelje 212, the National Theatre, Bitef Theatre, Belgrade Drama Theatre, Terazije Theatre and Yugoslav Drama Theatre. The festival center and box office stay at Bitef Theatre, on 1 Mira Trailovic Square.

The opening belongs to The Merchant of Venice after Shakespeare, directed by Strahinja Padezanin and produced by KPGT, set in Venice in 1938, the moment fascist racial laws strip Jews of citizenship and the right to hold public office. The choice is hard to read as accidental: KPGT is the theater of Ljubisa Ristic, who was in the meantime appointed acting director of Atelje 212 by a decision of the Belgrade City Assembly, after Gordana Goncic was removed from that post. The new selection also brings “Albion” by Mike Bartlett from the Nikolay Binev Theatre in Sofia, “Chisinau by Night” by Mihai Fusu from Teatrul Fara Nume, “Stalker” by Avtandil Varsimashvili from Tbilisi’s Liberty Theatre, “Antigone” directed by Hakan Alkan from Karma Sahne Theatre in Samsun, and “The Runaways” by Vafa Taabouni from the National Theatre of Tunisia. The accompanying program includes “Russian Blues” by Sofia Gorlova and Anton Shmakov. As the list of withdrawals grew, Frljic said he did not want “Black Gold” to serve as an alibi for censorship, though his participation was never in question, since the play is staged by a state institution, the Belgrade Drama Theatre, rather than a foreign guest choosing whether to attend.

The list of those who pulled out reads like a roster of names Bitef usually prizes for its catalog: the British-German collective Gob Squad turned down its invitation, Portugal’s Teatro Praga withdrew its production “Audition,” directors Ziga Divjak, Sebastijan Horvat and Milan Ramsak Markovic pulled their pieces, and the latest to leave is the Italian company Motus, which canceled “Frankenstein Diptych,” which had been scheduled for September 19. According to the Italian daily Il manifesto, the reason given was “the repression of culture in Serbia.”

What looked, a few months ago, like a question of programming has become a question of identity, and cultural circles in Serbia are not of one mind about it. Theater director Nebojsa Bradic, a former minister of culture, has known the festival since “Bitef-like” meant something specific:

“I remember the first plays I saw at Bitef. They were new readings of the classics by Peter Brook, Patrice Chereau and Peter Stein, but also the new stage worlds of Bob Wilson and Philip Glass. In those productions, the dramatic text was no longer the sole carrier of meaning; light, rhythm, space, silence and movement became equal elements of the dramaturgy. That was the time when theater’s ‘gods’ walked the streets of Belgrade, and when the term ‘Bitef-like’ was coined as a synonym for creative leaps, courage, provocation, a push into the new, even a certain artistic audacity. ‘Bitef-like’ is a value category. It has nothing to do with what is being presented today under the slogan Dare to Know. This is no longer what Bitef once meant. Changing the essence does not mean changing Bitef, it means ceasing to be Bitef.”

Former artistic director Nikita Milivojevic, whose departure from the festival’s helm set off the current crisis, reads the slogan differently, but his conclusion is not much gentler:

“We have learned, for who knows what time, that those in power will not stop trying to convince us that black is white, ugly is beautiful, lies are truth, small is large, foolishness is wisdom, the unprovable is proven. Unfortunately, Bitef has now joined that parade of absurdity as well, and by the same ‘logic’ it will probably turn out better, more prestigious, more interesting than ever, provided we dare to find that out.”

Anja Susa, who selected the festival’s program from 2006 to 2016, goes a step further and simply does not recognize this year’s edition as the festival she was once part of:

“Not for one moment, since the occupation of Bitef took place, have I been able to see this newly formed Bitef as part of the ‘real,’ great and celebrated Bitef that has existed for almost 60 years. I truly see this situation as temporary, and I hope it will not last too long. For me, the spirit of the Bitef I watched, helped create and eventually took part in can, at this moment, only be connected to a non-Bitef. Bitef grew out of the rebellious neo-avant-garde theater of the 1960s, and through its long existence and its impressive list of participants over nearly six decades, it institutionalized that rebellion. It was built by a country that had capacities this one, where the festival is currently being crushed and humiliated, along with the entire cultural scene and its people, cannot even grasp. It was a country people were glad to visit, from both East and West, in a world divided by the Cold War. This is a country almost no one wants to come to anymore. That says everything.”

Selector Spasoje Z. Milovanovic argues the opposite, not because he thinks the dispute over the slogan and the lineup is unimportant, but because he believes the question is being framed the wrong way:

“It seems to me that the wrong question is being asked right now. The question is not whether Bitef will happen and who is left in the lineup. A much more important question is whether this situation, which we all arrived at together, is good for anyone. Is it good for Serbia? Is it good for Serbian society? Is it good for the theater community? I don’t think it is. After everything that has been written, said and commented on, a far more important question arises: do we, as a society, actually want to preserve one of the spaces through which Serbia talks to the world? Bitef is not just a festival. For almost six decades, it has been one of the most important ways Serbian theater has been part of world theater.”

Two things in this dispute cannot be reconciled, and both are true at the same time. Six withdrawn productions are a real loss, not a gesture that a reshuffled program can make up for in a week and a half. And a festival that canceled itself, at a moment when the institution around it is changing leadership without consulting the profession, would not have solved anything, it would only have left an empty space where Bitef used to stand. The program that opens in Belgrade on September 13 is not the one announced in the spring, and that is not hidden, it is stated on the first page of the program booklet. Whether it is still “Bitef-like,” in the sense that term once carried real meaning, is something the audience will have to judge for itself, since that is the only measure left once the statements from every side are set aside.