Author of the article Branko Brdjanin

Theatre “Maska i Pokret” has been operating already for two years, and the project “Somebody has Killed the Play” is, after “Etude,” the second contribution to theatrical research in our country. The specificity of this work is the use of masks, movements and music tightly woven into a dynamic stage unity, which establishes direct, immediate communication with the audience and the audience thus has the opportunity to participate in the play to become a medium through which the story is refracted and, it seems, the most important layer of the whole work.

This treatment of the mask is a characteristic of the theatrical efforts of Iva Kostović-Mandić and Petar Mandić, who are the only protagonists in the play, present as authors in every phase of the work: from script, mask making, choreography and music selection, through stage design to directing. It can be said that indeed the two of them make up this Theatre, whose beginnings by more careful observers of theatrical events in this city are revealed in the project of the independent theatre group “Pokret i Maska” performed three years ago, where they both started with this kind of theatrical expression, after which upon graduation, enriched with new experiences and theoretical knowledge, singled out as propagandists of the introduction of masks, movements and music in direct connection with the theatrical act, unencumbered by additional connotations that would result from possible use and speech, in the function of the play which would mean a different level of acceptance of their stage endeavours.

Otherwise, the theatrical means used in theatre “Maska i Pokret” are traditional, present in the theatrical tradition of both East and the West, and also through the Renaissance and Baroque theatre in our country. But what sets this play apart as a new and conditionally said experimental is bringing the mask, movement and music into a special context in which the mask becomes a living person by ceasing to be an artistic element but enriched by this connection with music and movement come into a position where authors want it to come to life, to develop on the stage immersed in the action, unlike some contemporary stagings in which the mask appears only as an additional element in emphasising the meaning of the traditional theatrical play.

Like this, as they do in theatre “Maska i Pokret”, all stage means used are returned to the basic meaning that they had from the very beginning of the theatre. It could almost be said that the authors strive to restore the syncretic character of the theatre …