MARLENE DIETRICH

Croatian National Theatre in Split (Croatia)

9th November 2018, Novi Sad Theatre, large scene, 19h
(Duration 1,30h)

About the performance

The performance, which was premiered in December 1999 in the production of CNT Split, in which one of the most charismatic stars of the film and stage is portrayed by Ksenija Prohaska, is performed about 400 times all around the world.
The author labeled it as a musical-drama, Marlene Dietrich is composed of 11 monologues and 13 songs with live piano accompaniment where Prohaska interprets the character of the great German diva, from her first filming beginnings in the late twenties to the end of her life.
Ksenija Prohaska performed her Marlene in Croatian, English, Italian and Spanish, among others in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, New York (in the celebrated Broadway theater of Theater La MaMa), San Pedro, at international festivals in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Venezuela, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and Italy (Rome, Venice, Trieste, Gorizia, Pescara, Lecce, Barletta …).
At the international festival Mittelfest in Cividale del Friuli (Italy) in 2005, Ksenia Prohaska received the Premio Adelaide Ristori Award for the best actress of the festival ofr the portrayal of Marlene Dietrich.

Word of the director

She did not like women’s cloths, female company, she did not persevere in violin playing, she did not like her husband, she was not decent, she did not have a big vocal range, she did not like civil society, she did not like America, she was not a good mother, she was not a bad friend she wasn’t unromantic, she did not like Hitler, she wasn’t stupid, she did not like stupidity, she didn’t quit smoking, neither sex nor any real Berlin strudel, she wasn’t a bad cook, she was not sober, she did not save, she did not die young and beautiful, she didn’t die at all, she didn’t and she didn’t…

Ivan Leo Lemo

From the press

Divine Marlen, loved but alone

(…) A woman who paid for her freedom with loneliness, and because of the rejection of Nazism and the performances she held for allied forces in Europe, she could not return to her Berlin. A woman who loved a lot, but was not equally loved back – in the light of her relationship with her daughter, Maria, and a love story with the famous French actor Jean Gabin. In a text translated into Italian by Sandra Damiani, Prohaska, who traveled half a century and lived in America for a long time, just like Dietrich, is able to find the key to a perfectly sincere acting, exciting and never exaggerated: the songs were performed with great care and energy.

(Giuliano Almerigogna, Messaggero Veneto)

Thanks to Ksenija Prohaska, there is a great memory of the charm of the immortal Marlene Dietrich
(…) With the piano accompaniment of Ivan Božičević, the only one with whom he shares the scene, Prohaska has very casually and with great diction performed pieces, in German, English, and French, such as: Lola, Falling in love again, Mein blondes baby, Boys in the backroom, La vie en rose, I’m waiting for you in Berlin, I wish you, The laziest gal in town, Lili Marlene.

(Alex Pessotto, Il Piccolo)