December 16.

OUR SON

Heartefact Fund

Written and directed by: Patrik LAZIĆ

 

Cast:

Mother: Dragana VARAGIĆ

Father: ĐINĐIĆ Aleksandar

Son: ĆOROVIĆ Amar

 

AUTHOR

Patrik Lazić (Pula, 1994) is a Serbian and Croatian theater director. He graduated in radio and theater directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade.

He is the winner of the Annual Award of the Belgrade Drama Theater, the Award for the best young director of the TNT Festival in Romania, and the “Hugo Klein” Award.

Plays: Decision Day, Boško Buha Theater Belgrade (2016), Hilarious Tragedy, Atelje 212 Belgrade (2017), When Nietzsche Cried, Theater Vuk Belgrade (2019), Fine Dead Girls, Belgrade Drama Theater (2019), All unhappy families look like happy families, National Theater Pirot (2021), Animal Farm, City Theater Čačak, The Death of Mr. Goluža, Youth Theater Novi Sad, Bikes, DADOV…

 

THE AUTHOR ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

My project, Our Son is based in an attempt to understand my own sexuality. Playing with autobiographical elements, on the edge of truth and fiction, I apply available psychological and parapsychological theories in an attempt to understand the formation of the sexual identity I live today. Through plenty of laughter, irony and self-deprecating jokes, I take viewers on an intimate theatrical experience in a non-traditional theater space where they can witness a fictitious meeting of a mother, a father and a son in which accounts are settled and (un)healed wounds, (un)satisfied needs and fears are questioned. Why would you watch it? Perhaps in my silences you find the unspoken words of your families, in my dilemmas you may recognize your own red lines, and in my honesty, you may question your readiness for the new time that has already arrived.

 

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

 

The story begins like hundreds of other stories: a mother, a father and a son. For years, maybe since forever, no one in that family knew how to say an honest word to anyone. Now the son has grown up, gone to live as far away as possible, sometimes he visits them, because he loves them, because he needs them, because he hopes that this time honesty will prevail. The parents also love their son, and they would love him even more, if they only knew what was the mistake and the reason and who was to blame for the fact that their child is not “like the rest of the normal world”. Everything would be fine; the only problem is that the son is already same as the normal world. An intimate, honest, poetic, humorous and at times tragic story about parents who deep down cannot find a way to accept their gay son’s identity, even though they think they have tried everything, they still remain prisoners of conditional love, which is the only thing they are capable for. The author’s project of Patrik Lazić, one of the most gifted directors of the younger generation, represents a serious artistic step forward – in a text that arises from reality, scenes from everybody’s lives come together. The story begins like hundreds of other stories, because that’s what it is, and we are all in it.

Biljana Srbljanović

 

VENUE SPECIFICITIES OF THE PLAY

 

The performance is originally performed in an apartment in Belgrade, where the audience is part of the ritual of entering someone’s intimate space. This procedure, in which the audience and the actors are sitting in the same living room, in which the spectators can smell the soup and the lasagna, allows for a stronger emotional experience. However, there is also a version for theater halls and playing areas. Slightly different, the theatrical version plays even more with the meta-theatrical process of a play within a play.

 

CRITICISM

 

 Son of us all

 

Our son opened a new theater space in Belgrade. Located in a salon apartment in Despota Stefana Street, it is both interesting and functional. The central space is intended for playing, while the rooms surrounding it on three sides are intended for spectators. In front of them is the dining room with the kitchen in the extension – the established place where all family dramas take place. Patrik Lazić will untangle one such, with his author’s project. It is about finally, after decades of silence, facing the fact that the son is homosexual. The son does not agree to continue participating in the game of hide-and-seek, in which his partner exists as his roommate. He wants to bring him into the family and finally merge hir two parallel lives into one.

At the same time, we see a dramatically even stronger theme, that of the parental relationship, the personalities of the mother and the father, scenes that we could call scenes from a married life, which Lazić very skillfully, both as a director and dramaturgist, turns into several highly emotional peaks. And it is no longer about the (for many) separate gay issue, but about the artistically powerful exposure of painful situations that merely a few families have avoided in their lives.

The association with Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” is conditioned by this studio space, because the viewer’s perspective is shaped by the form of a close-up, a table right in front of you, behind which are three powerful actors. Dragana Varagić is a broken, also crushing mother, who leads this game to the greatest extent. Due to the fear of old age, illness and loneliness, her indisputable love turned into an obsession in which the ability to truly connect with others is lost, and the character is based on this strong duality. Aleksandar Đinđić is a much softer father, who was separated from his son by a whole set of objective and subjective circumstances. As an actor, he alternates weakness and insecurity with several aggressive outbursts. Amar Ćorović is equally confident, precise and suggestive as a son who courageously solved his painful doubts, unlike the parents trapped by silence.

The characters occasionally jump out of one stage reality to (Frljić-esque) jump into another, into “real” parents who comment on their son’s project and their place in it, thus rounding off a fine play with a documentary and confessional process.

 

Aleksandra Glovacki (Nova.rs, June 17, 2022)

 

 

ABOUT HEARTEFACT

The Heartefact Fund was founded in 2009 with the mission of creating a new field of artistic activity, which focuses on critical reflection, an honest and courageous approach to confronting the leading problems of contemporary society. During more than a decade of its existence, the Heartefact Fund participated as a producer, organizer and coordinator of numerous events in the field of art and culture, public debates and creation of a space for dialogue that contributes to the repair of historically damaged relations in the Serbian society itself, but also in the region.

Heartefact ‘s mission is to strengthen the idea of ​​a world open to diversity, devoid of any judgment, in which the personal identity of each person is not understood as a provocation and in which the right to personal freedom is inviolable. Heartefact has been proving for more than a decade that art can be the bearer of social change through creating a working space for newer, younger and different generations that fight against hatred, homophobia, nationalism and “blessed ignorance” through culture and dialogue.

We will continue our mission and activities in the future, thanks to the Heartefact community, which has a thoughtful and responsible approach to the injustices of the past and present, which brings optimism and helps today’s society to see a different path.