Werther: You Either Have Hope or You Don’t

Text
Vuk Boskovic, after the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther

Director
Andrej Nosov

Cast
Aleksandra Jovanovic, Anja Orelj, Davor Perunovic, Ivana Terzic, Jelena Graovac, Jelena Grujicic, Jelena Kesic, Jelena Puzic, Jovana Jelisavcic, Maja Susa, Stefan Radonjic, Tasana Djordjevic

Choreographer
Bojana Misic

Composer
Irena Popovic Dragovic

Costume designer
Selena Orb

Dramaturg in rehearsals
Tisa Milic

Lighting designer
Gordana Pantelic

Producer and scenographer
Mia David

Executive producer
Janko Dimitrijevic

Organisers
Stefan Todorovic and Uroš Rankovic

Trainer
Marko Lekic

Musicians
Ivan Mirkovic, accordion; Luka Jovicic and Danilo Tirnanic, drums

Support
Ovation BBDO and Parobrod Institution of Culture

Premiere
30 March 2015, Hotel Bristol, Belgrade

The play Werther: You Either Have Hope or You Don’t is staged at the Bristol Hotel. In its day, the hotel was the hub of social life in the Savamala district, and, with the Belgrade Stock Exchange building, its most noteworthy piece of architecture. Today, a hundred years later, the building is owned by the army, with parts of it functioning as a hotel, and the rest as housing for homeless military personnel. Across the road is the restored original Stock Exchange building, later occupied by the Institute of Geophysics, and now serving as the headquarters of the Belgrade Waterfront project.

This is all part of the growing-up environment of today’s Werthers: young people whose dreams, hopes and faith are tested daily. To fight or to give up? What is the point of living in this kind of world? Twelve young actors bring it all to the stage and, through voice, movement and emotion, lay bare their innermost selves before the audience.

The novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774, is one of Goethe’s most important works. In epistolary form and through the story of a love conflict, Goethe deals with the issues of the struggle for freedom and development of the personality in a socially restricted world. It is a story of a passive, emotional hero brought to suicide by his inability to find his way in society.

Word of the director

“Generations of young actors, future theatre creatives, are leaving school and trying to find their way in the present moment. Has school given them the knowledge necessary to survive or do they have to adapt to the philistine mentality of the Belgrade theatre scene? If you try to stir things up, alter the time-honoured ways, want more than you are offered, you are marginalised socially and artistically by the self-styled moral arbiters. Who cares about young actors? Who needs art at all? Aren’t we all destined for suicide, whether intellectual, creative or physical? This show is a cry out of the darkness of passivity and irresponsibility and an attempt to make other voices heard. We don’t moan, but create new spaces.”