Bitef

«fin de millénaire» theatre

We made up the expression »fin de millénaire« after another, well known one. The cultural and historical idea of » fin de siècle« is in fact the title of a forgotten comedy by the forgotten French authors Jouvenot and Maicard of 1888. Today only the idea remains of their title, an idea that happily denotes above all the poetry and prose of the fine decadency of the great names of European literature, as well as the style of life of the same period. The expression »fin de siècle« contains all the greatness of the pretentious word » century « and the voluntary admission of some indefinite »end«, as well as a suspicion of something new. And what is the situation today, at the end of a millenium? Above all in the theatre? The theatre, as always, shares the fate of other arts. After the fifties, when the theatre was ruled by playwrights, whether socially engaged like Brecht, Sartre and Arthur Miller, or those who destoyed the existing theatrical forms of expression, such as Beckett and lonesco, and after the sixties, when the theatre was ruled by the theatre itself, in which literature was merely a motive, or was even absent, seventies came on, which appear to us, possibly because we still live in them, to be untypical and without and special characteristics. This would otherwise be in accord with the observation made by Kenneth Clark, to the effect that the seventies of every century of the latter cultural history, were decades in which no great contribution to art was made. If, however, this decade does not have, in the world theatre, some expressive properties, nor have names appeared in it which were not present in the preceding decade (Brook, Planchon, Tovstonogov, Ronconi, Robert Wilson, Schechner, Schuman etc.), may be in the three remaining decades, to the end of the century (the XXth) and the close of a millenium (the second) a theatre of expressive characteristics and values may form. There is, we feel, cause to name this period in advance as the »fin de millénaire«, not only because it is in fact the end of a period of a thousand years, but because, judging by everything, this period will be characterised by some kind of an end, at the treshold of the XXlth century and the third millenium. It can already be felt that »in the course of« these years with a new kind of decadency, similar to the one of the »fin de siècle« period, theatrical forms of the past are being disintegrated in the most diverse manner, often crudly, sometimes brilliantly, more rarely sublimely. Bitef 13 cannot give a complete picture of such a state even a complete world season could not achieve that but it can give examples of some theatrical trends, which will one day characterise this theatrical period of ours. Is the »fin de millénaire« the cruel, almost scientific realism of the Werkteater of Amsterdam, or the conscious renewal of classical realism by the Estonian »Vanemuine«, or the poetic realism of »Ivan Vazov« of Sofia, or the pompous sarcasm of Carmelo Bene, or the anarchistic revolt of a Squat, or the total theatre of Pina Bausch, or the ironical actualization of classics by Roberto Ciulli, or the theatralization of historical reminiscences of a Ljubisa Ristié? It is difficult to say which of these so divergent theatrical undertakings will characterise our times. All these performances will be gathered in Belgrade, in September, 1979, to enable us all, creators and the public, to take part in attempting to give an answer to this question. (Mira Trailovié r md Jovan Cirilov)

le théâtre «fin de millénaire»

»Fin de millénaire«, nous avons fait le syntagme par analogie avec une autre expression bien connue / en effet la notion historico-culturelle de »fin de siècle« est en fait le titre d'une comédie oubliée de auteurs français Jouvenot et Maicard de 1888. De leur titre il ne reste aujourd'hui que la notion, une