Bitef

life? is there anything in this world which I do, which gives me even the ~ 'J" 1 """slightest satisfaction? will I ever, ever lose my virginity? Try as hard as I may, I cannot detect anything pleasurable in my memory ofthat period of life. The text by Mattias Andersson has a disarming honesty. In it, all romantic lies about adolescents and their everyday life are absent. Identity crisis, desperation over not belonging to a group, martyrdom experienced by those who differ from others, are shown in all their cruelty and mercilessness, imaginable only when reality is portrayed in an almost documentary fashion, as is the case in The Runner. _ This play is a moving study about human relations within a closed circle of : js rr $$ Âa children forced to see each other every day. The characters in The Runner- - “ 1 “ ? a roam around locker rooms and classrooms of a school as if they have been j S 111 condemned to one another in a strange Sartrean key. In a highly electrified |Щр atmosphere of a school gym class, designed by grown ups and therefore es- : ‘ jEssentially repressive for those for whom it has been designed, cruel relations " JÍ|||| between those who have their own direction in life and are therefore differ- Si IЯIЯ : : j ent and unpopular, and those who "linger around" in corners of "the prison house" of school, prepared to pass their time harassing those whom they / J. strongly dislike, are thus able to surface. The relations between torturers and victims look like a system effacing mirrors which reflect each other and alternate their negative energies, the source of which is somewhere outside this spellbound system, in the homes that keep secrets about family violence ; IШIIН , or broken marriages. The source of that feeling, which like unfathomable Vr anti-matter lingers in this play, are actually grown ups, their problems and У\ *■ mistakes, passed on like a kind of "genetic deviation” to posterity, forever be- 4 stowed with that unwanted and irretrievable "gift". The sole but quite memo- __ rabie representative of that omnipresent but invisible world of grown-ups —■* *» .-•■ — ■ is the Mother, a character written so that it soars into poetic spheres of the ABfc most villainous female characters in drama literature. This play and this performance do not propose a solution to the problem of violence in schools, but they lay it bare and reveal its roots, its human dimensions. I am deeply convinced that the truth is cathartic and that reaching the truth does constitute a promise of hope. Stevan Bodroza ABOUT THE DIRECTOR Stevan Bodroza was born in Belgrade in 1978. He graduated theatre directing at the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade. He directed plays at the Bitef Theatre, the Belgrade Drama Theatre, the National Theatre in Belgrade, the Little Theatre "Dusko Radovic", the Beton Hala Theatre and the PinokioTheatre.The most important plays he directed include Fireface by Marius von Mayenburg, Heiner Muller's Medea, RW Fassbinder's Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Jon Fosse's Mother and Child, Edna Mazya’s Games in the Backyard, A Tatoo Lesson by Konstantin Kostjenko, Steel Wings by Sanja Domazet and Euripides' lphigenia atAulis. He is a lecturer at the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade and teaches theatre directing. He lives and works in Belgrade. ABOUT THE WRITER Mattias Andersson was born in 1969 and brought up in Gothenburg, Sweden. 1990 -93 he studied to become a professional actor at the University College of Acting in Gothenburg. 1993 -97 he worked as an actor at the Васка Teater, Gothenburg, where he played in among others: Peer Gynt, Gisslan, Faust and Mahabharata. Plays directed by himself: And outside is the Sea, the University College of Acting, Gothenburg, 1993 Sf. John's passion, Васка Teater, Gothenburg, 1994 K+M + R + L, Pusterviksteatern, Gothenburg, 1998 The stuff that stars are made of, Alvsborgsteatern, Boras, 1998 Before This, Pusterviksteatern, Gothenburg, 1999 The Runner, Unga Klara, The Stockholm City Theatre, 2000