Four actors, four chairs, four microphones and two guitars – this is how the stage for the literary-music performance ‘Jaj nekem… szerelem!’ (Woe Is Me… Love!) by authors Emina Elor, Judit László, Bence Szalai and Róbert Ozsvár, looks like.

Audience will have a chance to see this poetry event on the Facebook page of the Egység Cultural Station, as well as on the official Facebook page of Cultural Stations, on Friday, 7 august, at 7 p.m. The event will be held in Hungarian, with Serbian subtitles.

‘Jaj nekem… szerelem!’ presents the connection of poetry and prose, and the main topic is love. The audience will spend 50 minutes with Shakespeare, Endre Ady, Pablo Neruda, Zoltán Zelk, Sándor Veres, László Nagy, Miklós Radnóti and other famous writers, and actors will speak in their name, recite and sing about passion, desire, shame, fire, fragility, compassion and importance of love.

Emina, Judit, Róbert and Bence are long-time associates and friends, and, as they say, they have known that ‘Jaj nekem… szerelem!’ will have its opportunity to shine.
‘Our small troupe – Judit, Bence Róbert and I, gather for the same topic for several years. There is a lot of ideas, including children Christmas performances and serious projects such as ‘Ostajem ostati’, which deals with the topic of staying in and leaving the country you are born in. ‘Woe Is Me… Love!’, as the title itself says, deals with the topic of this fantastic and deep emotion. When the Public call was published, we thought whether we could implement something such as theatre play, poetry reading, fairy tale, poetry performance, etc. We decided to do it and this literary-music performance was created’, explains Emina Elor and adds that the motive for the application was their wish to become part of the ‘Novi Sad – European Capital of Culture’ project.

‘We would like to be seen and heard, and to take a small part in this huge project. This is the title that I perceive as a some kind of award and I think that each city that gets a chance to become capital of culture should be capable of enhancing and increasing its capacities in the field of culture and art.’

When it comes to artistic creation in different languages in Novi Sad, Emina says that multiculturality should be even more strengthened:

‘It would be so nice if all citizens of the city spoke at least two languages they are able to hear in their neighbourhood. It would be so nice to make children aware that more languages you know, the more you are worth it, and to teach them a second, minority language from grandmother, grandfather, mother. I wish that citizens of Novi Sad could visit theatre more, to have scheduled in their notebooks one day for visiting a concert, exhibition, theatre play in a month…one day to feed their soul’ and adds that we need a lot more cultural stations and spaces where artists can create in order to make culture louder and more understandable.

‘Jaj nekem… szerelem!’ is one of the 22 projects that received funds within the ‘Artists. Now!’ public call of the ‘Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’, aimed at strengthening local cultural scene, raising its capacities through a network of cultural stations, decentralisation of culture and audience development.

Partner in the project ‘Artists. Now!’ is the Merkator S company.