The grand opening of the second theatre festival ‘UPAD’ by the Student Cultural Centre Novi Sad, which was initiated last year with an aim to improve theatre arts for the young, will start off with the play ‘Sakrij se Negdje Daleko. Do Smrti’ in the Novi Sad Theatre, on 19 October at 8 p.m. The play is a copyright project by Christian Jean-Michel Jalžečić and Doroteja Šušak, co-produced by Arterarij from Zagreb.

Eight plays will be held in the Novi Sad Theatre, ‘Laza Kostić’ Grammar School, Memorial Collection Pavle Beljanski and Serbian National Theatre for 13 days, starting from 1 November. You can see the whole programme on the link.

As in the previous year, the plays will be followed by discussions with the audience that will be moderated by young students and high school students who selected the plays. Bojan Milosavljević, artistic coordinator of the festival, stresses that the festival stays true to rejecting outdated and mostly meaningless concept of the competition, selection jury and awards. Instead of the formal evaluation of plays, the focus is on evaluation and analysis of social relationships and problems.

‘The second edition of the ‘UPAD 2’ festival continues with the elaboration of a specific and unique concept on which the first edition of the festival was based. Once more, young people selected innovative plays that critically analyse the world we live in and are based on the texts by Joakim Vujić, paintings by Pavle Beljanski and comments on Facebook. The borders between professional and youth theatre have been erased, which resulted in a play directed by Jan Fabre and performed by the National Theatre in Belgrade, together with the play by the grammar school theatre from Kragujevac. Most of the plays will be premiered in Novi Sad,’ said Milosavljević.

The ‘UPAD 2’ theatre festival is being implemented within the activities at the ‘BeSpectActive!’ international project, which is part of the ‘Creative Europe – Culture’ EU programme that gathers 19 partner organisation from 15 EU countries. The partners are important European theatre festivals in Dublin, Göteborg, Prague, Nitra and Sibiu, universities in Barcelona and Montpellier, and regional networks of cultural institutions from Portugal and France. The aim of the project is audience development within a specific concept of the so-called ‘active viewers’ or ‘selection juries’, as well as international mobility of artists. The concept of active viewers is based on the idea of involving the audience in the selection of plays for the festivals.

You can reserve and buy tickets at the box office of the theatre in which the plays are being performed. Regular price of the tickets will be RSD 500, while for students and high students the price will be RSD 250.

Organisers kindly ask all visitors to adhere to all measures, i.e. to wear masks and keep the distance.

The project was supported by the ‘Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ and Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia.