Cases

On Thursday, June 21, 2018, on the main stage of Madlenianum Opera & Theatre, Cultural Element — in co-production with Madlenianum — presented to the Belgrade audience the theatre play "Cases", based on the works of the Russian poet, prose writer and playwright Daniil Kharms — a forerunner of the theatre of the absurd. Directed and dramaturgically shaped by Tadija Miletić, the play gathered an impressive creative and performing team of nearly thirty artists and collaborators.

"Cases" combines a whole range of theatrical motifs. First and foremost, the acting performance of a duodrama, in which lies the backbone of the action — between the Right Man and the Left Man unfolds a tense, absurd, distinctly Kharms-like fractured dialogue. Alongside it develops choreo-dramatic dance, which brings supplementation, clarification and elevation of the dramatic text we hear, while simultaneously introducing its own independent thematic, equal in weight to the part written for the actors.

There is also a musical-operatic aspect, in which soprano, flute, clarinet and double bass add a new layer of meaning to the whole picture. Running through it all are elements of shadow theatre and a range of modern audio-visual stage solutions, which finally unite all aspects of the play into one great image, one scene and one story. The overall conceptual solution stems from the life and work of Daniil Kharms, whose "Cases" were a particular and lasting inspiration for the creation of this thoroughly modern theatrical concept.