ÇIFTI MARTIN
NATIONAL THEATRE OF KOSOVA
7 November, 20:00 h, Place:
National Theatre of Kosova
Based on a play by: Eugene Ionesco / Directed by: Bekim Lumi / Actors: Astrit Kabashi & Gresa Pallaska / Accordion: Agon Xharra / Stage design: Mentor Berisha / Costume: Samka Ferri / Lighting design: Asllan Hyseni / Stage manager: Bajram Mehmetaj
ÇIFTI MARTIN
The play “The Martin Couple” is an experimental artistic creation built on one scene (with a text of three pages) from the anti-comedy “The Bald Singer” of Eugene Ionesco. In the richness of this anti-comedy, the Martin Couple scene can be read also as a drama on its own. The expressive dialogue of this anti-logical scene, constructed in the form of a parody around the story of the “re-acquaintance” of a man and wife, is a unique dramatic model, which through the trivial adventures of a fictional couple, parodies the conventionality, falsity and “brilliance” of beautiful, but often deceptive, marital relations.
In such a relation, completely crazily, the Martins' married life of many years gets confused, and although they live in the same house, and continually travel on the same train, although they sleep together in the same room and have sex with each other in the same double bed covered with a blanket, and further more, even though they have a two year old girl, “they are not acquainted”, therefore like an ancient Greek tragedy or a popular Albanian ballad of rediscovery, through various “signs”, they continually become “reacquainted” again.
Completely different to dramas with a classic and conventional tone, and totally beyond the clichés and uniformities with which texts of the theatre of the absurd are usually treated, the drama of the 'Martin Couple' gives extreme opportunities to creative acting and directorial genes, up to the crazy 'Jongleur'. It is not by accident therefore that the creative act of this play comes in the form of a theatre burlesque with elements of the musical, which depending on the different situations, the composition of the tableaus, from poetic images and light comic rhythms, escalates into a parody and grotesque caricature.
“The Martin Couple” play is no more and no less than a universal human fairy tale, which with its theatrical, emotive and artistic expressiveness, intends to captivate and to ennoble the public, to move them deeply, to make them joyful, to make them laugh and at the same time, to cry with ironic tears, sadness, desperation and joy.
NATIONAL THEATRE OF KOSOVA
The National Theatre of Kosova, (in the beginning called the Popular Provincial Theatre and later the Popular Regional Theatre) was founded in October of the year 1946 in Prizren. This was the first professional theatrical institution in Kosova after the Second World War. Very quickly, some months after its foundation, the theatre was transferred to the capital of Kosova, in Prishtina. The first plays of this theatre were performed mainly by amateur artists, enthusiasts and talented idealists, helped by professional artists from other areas of the former Yugoslavia, and later, in the 1960s, the ensemble was enriched with a new team of professionals. By the year 1989, this theatre had shown 400 premieres with about 10,000 reprisals, which in Kosova and in various areas of the former Yugoslavia, were seen by over 3,200,000 spectators. The repertoire of this theatre was built upon the texts of many national, world and Yugoslav dramas. The plays of this theatre, which have been presented in various festivals of a national and international character in the former Yugoslavia, were praised highly by critics of that time and were honored with different artistic prizes. Thus for example, in the year 1967, the play “Erveheja” by the Director Muharrem Qena was honored with the Best Direction Prize at the Yugoslav Drama Festival “Sterijino Pozorje”. As well as plays in the Albanian language, plays in the Serb language were also performed in this theatre. Very often, the theatre operated under severe political pressure from the Yugoslav communist system and regime, especially after the year 1981 and onwards. In the year 1990, the Serb regime of Slobodan Milosević put the theatre under violent administration, expelling many Albanian artists and putting the artistic creativity of the theatre under totalitarian control. During this period, in house–schools in a parallel university education system, created in conditions of active peaceful resistance against the totalitarian Serb regime, many of the artistic generation who are now part of the professional ensemble of this theatre were formed. In the year 1999, after the end of the war in Kosova, this theatre was given the name the National Theatre of Kosova. During the 10 years since the war, many national and world dramas have been staged in this theatre. The National Theatre of Kosova is a theatre with a state character and, as such, it is financed by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport of the Republic of Kosova.
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