Hartefakt Belgrade
Text: Pola Vogel
Directed by: Tara Manić
Translation: Ivana Đurić Paunović
Text adaptation: Vuk Bošković
Starring: Svetozar Cvetković and Marta Bogosavljević
Scenography / Costume: Zorana Petrov
Music: Vladimir Pejković
Lighting design: Nemanja Calić and Zorana Petrov
Public relations: Slavica Pešić
Photo and video production: Marko Stojanović
Author of the poster: Marko Stojanović
Technical associates: Nemanja Calić, Bojan Durutović
Executive production: Selena Pleskonjić and Aleksandra Lozanović
“How I learned to drive” by Pola Vogel is a text that many call “Lolita” written from a female perspective – the character of an adult Malecka, who recalls her childhood. While working on it in the chamber, intimate space of Hartefakt House, together with actress Marta Bogosavljević and actor Svetozar Cvetković, as well as with all collaborators, we tried to find a gentle stage language for this complex, deep and delicate text – which does not even try to match reality, which we live everyday. It is so much scarier, it happens all around us and it seems discouragingly unstoppable – that through this play we tried to go backwards, step by step, examining the problem that most of the people reading this text have encountered at some point in their lives. The relationship between these two characters, Malecka and her son, is full of ambivalence: love, tenderness, curiosity, teaching, trust, the formation of authority, mistakes, and consequently: breaking through boundaries, grooming and hurting, up to the point of self-destruction. The great value of this text is the author’s empathy for both characters, which opens up an important, polemical tone about the causes, not just the consequences, of such a relationship. This is a play about forgiveness, without realizing that it is impossible to forgive. I hope that with this play we will make people awake and at least a little braver – I think that would be more than enough in a society where we make them ashamed and silent.” – Tara Manić, director
