Kraljevo

At the height of the World War I, Miroslav Krleža, a great artist of words, writer, poet and playwright, wrote his Kraljevo which is with good reason considered the first expressionist work not only in Croatia, but in Central Europe as well. The plot of this expressionist fresco from a royal market in Zagreb follows numerous characters that could be found at a market: prostitutes, pickpockets, policemen, gentlemen, circus artists. In the whirl of human destinies which interlace in the short scenes on the stage, we witness a love story as well. But, the frantic market is also the place where two worlds overlap: the world of the living and the world of those who have passed to the other side. In the characteristic scenes of the encounter of those two worlds, Krleža brilliantly illustrates the world of common people wrestling with life and death, and gives a great view of familiar and understandable characters. With Kraljevo, Croatian drama literature has bravely entered the modernism of the twentieth century, which still forces us, in the twenty-first century, to ask the same questions about us and about the world around us.

Kraljevo will be directed by Ozren Prohić.