Zoran Đerić: Children's theaters no longer deal only with fairy tales, but also with current everyday topics

This year's edition of the International Children's Theater Festival will be held from September 20 to 24, organized by the Open University of Subotica. The festival will be officially opened on Sunday, September 20 at 5 pm in the Children's Theater with the award ceremony for the Little Prince Lifetime Achievement to writer, playwright and director Vladimir Andrić and Bulgarian director Slavcho Malenov, for exceptional contribution to the development of culture and performing arts for children. This year, for the first time, will be assigned a posthumous award for life dedicated to creativity for children, to actor and director Zoran Lozančić.

Zoran Đerić, the selector of the main program, emphasized that the festival will be a mixture of classical theater, musicals, dance and puppet shows, as well as attractive multimedia settings. Speaking about current events in modern puppetry, he said: "It is a turn to new digital media, 3D animation, and an effort to include new media and film discoveries in children's performances. Both play directors and numerous theaters around the world are trying to be visually and audibly appealing to their audiences."

About the plays that he would single out, Đeric said: "It is interesting to see the scope of the Chinese play "We are the Terracotta Army" which will be shown in the Eurocinema. All the shows that will be seen live are interesting in their own way. Some are based on classic fairy tales, such as Alice or Gulliver, others are based on new stories such as the play "Fattie", about a girl who is different and misunderstood. It is interesting that children's theaters are now dealing with these current, everyday topics, and not just fairy tales."

Ilija Tatić, director of the Open University Subotica and producer of the International Children's Theater Festival, spoke about the challenges of organizing a festival during the pandemic: "Taking all the circumstances into account, we can still be satisfied because we are one of the few festivals in Serbia, especially among festivals for children. We are one of the few festivals that will have an international character, six live performances, and five online performances by international theaters that could not come. Iam glad that, in addition to all the troubles, the team from Slovenia is coming to open the festival. This way, we will maintain not only the continuity, but also the quality of the event."

The festival will be held in a hybrid format, as a combination of live performances, and those shown as screenings, and the program includes 11 performances for children. The main program presents various and imaginative performances by ensembles from China, Russia, Israel, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Serbia.

After the opening ceremony, the Festival will start with Slovenian performance "This is Ernest" by the Puppet Theater Nebo, at 6 pm at the National Theater "Jadran". Five plays from Serbia will be performed live: "To Theater with Love" by Children's Theater Subotica, "Gulliver" by the Little Theater "Duško Radović" from Belgrade, "Fattie" by the Youth Theater Novi Sad, "Who is afraid of Isadora Duncan" by the Center for Contemporary Artistic Productions "Viva Dance Academy" from Novi Sad and "Crvenkapa" by the theater "Toša Jovanović" from Zrenjanin.

Video screenings will be organized for five foreign productions in the Eurocinema in Subotica: the Austrian play "Queen of Colors", "The Penguin-Baby Who Wanted to Fly" from Russia, "Guli" from Israel, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" from Germany and "We are the Terracotta Army” from China.