City Drama Theatre Gavella, the Croatian National Theatre in Split and the Croatian National Theatre in Zadar
Directed by Anastasija Jankovska
Dramaturgy by Elvis Bošnjak
Stage design by Vesna Režić
Costume design by Marita Ćopo
Music by Matija Antolić
Choreography by Pravdan Devlahović
Linguistic consulting by Marina Čapalija
Light design at the Croatian National Theatre in Split by Srđan Barbarić
Light design at the City Drama Theatre Gavella by Zdravko Stolnik
Photography by the Croatian National Theatre in Split
Performers:
Antonio (74 years old): Davor Jureško
Jakovica – Jako – his wife (54 years old): Anja Šovagović Despot
Niko – his sister (54 years old): Snježana Sinovčić Šiškov
Cvitan – Kirnja – Antunov and Jakovica’s younger son (37 years old): Goran Marković
Pavica – Pave – Antunov’s second wife and Jakovica’s older son Ruzarija (21 years old): Martina Čvek
Jozica – Joze – Niko’s daughter (16 years old): Maruška Aras
Dobra – Paščoka – the neighbour (37 years old): Katarina Romac
Stage managing by Ana Dulčić / Frane Smoljo
Prompting by Marina Fakac
Premiered on the 11th of December, 2020, at the Croatian National Theatre in Split
The Anchored is Elvis Bošnjak’s third text, which at the end of the last decade established itself on Gavella’s stage, and this time in a coproduction with the Croatian National Theatre in Split and the Croatian National Theatre in Zadar. In the citation to the theatrical Marin Držić Award for 2017, awarded to The Anchored, we find: “The Anchored brings forth a wide array of complex relations, well-defined characters, especially the women. (...) The text is run through and through with an almost primeval, wild insular beauty, but also with the hardships of the lives of its inhabitants, who are anchored without return to the sea’s depths.” Having in mind the play’s subject – life on the islands, indelibly connected to the roughness of the weather and set in tune with the routine abandonments of the islands, and the much rarer returns thereto – it is not unusual that in this production we joined hands with the Dalmatian theatrical scene and a festival from down south in the country… The author himself has noted: “In ten or twenty years, the last person to have been born on the islands in this primeval world, in the world of natural light, the natural course of bright day unto dark night, born in a stone hut with stone roof tiles will pass away… That world will forever disappear in our time. It is disappearing as we speak.”
Albeit the times are against us folk working in the theatre, or anyone else working in the domain of culture, this Friday last on the stage of the Croatian National Theatre in Split we got to witness the public preview, the prepremier of Elvis Bošnjak’s new play The Anchored. It was a truly intimate experience watching it. In the theatre there were some 130 audience members, only a fifth of the size of an audience that the Croatian National Theatre in Split is used to on such occasions. But, if the theatre is there where there is at least one actor, then the same can be said of the audience. In any case, it was a truly rare privilege to see such an interesting coproduction by the Croatian National Theatre in Split, the Croatian National Theatre in Zadar and the City Drama Theatre Gavella in Zagreb, at whose centre is a ‘rebellious Penelope’ of sorts. That is to say, the action takes place on an unnamed Dalmatian island, to which the old protagonist Antonio returns after having spent a good deal of his life working abroad, returning in order to spend his calm days with his wife and children, whom he ‘left’ a while ago. Even though the women folk, during the Odysseys of their husbands, usually opened their doors and beds wide open, Antonio’s wife Jakovica does not see that as being a reasonable, or even the only solution to the problem of absence… (Renato Kragić, Slobodna Dalmacija)
