The Hotel Tito

First published ten years ago, The Hotel Tito (Hotel Zagorje) by Ivana Bodrožić is a touching, profoundly moving and critical tale which flows smoothly, but is indelible - it is one of those indispensable titles of contemporary Croatian literature. “The Hotel Tito is not to be measured by one or even ten literary seasons. It is a novel that defines an entire generation,” this high praise is to be found in the book. Its central theme does not cease to be topical, and to breathe life into it on stage is a creative and enlivening endeavour. Moreover, talk of refugees has, at this very moment, global implications, thus sentences such as these strike painful notes: “On one occasion we received a bag-full of sweets at the local Caritas and we dragged it toward the west of town in a tram jam-packed with people. A well-dressed lady in our corner of the tram told her colleague that it’s the refugees that take up all the space and that they go about town all day. I gave her a look and smiled, because I knew that we were exiles, whereas the refugees came from Bosnia.” The energetically polemical essence of this tale is what the authors of this production, Jelena Kovačić and Anica Tomić, are seeking to place on stage. The Hotel Tito emotionally as well as politically addresses itself to its readers, of all ages and experience, which is also the aim of this theatrical adaptation, which, after being viewed, we hope, won’t make us leave the theatre hall being the same person as we entered it, and which will inspire, just as the book itself does, “laughter and playfulness – and love.”

Awards:

Croatian Actors’ Award, 2020
– For the best theatrical play as a whole
– For the best stage direction: Anica Tomić

28th Actors’ Festival, 2021
– For the best theatrical play as a whole

31st Marulić Days, 2021
– For the best theatrical play as a whole
– For the best stage direction: Anica Tomić
– For the best dramaturgy of a theatrical play/dramatisation/adaptation: Anica Tomić and Jelena Kovačić
– Award for acting achievement: Dijana Vidušin
– Award for best stage design: Igor Vasiljev
– Award for acting achievement by the jury of readers of the newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija: Dijana Vidušin

“This is an important and monumental play that aims right for the heart. The Hotel Tito at the City Drama Theatre Gavella is an original stage production by Anica Tomić and Jelena Kovačić based on the novel of the same name by Ivana Bodrožić, with Dijana Vidušin in the principal role who gently, but carefully, leads us into a salutary uncovering of the unconscious mind of the national consciousness. (...) This new stage production at the Gavella theatre as directed by currently the most mature and invigorating of directors, Anica Tomić and Jelena Kovačić, is a prime example of how to truly direct a play, how to muse over a national trauma thirty years after the fact, not in order to pick at long-gone wounds only to provoke pain and frustration, but instead to allow deep-seated emotions to vent, to set them free, to help us rid ourselves of the poison within. Art heals, and the theatre heals when it is at its peak performance.” (Snježana Pavić, Jutarnji list)

“I’ve been a theatre-goer since I was five years old. It’s been more than five decades now. I can swear that not once have I seen an audience leave after a play without muttering a word, in complete silence, a silence that bears witness to a powerful experience, with due respect. That is how the audience left Gavella after the first performance of its solemn debut of The Hotel Tito, an original stage production by Anica Tomić and Jelena Kovačić, based on the novel of the same name by Ivana Bodrožić. This great novel, after ten years in waiting, has finally received its setting on stage. It was well worth the wait. (...) All eight actresses have managed to perform their arduous roles, visibly putting their full trust into the narrative and the director. Much is to be said about the corporal aspect of the play – the sprints, the flights, the falls, the dancing, and all our actresses have pushed to their very limits to reach up to the task. (...) Dijana Vidušin shines in the principal role to such an extent that after the closing scene, the viewer is left with the thought: “Good God, how on Earth does this lady return to her ordinary life after this?” This must be the utmost an actress can achieve.” (Bojana Radović, Večernji list)

“The Gavella theatre’s repertoire is simply extraordinary on stage: Dijana Vidušin in the principal role as Ivana, Ksenija Pajić as her Mother, Perica Martinović as the Grandmother, Aunt Slavica is played by Bojana Gregorić Vejzović, Zorica by Lana Meniga; Antonija Stanišić Šperanda is Marina, Ivana Bolanča performs as Jelena, while Tena Nemet Brankov plays Nataša. Each and every one of these actresses has put on stage a highly original study of their respective characters, and the whole structure is tightly maintained by a powerful, feminine wall of mutual support both in wartime and peacetime circumstances of an unbelievable misery and pity.” (Nataša Govedić, Novi list)

“This stage production is carried by powerful representations on stage of layered characters, of personages forever scarred by war.” (Tanja Novak, Ravno do dna)

“One can conclude that The Hotel Tito is a robust, visually pleasing, emotionally dense and partially polemical stage production which does not stop at a vision of war and of an exile’s experience as seen from an ostracised but playful girl, instead choosing to encapsulate the whole from the perspective of today’s 40-year old self. The generation in question is one that was 10-years old at the outbreak of war, but is too aged today to migrate, but is certainly not too young to seriously put into question today’s social paradoxes.” (Nina Ožegović, T-portal)