Based on the Beggar's Opera by John Gay

Play by: Salvatore Tramacere
Assistant Director: Fabrizio Saccomanno
Assistant on stage: Mariarozaria Ponceta
Stage movement: Silvia Traversi
Music: Admir Škurtaj
Musicians: Giorgio Distante, Redi Hasa, Admir Škurtaj
Light and sound: Mario Daniele, Angelo Piccinni
Cast: Danijel Todorović, Miljan Guberinić, Ana Pašti, Anđelka Vulić, Emran Šabani, Ajnur Ibraimi, Damir Kriziv, Ajnur Redžepi, Senad Sulejmani, Sead Kurtiši, Marija Miladinović, Vukosava Lazić, Marija Mladenović, Marko Stojanović i Nikola Jovanović

Co-production: Teatro Koreja Lecce (Italy), Smederevo Centre of Culture (Serbia) and PATOS (Serbia)
Supported by: The Ministry of Culture of Republic of Serbia; the City of Smederevo; Teatro Publico Puglieze from Bari (Italy)
Premijera: May 2010
Season 2009/2010

Duration 45'

Gentle and nomad people who do not claim sovereignty, territory, mint, stamps, seals and borders, but simply the right to continue being that finely “other” and “transcendent” people compared with all those who compete for territories, flags and palaces; people who, more or less like the Hebrews, are part of the European history and identity just because, differently form all the others, have learnt to be light, coexistent, able to go over and under the borders, to live among all the others without loosing themselves and to keep their own identity, though without building a country around it.

Alex Langer, journalist and peace activist

Word of the Director

We do not want to create a new professional company, and we do not look for a social purification. What do we want? We start from the text The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay. We need people and actors who are able to give sense and truth to the biting words of the Opera in times of a thin borderline between truth and fiction. Thieves, tarts, prisons, police chiefs fighting … these are new heroes and topics of an up-side-down world. A story played many times before in different historical periods and places. Eight Serbian young actors, eleven Roma people participants, who are not actors, take roles to present their own culture. The culture is destined to disappear like the petty thieves on the stage. The result is a “presentation” about how playing with the stereotypes of a culture brings the thin borderline between fiction and reality into question.