As the final competitive performance of the program at the 34th Marulić Days Festival of Croatian Drama, on Sunday, April 28th, starting at 8:00 PM on the stage of the Croatian National Theater Split, the play "My Sad Monsters" by Mate Matišić, produced by the Gavella City Drama Theater of Zagreb and directed by Vito Taufer, will take place.
Mate Matišić's new drama echoes, in style, procedure, and certain characters and toponyms, his "Wax People." As there, here too, the dramatist intriguingly questions the porosity of the boundary between reality and fiction, biography and performance, person and character. At the center of "My Sad Monsters," subtitled as a "dramatic diary," is "dramatist and musician" Mate, and the material brings us scenes where theatricality and a kind of hyper-eventfulness imaginatively merge with intimacy and documentary that are not afraid to expose intimate space. There is also humor, bold, lush, and multivalent as is Matišić's custom. Besides being a dramatic confrontation with personal demons, "My Sad Monsters" are very much interested in the social context, collective pains and injustices, knots we haven't untangled, for provocation that is not an end in itself, for complex acting engagement, and transformative (co)play. The amalgam into which we are invited to immerse ourselves is so inscribed that it is not possible for us to discern what is real and what is fictional; moreover, it is neither possible nor important.
The role of Mate is played by Živko Anočić, and in other roles are: Antonija Stanišić Šperanda, Filip Šovagović, Jelena Miholjević, Sven Šestak, Franjo Dijak, Ivica Pucar, Mada Peršić, and Damir Klarić, Jakov Klarić, Bruno Mlinarić, Senko Mlinarić, and Emilija Šušković Jakopac. In addition to director Vito Taufer, the creative team of the play includes: set designer Lazar Bodroža, costume designer Marita Ćopo, composer Šimun Matišić, lighting designer Zdravko Stolnik, speech coach Ivana Buljan Legati, dramaturgical collaborator Dubravko Mihanović, Serbian language consultant Katarina Pejović, assistant costume designer Dora Črnjević, and Ivona Đogić Đurić / Crtaona Studio, who created the visual identity of the play.