“God’s People” Written by Borisav Stanković and Directed by Jug Đorđević to Premiere on 14 June on the “Raša Plaović” Stage

The play “God’s People”, based on motifs from the prose of Borisav Stanković and directed by Jug Đorđević, will premiere on 14 June at 8:30 p.m. on the “Raša Plaović” Stage of the National Theatre in Belgrade.

The play examines themes of fate, death, and madness through Stanković’s characters - beggars, paupers, and outcasts from Vranje - whose stories, more than a century after they were written, retain their universal power and relevance. The cast includes Vanja Ejdus, Iva Milanović, Jelena Blagojević, Aleksandar Vučković, Nedim Nezirović, and Novak Radulović.

Director Jug Đorđević notes that Borisav Stanković was a chronicler of destinies that defy time and oblivion, recording the lives of people of his era in a voice that defies, warns, and inspires.

He also points out that this production was conceived not merely as a story about beggars and the town of Vranje, but as a collective conversation about fate, death, and madness - a conversation seldom held, and yet concerns us all.

According to Đorđević, the result of this creative process is a “visual poem,” composed of a sequence of images, scenes, and voices arranged not according to the logic of plot, but to the logic of memory.

“We sought a form rooted in storytelling rather than representation,” Đorđević says, for whom this is his third collaboration with the National Theatre, following his highly successful directions of “Lullaby for Aleksija Rajčić” and “Madame Olga”. 

Dramaturg Đorđe Kosić points out that “God’s People”, published in 1902, introduced into Serbian literature a gallery of characters unlike almost any it had existed before. 

“Beggars, the destitute, the blind, the mad, and the outcast, all those whom old Vranje looked at but did not truly see - were, for the first time, looked in the eye, with the kind of attention we usually look at saints”, Kosić emphasizes. He adds that the production was not conceived as a conventional dramatization of Stanković’s prose, but rather as an act of storytelling in which the actors do not “become someone else,” but instead bear witness to the characters and carry their destinies forward.

“Storytelling and death have always been closely related: every life story told is a small act of resistance against disappearance. Pondering about their own transience, the actors discovered that the boundary between the one who tells a story and the one whose story is told is not fixed; that, sooner or later, we are all God’s people. The title is no coincidence. In folk and Orthodox tradition, the poor, the helpless, and the mad are “God’s people” - those who belong to God, marked by His finger and sheltered by His hand. Stanković neither ironizes nor preaches this belief; he simply acknowledges it and narrates it as an example of human destiny,” Kosić observes.

In Kosić’s view, “God’s People” is not “ a portrait of other people’s lives, but an invitation to listen together, just as people once gathered around a fireplace, to summon back, if only for an instant, and keep among the living those whom the world let go long ago.” 

The production’s creative team also includes Andrea Rondović (set design), Velimirka Damjanović (costume design), Nevena Glušica (music composition), Milica Cerović (stage movement), and Dr. Ljiljana Mrkić Popović (stage speech coaching).

The first subsequent performance will take place the following day, 15 June, and it will also be on the repertoire on 21 June, with both performances beginning at 8:30 p.m. on the “Raša Plaović” Stage.