A “FUNNY PLAY” FOR CHILDREN IN MEDVEDJA

3. October 2018.

Medvedja– As part of the “Funny Play”, a kind of interactive theatrical workshop was held at the Cultural Center in Medvedja, during which Gile Brankovic, an actor, in the course of one-hour program, brought closer to preschool and elementary school children from this environment the basic notions about theater, public performance and the basic elements of acting. The performance in Medvedja was the last one, since Mr. Brankovic previously visited the elementary schools in the villages of Tupale, Tulare, Bucumet, Rujkovac, Gazdare and Lece, where he presented a similar program.

By this, the project of the Cultural Center "New Hopes for Medvedja", which is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Information, was launched. The project involves cooperation between children from different ethnic communities and environments, rural or urban ones, at interactive workshops on plays.

"Before coming to the municipality of Medvedja, we used a similar concept in the municipality of Bojnik, and after this we are going to Sjenica" said Gile Brankovic.

"As far as I can see and hear from the teachers, such performances are very popular with and interesting to the children. Most of them directly meet with the theater and acting for the first time, and also get a chance to get on stage and see what it looks like. Our goal is, besides bringing the theater and acting closer to them, to explain to them that working is something that is very important in life and that they have to read, practice etc. That is why we had Dejan Cvetkovic Cveks, who is a juggler, in our final performance in Medvedja, as he is a good example of what can be achieved when you practice persistently."

Apart from Mr. Brankovic, and Mr. Cvetkovic, Milja Brankovic and Strahinja Nikolic also performed in the “Funny Play”.

Gile Brankovic singled out the performance held at the school in the village of Tupale as a particularly interesting one. It is a village where the Albanian national minority lives, so that there was a problem of communication with the children.

“The children can speak some Serbian, some of them well and some of them a little, while I cannot speak Albanian at all, so that we somehow communicated by using words. When we ran out of words, we used our arms, legs and made faces at one another, and when we ran out of that, too, the children’s teachers came to our aid by interpreting. Thus, I taught them to act and they thought me Albanian, so that we had a great time together."

Source: Jugpress and Coordination Body