HISTORY
DAH Teatar was founded in 1991 by directors Dijana Milošević and Jadranka Anđelić, out of a need for experimental, research work. From the very beginning, actress Maja Mitić joined them, and over the years, a large number of permanent and occasional collaborators joined DAH Teatar.
In 1993, DAH Teatar grew into the DAH Teatar Center for Theatre Research, and in 2017 it became DAH Teatar International.
Since 1993, the Center for Theatre Research has organized and realized many events such as: specific workshops (Laban technique, Alexander technique, the legacy of Maga Magazinović, working with stilts, Butoh, Suzuki technique, etc.), international
festivals and meetings, and guest appearances by many significant artists from around the world (Odin Teatret – Denmark, Joshi Oida – France / Japan, Shiro Daimon – France / Japan, Sonia Kehler – Germany, Jill Greenghalgh – Great Britain, David Zinder – Israel, Ron Jenkins – USA, 7 Stages Theatre – USA, Bond Street Theatre – USA, Anna Zubrzicky and Grzegorz Bral – Poland, Stella Chiweshe – Zimbabwe, Gennadi Bogdanov – Russia, among others).
Great theatre masters have said that the first steps of a theatre group determine its destiny. The first performance certainly determined the fate of DAH Teatar, shaping the main postulates of its activity. The themes through which DAH Teatar expresses its poetics remain connected to the relationship between the individual and society and the role of the artist in “dark times.”
When the war in Yugoslavia began in 1991, DAH Teatar faced fundamental questions: What is the responsibility and duty of the artist in dark times, in times of violence and human suffering?” In search of answers, the group interrupts work on the started project “Gifts of Our Ancestors” and dedicates itself to preparing a new performance. The performance “This Babylonian Confusion” based on Bertolt Brecht’s poems, was the first performance performed by DAH Teatar. An anti-war performance that DAH Teatar performed in the open space in the center of Belgrade, at a time when it was not allowed to mention the war.
“The beginning of DAH Teatar’s work, its cry for creation, coincided chronologically with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the general destruction that followed. Theatre directors Jadranka Anđelić and Dijana Milošević, together with actress Maja Mitić, decided to oppose destruction with creation, to create a living theatrical microcosm in a disintegrated world.”
Dubravka Knežević (“Until the Last Breath”, SCENA no. 5/6, 1995)
A book about us
2016. In 2016, DAH Teatar celebrated 25 years of existence and work when the first book about DAH Teatar was published – “DAH Theatre – A Sourcebook” published by Lexington Books, edited by Dennis Barnett, professor of drama and literature at Coe College
[Coe College], Iowa [USA]. Eminent artists from all over the world, as well as from Serbia, contributed to the book with texts about DAH Teatar, and the foreword was written by Eugenio Barba, the famous director and founder of Odin Teatret.
“Dennis Barnett has compiled the most informative and exciting sourcebook on DAH Teatar, one of the world’s finest theaters working in the context of social conflict. A work of great breadth that offers the historian, scholar, and practitioner a meaningful and enjoyable reading, while as a whole it manages to paint a rich portrait of a living theater, the people and social circumstances that breathe life into it. This is a necessary and revealing book.” D –Roberto Gutiérrez Varea, University of San Francisco
POETIC RIFFS IN THE RHYTHM OF BOMBS, ARTICLE ABOUT THE WORK AND POETICS OF DAH TEATAR, NEW YORK TIMES, 2001
GUEST APPEARANCES
All this time, DAH Teatar has been a guest throughout Europe, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, and in Serbia. Also, as a Center for Theatre Research, it is open to various organizations and associations (informal initiatives, networks, association of women’s initiatives, peace organizations, groups with special needs, minority groups) which, in cooperation with us, can realize their programs.
