THE HISTORY
DAH Theater was founded by directors Dijana Milošević and Jadranka Anđelić in 1991, out of a need for experimental, research work. Since its foundation, actress Maja Mitić has joined them, and over the years a large number of permanent and occasional collaborators have joined the DAH Theater. In 1993, DAH Theater grew into DAH Theater Center for Theater Research, and in 2017 it became DAH Theater International.
Since 1993, the Center for Theater Research has organized and implemented many events such as: specific workshops (Laban technique, Alexander technique, Maga Magazinović heritage, work with stilts, Butho, Suzuki technique, etc.), international festivals and meetings and guest appearances of many important artists from all over 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 Theater - USA, Bond Steet Theater - USA, Anna Zubrzicky and Grzegorz Bral - Poland, Stella Chiweshe - Zimbabwe, Gennadi Bogdanov - Russia, among others).
Great theater masters have said that the first steps of a theater group determine its destiny. The first performance certainly determined the fate of DAH Theater, shaping the main postulates of its activity. The themes through which DAH Theater 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 started in 1991, the DAH Theater faced essential questions: What is the responsibility and duty of an artist in dark times in times of violence and human suffering?" In search of answers, the group stops work on the project "Gifts of our ancestors" and devotes itself to the preparation of a new play. The play "Ova Babylonska pometnja" was based on the poems of Bertolt Brecht, an anti-war play that DAH Theater performed in an open space in the center of Belgrade, at a time when it was not allowed to mention the war.
"The beginning of DAH Theatre's work, its cry for creation, chronologically coincided with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the general destruction that followed. Theater 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 broken world."
Dubravka Knežević ("To the Last Breath", SCENE No. 5/6, 1995)
DAH THEATRE SOURCEBOOK
In 2016, DAH Theater celebrated 25 years of existence and work when the first book about DAH Theater - "DAH Theater - A Sourcebook" was published by Lexington Books, edited by Dennis Barnett, Professor of Drama and Literature at Coe College [Coe College], Iowa [USA]. In the book, eminent artists from all over the world but also from Serbia gave their dorpinos, texts about DAH Theatre, and the foreword was written by Eugenio Barba, the famous director and founder of Odin Theatre.
"Dennis Barnett has compiled the most informative and exciting sourcebook on DAH Theatre, one of the world's finest theaters working in the context of social conflict. A work of great breadth that offers meaningful and enjoyable reading to the historian, scholar and practitioner, while overall succeeding in painting a rich portrait of a living theatre, the people and social circumstances that breathe life into it. This is an essential and revealing book.""D" -Roberto Gutiérrez Varea, University of San Francisco
POETIC RIFFS IN THE RHYTHM OF THE BOMB, ARTICLE ON THE WORK AND POETICS OF THE DAH THEATER, NEW YORK TIMES, 2001
AWAY GAMES
All this time, DAH Theater has been touring throughout Europe, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, and in Serbia. Also, as a Theater Research Center, it is open to various organizations and associations (informal initiatives, networks, associations of women's initiatives, peace organizations, groups with special needs, minority groups) that can implement their programs in cooperation with us.
