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SYNOPSIS |
| Just an hour before her
major perfomance in Carnagie Hall, Billie
Holiday, together with her pianist, stops by
the bar where she used to sing before she
was arrested and sent to prison. She asks
her friend, the bar owner Charlie, to let
her practise a bit since she was kicked out
of a rehearsal room in her hotel. During her
practise, while she sings some of her most
famous songs, Billie opnes her heart to
Charlie and starts demanding alcohol to help
her overcome her fear. At first Charlie
reluctantly gives her a drink or two, but
soon the situation spirals out of control
and her performance in Carnagie Hall comes
under a question. |
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DIRECTOR'S VISION |
When Ksenija came to me with
the idea to stage the show on Billie
Holiday, I found myself in a dilemma how to
present decades of tempestuous life of a
famous person in one single theater show.
Trying to solve that "problem" the idea
emerged to swing into another extreme and
present only little bit more than an hour
from her life, one really short and
seemingly insignificant moment, the one that
might tell us most about Billie Holiday.
Therefore most of the facts from her life
were cut out from the text, and we kept only
a few historical elements: the fact that she
was imprisoned due to illegal drug
possession and that shortly after having
left the jail she sang in Carnagie Hall to a
packed audinece. Such a drastic limitation
in story, place and time not only brought
the text closer to the ideals of classical
dramaturgy, but also enabled me as a
director to focus on what I am most
interested in - human emotions, that is
painting a vulnerable human soul desperately
trying to control her life and resist demons
that prevailed her. Musical cuts adjusted
naturally into the structure of the show, as
an integral part of the story, in the
situation when Billie was rehearsing using
her good friend, the owner of a bar she
stopped by announced, just before the
preformance. In this amazing cooperation
with Ksenija featuring Billie Holiday and
Robert Kurbasa featuring her friend Charlie,
I tried to discard as many outer elements as
possible, trying to open human hearts on the
stage and thus touch the hearts of the
audience.
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THEATER:
WRITERS:
DIRECTOR:
SET DESIGN:
COSTUME DESIGNER:
MUSIC ARRANGEMENTS:
LIGHT DESIGN:
SOUND DESIGN:
PROMPTER: |
Croatian National
Theater in Split
Ksenija Prohaska and Arsen Anton
Ostojic
Arsen Anton Ostojic
Slaven Raos
Neda Makjanic-Kunic
Ivan Bozicevic
Miroslav Mamic
Damir Punda
Zlata Kovacic |
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BILLIE:
CHARLIE:
PIANIST:
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Ksenija Prohaska
Robert Kurbasa
Ivan Bozicevic
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PREMIERE:
February 11th 2006 |
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