PREMIERE

Festival Drama Ensemble

THE MELANCHOLY WOMEN OF RAGUSA

A project by Dora Ruždjak Podolski

Dramaturge: Marijana Fumić, Stela Mišković

Set designer: Stefano Katunar

Lighting designer: Elvis Butković

Composer: Maro Market

Stage movement: Saša Božić

Speech advisor: Maro Martinović

Stage manager: Roko Grbin

Cast: Nataša Dangubić, Gloria Dubelj, Anica Kontić, Nataša Kopeč, Iva Kraljević, Lana Meniga, Lidija Penić-Grgaš, Lucija Rukavina, Nikolina Prkačin, Marin Klišmanić

In The Melancholy Women of Ragusa, Dora Ruždjak Podolski and Marijana Fumić search for the contours of everyday life of the Dubrovnik community, focusing in particular on the lives of women in the period of the Republic of Dubrovnik, and mirroring those lives in contemporary experience. By combining two research areas, women’s history and history of everyday life, the authors creates a kind of dramatic fresco that reflects different fates of Dubrovnik’s noblewomen, nuns, house servants, procurers, innkeepers, widows, healers and many others. The subject matter of the play, focused on the ideal of female purity, engagement practices, lives of female servants, female professions, marginal female activities (herbal healers, witches), is taken from various archival, historical and contemporary theoretical written sources. The framework in which the directors places the fates of Dubrovnik women is one of submission and dependence on men (husbands, fathers, brothers) and the idea of woman’s passivity and confinement in domestic environment and family community, regardless of her social status. Through the play The Melancholy Women of Ragusa, women become visible protagonists of Dubrovnik’s vibrant daily life, past and present.

Photo (c) Marko Ercegović