Photo: Joeri Thiry, 2016
Photo: Joeri Thiry, 2016 
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016 
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016 
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016 
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016 
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016 
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016
Photo: Kris Dewitte, 2016 
 

Do You Still Love Me?

by Sanja Mitrović (Belgium/Serbia)
Direction: Sanja Mitrović

Guest performance during FIND 2016

Football and theatre both take place in front of a live audience, thrive upon confrontational encounters between opponents and count passionately enthusiastic followers and ardent admirers among their spectators. Yet at first sight the two have little in common: whereas football constitutes a multi-billion dollar industry with hundreds of thousands of supporters in which nationalism, xenophobia, political power and corruption are the order of the day, theatre, as a place of high culture, is supposed to disseminate enlightenment and to counterbalance such dangerous tendencies – although it survives on a rather smaller audience and is itself based on structural inequalities. Where do these two worlds meet? What do they have to say to each other? Where can we still recognize ourselves in others during times in which western societies appear to be more starkly split than ever into the haves and have nots and are threatened by both right-wing and left-wing populism, hostility towards foreigners, resentment and disenchantment with democracy? Are there any common denominators? Is there something we can share in our ever more fractured societies? »Do You Still Love Me?« explores notions of community, belonging and identity with a group of French and Belgian theatre actors and real football fans from Brussels – and poses the question: to which passions do people devote their entire lives in a society which is increasingly losing its cohesion?

>>> Q&A about the production in Pearson's Preview: What Football Supporters and Theatre Have in Common

Sanja Mitrović, born in Zrenjanin, Former Yugoslavia
Theatre director, performer, writer, and lecturer. Currently based in Brussels. Mitrović graduated in Japanese language and literature from the Belgrade University, and in Mime Studies from Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten. She is artistic director of Stand Up Tall Productions, which she founded in 2009. In 2010 she was awarded the prestigious BNG prize for the best young theatre director from Theatre Instituut Nederlands. Mitrović’s projects have been commissioned, co-produced or presented at international festivals and venues, including Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), BITEF Festival (Belgrade), Theater Spektakel (Zürich), Festival International Mettre en Scène (Rennes) and Teatro Nacional São João (Porto). At FIND 2016 she is also part of Milo Rau’s »The Dark Ages«.

Trailer

Duration: ca. 110 minutes

A production by Stand Up Tall Production (NL), La Comédie de Reims-CDN / Reims Scènes d’Europe (FR), Hiros (BE) in co-production with STUK (BE), Beursschouwburg (BE). Sponsored by: The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (NL), The Flemish Community (BE), Performing Arts Fund (NL).