How I Learned to Drive

11/17, Tuesday, 8 PM

"How I Learned to Drive" (Heartefact, Belgrade)

Duration: 80 minutes

A Word from the Director:

"How I Learned to Drive" by Paula Vogel is a text that many call the "Lolita" written from a female perspective – that of the adult Humbert Humbert, who recalls his childhood. In our work on it, in the chamber-like, intimate space of the Hartefakt House, together with actress Marta Bogosavljević and actor Svetožar Cvetković, as well as with all the collaborators, we have strived to find a gentle stage language for this complex, profound, and delicate text – which doesn't even try to compete with the reality we live in every day. It is all the more terrifying because it happens all around us and seems discouragingly unstoppable – which is why, through this play, we have tried to move backward, step by step, examining a problem that most people who read this text have encountered at some point in their lives. The relationship between these two characters, Malecka and her uncle, is full of ambivalence: love, tenderness, curiosity, teaching, trust, the formation of authority, mistakes, and consequently: boundary violations, grooming, and hurt, all the way to the point of self-destruction. The great value of this text is the author's empathy for both characters, which opens an important, polemical tone about the causes, and not just the consequences, of such a relationship. This is a play about forgiveness, without the awareness that it is impossible to forgive. I hope that with this play we will make people more awake and at least a little braver – I think that would be more than enough in a society where we make them ashamed and silent."
Tara Manić, Director

• Text: Paula Vogel
• Direction: Tara Manić
• Translation from English: Ivana Đurić Pavlović
• Adaptation of the text: Vuk Bošković
• Starring: Svetozar Cvetković, Marta Bogosavljević
• Set/Costume: Zorana Petrov
• Music: Vladimir Pejković
• Lighting Design: Nemanja Calić and Zorana Petrov
• Photo and Video Production: Marko Stojanović
• Visual Identity: Marko Stojanović
• Technical Assistants: Nemanja Calić, Bojan Durutović
• Executive Production: Selena Pleskonjić, Aleksandra Lozanović
• Production: Hartfaktor, March 2024.