Troupe

Croatian theatre director born in 1955

He had been studying philosophy and comparative literature at the Philosophical University before he entered the Theatre Academy in Zagreb where he graduated in theatre direction.

His first performances were related to one of the most significant alternative groups of the seventies in ex-Yugoslavia, the Coccolemocco Theatre Company which he founded and guided artistically since the age of fifteen.

At that time he directed Brecht’s didactic plays including the world premiere of the Brecht’s first piece The Bible (1974), worked with huge puppets and in recitals with hundred participants.

With the play Ormitha Macarounada (1982) he inaugurated his “patent” dramaturgy that gives surprising results with the juxtaposition of a number of completely disparate texts (in this case he put together, at first sight absurdly, the novel The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide and The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter). The texts comment on each other, overlap in unexpected places, casting a new light on each pronounced sentence.

This method will develop further with Brecht 1917 (1985) in which a real tragic event from a newspaper article is only a pretext to talk about the Brechtian dialectical method itself, using excerpts from 26 Brecht’s plays, essays and poems. In the later period Brezovec directed in national and repertory theatres, theatre companies and independent structures all over ex-Yugoslavia, and in Great Britain, Norway, France, Sweden, Uzbekistan, Germany, Italy... working in different genres (opera, multi-media spectacles, “metaphysical comedy”, etc.) and in multi-cultural environments with Albanians, Turks, Welsh, Uzbek and Roma people....

His innovative dramaturgical approach is enlarged by putting together different discursive materials, contexts, languages, directing and acting styles in one performance. He investigates into still unexplored possibilities of a dramatic text, using freely references from various cultures (particularly those from the Balkan area) which are then combined with modern directing procedures. Parallelisms employed in his work (like Dutch polyphony) lead to the abundance of information and excess of meaning demanding additional effort from the audience which, although entertained while perceiving the existence of a system, cannot fully penetrate into it.

His performances were invited and awarded at almost all festivals in former Yugoslavia and abroad on all continents with over 200 presentations. Most important performances: The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent (1973), A Day in the Life of Ignac Golob (1977), Ormitha Macarounada and Several Cooks (1982), Brecht 1917 (1985), Why are We in Vietnam, Minnie? (1988), Mysterious Yarn-spinning Bee (1990), Three Noras Waiting for Baal (1993), King Hamlet (1995), El1Ec2Tra3 (1997), Caesar (1998), Grand Master of all Villains (2001), Kamov, Necrography / Moulin Rouge (2003), Timon of Athens (2005), The Glembay (2007), In Agony (2008), Galileo Bound (2009), Salome (2010), The Flying Dutchman (2013).

Since 2002 Brezovec has been teaching as a Professor at the Academy of Dramatic

Art in Zagreb (Department for theatre directing and radiophonics).