Amateur theater plays by Serbian migrants in Vienna

Abstract

In the last twenty years, several cultural and educational organizations developed amongst the Serbian migrants in Vienna, and they engage in presenting modern day Serbian culture and the lives of migrants in a different light and with a different approach than some other clubs of our former migrants. The goal we have set with this study is to present just one segment of these activities, and those are the amateur theater plays that our migrants take part in playing themselves and about themselves. After a short overview of the general characteristics of migrant theater troupes, and after giving several vivid examples of those troupes in Europe, we have set our sights on the group “Non-Aligned Dilatants” which was founded by Darko Markov, Serbian writer, amateur actor and director, who surrounds himself with Serbian migrants and together with them makes all sorts of shows in which they comically portray the life, work and day to day activities of our migrants in Vienna. In our study of the “Non-Aligned Dilatants” we have used the methods of observation, informal conversation, interview and questioners, along with the information available on the website and Facebook page of Darko Markov. In the conclusion of the study, we have deliberated the future of migrant theater troupes through the following aspects: problems with migrant enthusiasm and the energy needed to hold the troupes together for extended periods of time, secondly - to find the appropriate finances, thirdly - question of the content of plays regarding migrant’s and post-migrant’s destiny, and finally the problem of the language used in plays (i.e. migrant’s native or the language of the immigrant country). [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 177035 and Grant no. 177027]

Keywords

• migrants
• amateur theater plays
• post migrant theater
• Vienna
• Darko Markov