| “Atelje 212” Theater came to life in the small hall of the old "Borba" (newspaper publishing house), on November 12, 1956, in front of 212 chairs, with the opening night of the play "Faust" staged by Mira Trailović. It was founded by a group of actors, producers, writers, and musicians, at a moment when there emerged a need for a theater that would play a new avant-garde drama of a great influence in Europe at that time.
“Atelje 212” was the first theater in Eastern Europe on whose stage the performance "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett was played, in 1956. A great success of this play paved the way for a whole range of other avant-garde dramas and authors to be staged in the Theater. Sartre, Faulkner, Ionesco, Camus, Pinter, Adamov, Rozewicz, Joice, Jarry, T. S. Eliot, Vitrac, Schisgal, Kopit, Genet, were performed on this stage before the Yugoslav audience for the first time. “Atelje 212” Theater also discovered new domestic writers and played the plays of Brana Crnčević, Aleksandar Popović, Dušan Kovačević...
Today, “Atelje 212” has a repertory company of 32 actors, but it is also open to those artists who are not permanently engaged by this Theater. The greatest celebrities among the actors still play on the stage of “Atelje 212”, and the best domestic and international stage-managers work in this house. On the stage of “Atelje 212”, the new dramas of contemporary domestic and foreign authors are played, on which the Theater leaves its own, very recognizable stamp. Lately, the performances of this Theater have been breaking through the newly established geographic borders and conquering the world. |