Project by Andrej Nosov

Starring: Simon Versnel

Dramaturgist: Đorđe Kosić

Scenography: Dejan Todorović

Costume: Selena Orb

Music: Draško Adžić

Producer: Aleksandra Lozanović

Advisor: Edit Kaldor

Project Associates: Una Jankov, Irena Popović Dragović, Flavia Pinero, Carolina Bianci

Photography: Milena Arsenić

Graphic Design: Miroslav Živanov

Premiere: 09th July 2022 at the Heartefact House (season 2021/2022)

“A Short History of Burgers and Other Stories” is a monodrama performed by Dutch actor Simon Versnel, a longtime member of the Belgian dance theater troupe “Peeping Tom”. This play tells several stories inspired by the memories of one boy about the traumatic events that impacted his understanding of reality. The author deals with the questions of guilt, love, sexuality and his own relationship with the world. “A Short History of Burgers and Other Stories” is amongst other things, the result of a three year long research project of the author that dealt with the memory after death, done in cooperation with the DAS Theatre from Amsterdam. This play was supported by Serbia Creates and the city of Amsterdam.

The play is performed in English with Serbian subtitles.

“A Short History of Burgers and other stories can be seen as an attempt by one man to understand his life through memories connected by one main motif – guilt, always intertwined with food, which thus becomes a symbol of different, often traumatic, situations. The Proustian moment of connecting food with memories is supported by numerous scientific studies that offer different explanations, and perhaps the most convincing is the evolutionary one, that the strong link between memory and food arose in response to harmful foods, in order to avoid their consumption in the future. Viewed in this way, memory becomes not only a question of identity, but also of elemental survival.”

Đorđe Kosić

“Don’t expect too much, this is just a story about a boy who managed to survive and create his own strategies for survival. Some people will never understand them, while others have already seen them. However, this is my reckoning with questions of guilt, love, sexuality, and relationships with the world. During the COVID pandemic, with many people I mention and those I didn’t mention because they probably won’t read this, we managed to create a stage event in one bed, one room, earlier with a machine in front of us, and today with an audience. The machine often didn’t understand us, but I hope the audience will. I told this story in one breath, on a special night when it seemed like every sense had disappeared. Then I built a puzzle from memories, piece by piece, which was supposed to help me understand myself and the world around me. This text contains a lot of documentary elements, but it’s all my inner fiction. An important partner in this whole thing is Simon Versnel. Working with this man is a privilege. All of his experiences and every step he took in these processes in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Belgrade are wonderful gifts for me, which only such a good spirit of the theater can give you.”

Andrej Nosov

Criticism

“These are heavy, truly distressing images, with lifelong consequences. Nosov writes them in short lines, as fragments of memory, flashes of traumatic events. Situations in which a parent irreversibly undermines their authority; malicious words like a hot iron strike in passing; physical traumas silenced in solitude because no one even tries to hear them. Loneliness – perhaps that is the main theme of Andrej Nosov’s text. Sadness in solitude. And food as a refuge.” Aleksandra Glovacki, Nova.rs

“He looks at us, just as we look at him, while he tells the story ‘just for us’. When an actor is so close to you, it either completely draws you into his story or (if you are not ready to accept the whole concept) can be irritatingly uncomfortable. But if you are ready to ‘let go’, the story of how the boy was not given the deserved popcorn will become even sadder with the smell of popcorn being made in the kitchen.” Marina Milivojević Mađarev, Vreme

“Actor Simon Versnel psychologically delicately examines his painful memories of growing up, traumatic episodes with a neglectful mother, violent sexual experiences, and finding comfort in food, in burgers.” Ana Tasić, Politika

Festivals/Guest performances

Kosovo Theatre Showcase – Prishtina, October 2023
Festival of Performing Arts & Society Noorderzon – Groningen (NL), August 2024