City Museum | September 7, 2023 | 09:00h
The dramatic play “Roko and Cicibela” was created as Ivan Baranović’s graduation thesis in September 2017 at the Department of Acting at the Academy of Arts of the University of Split. The author’s team consists of Ivan Baranović, who plays the role of Rock, Monika Vuco / Katarina Romac, who play the role of Cicibela, costume designer Ana Marin, set designer Latica Zajmović, dramaturgs Monika Vuco Carev and Ivan Baranović, light and tone designer Miho Dolina, while the direction is signed by assistant professor art. Milan Strljic.
The plot of the drama “Roko and Cicibela” is based on real people and events from the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1978, the well-known film of the same name was made according to this script by Smoja. Roko Ljubica, called Balauska, was a fisherman who lived on an abandoned boathouse on Matejuška (a harbor in Split), and he fell in love with Dujka Bašić, whose nickname was Cicibela. This poor couple got married in the church of St. Cross in Vela Varoš in Split. They settled in abandoned gajetas and leuts and caught the eye of tourists who took pictures of them. They died together in the winter of 1936/37. pressed together on the dirt floor of the basement in what was then Antonova Street at number 14. The city placed them there when they entered their later years.
The drama “Roko and Cicibela” is first of all a warm, fairytale story about true love, which is increasingly becoming an endemic species in today’s material world. Young actors staged the aforementioned drama, focusing on the love of two people for whom poverty and deprivation are no obstacle in achieving a happy coexistence.