The Vodice Centre for Art and Culture is delighted to announce the premiere of a new play by its Amateur Drama Group, “Dear Ulija – Love Letters from the Island”, based on the book by Davorka Vukov Colić.

Admission is free, but with numbered tickets that can be collected at the Cultural Centre box office from Monday, March 23 to Thursday, March 26 according to the following schedule:

• Monday and Tuesday: 17:00 – 19:00

• Wednesday: 08:00 – 10:00

• On the day of the performance (Thursday): 17:00 – 20:00

About the play
At the beginning of the 20th century, young men from a poor Dalmatian island – Ante, Srećko, Frane and Alberto – leave in search of a better life, travelling to America or sailing along the routes of Admiral Columbus. Left behind are their young wives: Ulija, Mare, Jerka and Lenka. Will the wives live to see the return of their husbands and a shared life and happiness?

The book is based on real testimonies and family memories. It is a stage mosaic of stories and anecdotes from the home island as well as from distant “Merika” (America), a collection of prose fragments from the lives of “white widows” – women condemned to solitude while waiting for their emigrant husbands.

This documentary-style theatrical piece tells a story from our region, from the Vodice–Tribunj archipelago – a drama from the sea about women who waited decades for their husbands to return, like the mother of Zlarin native Mladen Bjažić, who “waited forty years for her husband to come back.”

It is a story about farewell journeys of our young men to distant America, with tears in their eyes and handkerchiefs waving like little flags – and about the hope that they will one day return home.