Cacilend as a folk theater

One of the professors from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts noticed, a few days ago, that a kind of theater of the absurd is taking place in Belgrade's Pioneer Park. Don't mind that we are not quite sure which professor it is, it is hard to make out everything in this tsunami of information, but his statement is, all the same, completely accurate - the event we are witnessing in recent days is really absurd and really has many elements of a theatrical act. Maybe not classical, dramatic theater, but avant-garde or performance, undoubtedly.

Stage

Let's start from the stage area. It is obviously an ambient theater, the stage in the park is clearly demarcated on all four sides and even surrounded by metal fences, which is a rather unconventional, but not unprecedented, method of separating the audience and the stage in the performing arts. Think, for example, of the country bar sequence in John Landis' film The Blues Brothers, with the band separated from the audience by a metal chicken coop. The audience can stand still or move freely around the fence and observe the performance.

In that space there is a growing group of people, performers of various ages and levels of education, all with the clear task of presenting themselves to the audience as student youth who yearn for learning. They do quite ordinary, everyday things - eat, walk, talk to each other, and some of them even sleep.

Previous experiences

We had something similar to this in a performance that was performed in Belgrade's Nova sensibilities theater, in the mid-eighties, when a group of four volunteers agreed to stay continuously for three days in a space equipped like an ordinary apartment, separated from the audience by a Plexiglas wall. The goal was for them to behave and act like an average family, and the audience could follow their everyday life and mutual relationships. We also have the example of Brett Bailey, an artist from the Republic of South Africa, who performed his controversial performance Exhibit B at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014 in which he sat in front of the audience in a cage like those in which animals are kept, alluding to the monstrous practice of human zoos that existed in some countries in the 19th century.

Reality TV

Thus, it can be said that this show has clear elements of television reality shows, and the audience spontaneously called the space where it takes place Ćaciland, probably as an ironic allusion to Barbieland from the recent Hollywood blockbuster.

In terms of form, it seems that the intention of the author of the event in Pionirski Park was to follow in the footsteps of August Boal and his concept of "invisible theater" in which the audience should not even be aware that they are witnessing a theatrical act, but real, everyday life. Boal thus organized performances in the compartment of the train in which the performers and the audience would sit together, the actors would start a prepared dialogue, perform certain stage actions and actions so that the other passengers in the compartment did not realize that it was a theater.

In our case, that goal was not achieved, namely, none of the audience believed for a moment that they were watching a group in which only or primarily students were eager for education. All the participants in the play are naturalists, there are no professional actors among them, with one noted exception. Namely, it was noticed that among them there is a professional performer, albeit with a career in the adult film industry.

Costumes and JSO

We can also notice that some of the performers are costumed, although most, in the tradition of avant-garde theater, wear their private clothes. Since a few days ago, a group posing as Veterans of the Special Operations Unit has been staying in the fenced area of ​​the park.

That unit participated in a series of assassinations and crimes, as well as in the murder of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, after which it was disbanded. Despite such a criminal past, a part of the members thought that it would be good to continue nurturing its traditions. It seems that there were not too many such people, so they were forced to hire other people from different professions for this performance, dress them in military uniforms and present them as former members of the JSO.

Thanks to the all-powerful social networks, they were recognized by their friends very quickly, and yesterday we had the opportunity to hear a recording of a conversation in which a female person explains to the new "recruits" how to dress up.

The introduction of this new group of characters also represents a certain dramaturgical development in the structure of the play itself. Now, in addition to actors who want to convince us that they are students, although in many cases they are quite obviously not, we also have those whose goal is to convince us that they are ex-soldiers. Here, one could find room for some additional dynamics in the relationships between the characters, of course if the performance of the play continues in the following days.

Publika

The audience's role in this performance is particularly interesting from a theatrical point of view. Theater creators have always been divided into those who want their audience to passively, with full attention follow the play and those who want and provoke the active participation of the audience.

If the latter was the intention of the authors of the play we are analyzing, it must be stated that they succeeded in it completely. The gathered audience loudly comments on what they see on stage, addresses the performers directly and asks for direct communication with them. Spectators point out to each other some details that they might miss on such a large stage with hundreds of participants, and what is particularly interesting, they invite other people, random passers-by, to join in.

In the best tradition of the audience of the Elizabethan theater of Shakespeare and Marlowe, when they don't like something or someone on stage, they don't hesitate to put the performers to sleep with various objects, usually fruits, vegetables or eggs. Sometimes such actions provoked a reaction from the actors who tried several times to cross the stage ramp, literally, by jumping over the fence and explaining themselves to the audience, which only strengthened the impression that this is a strong, full-blooded theater act.

Smell

The visitors of the play, in their comments on social networks, insist on another similarity between the play in Ćaciland and the theater in the era of Elizabeth I. Namely, whether due to the amount of organic materials thrown on the stage or the rain that often falls these days or for some other reason, the viewers say that the entire stage space exudes certain characteristic, intense smells. Just as it was the case, as historians tell us, at the Globe Theater and other Elizabethan theaters. It is, therefore, the people's theater in its full glory.

Finally, we noticed another detail that further supports our thesis that this event in front of the Presidency building has the nature of a real theatrical act. We could see it the previous evening, when a video was released showing the participants of the show standing in a long line waiting to be paid their performance fee. And that's the way actors, from the beginning of the theater under the warm sun of ancient Greece, until today, love it the most - immediately after the performance and on their hands.