To play or not to play, that's the question now

Over the heads theater like some kind of sinister canopy the question "to play or not" hangs. Should theaters work, that is, play plays so that artists and audiences can share their common position on a social problem? Does the theater belong equally to those who support the student demands and those who do not, and in that case should the theater offer an aesthetic refuge from the conflict in an over-stressed reality?

Under the influence of social pressure, in theaters from November Vri. Performances are often canceled (including festivals), and when they are performed, proclamations are read, indexes and red gloves are shown. The question "to play or not" hangs over the theatergoers' heads like an ominous canopy. Should theaters work, that is, play plays so that artists and audiences can share their common position on a social problem? Does the theater belong equally to those who support the student demands and those who do not, and in that case should the theater offer an aesthetic refuge from the conflict in an over-stressed reality? Or, on the contrary, should theaters stop, stop performing performances in order to silently send a message that the situation must be resolved urgently, because otherwise nothing, not even art, will make sense anymore? For social recovery, what is more beneficial - to play or not to play? That's why it seems that at this moment there is no more appropriate theatrical theme than the true story about the fate of the artists who played in the "Centrala za humor" troupe during the Second World War. In order to explain why we came to the theater with that conviction, we will make a small but necessary digression.

CAN THEATRE STOP??

It was only when the ideological core of SFR Yugoslavia began to crack, starting in the second half of the eighties, that dramas began to appear that tried to explain and justify the action of Žanka Stokić to play during the war in a comedy theater supported by the occupation authorities. In the 1980s, JDP played two important pieces that changed the previous perception of the artist. There is one Croatian Faust Slobodan Schneider, in which it is said that ideology wants to (mis)use the artist. The second one is even more important for us Traveling theater Šopalović Ljubomir Simović. The play begins with the poor actors of a third-rate traveling troupe playing under the shadow of the German gallows with the terrible condemnation of the citizens of Užice, and ends with the theater saving the soul of the thug Dropac and the life of a young illegal communist. During the nineties, theaters work in all conditions - under sanctions, and while tanks are passing through the streets, and when there are demonstrations, and when bombs are falling, and everyone is guided by the motto of Šopalović Traveling Theatre. If the baker is in the bakery during the war, where should the actor be during the war? Because: "A baker helps us to somehow feed ourselves and to survive, and an actor shows why it is even worth it for a person to feed himself and survive!", say Simović's heroes. From then until corona, in our theater it is a legitimate attitude that you should play in all conditions. Starting with the corona and after the tragedy in "Ribnikar", the question arises again whether it is moral to play in a difficult situation. The latest events, especially the explicit demand of students to go on a general strike, reinforces this dilemma. That is why theatergoers ask themselves what is the right theatrical response to this situation.

UNCONVINCING REASONS

Đorđe Kosić started from documentary material and recorded statements of the actor. That material certainly fascinated him. However, looking at the play based on his play, we are not quite sure what the playwright thinks about the actions of the actors, or at least we don't know what to think about them. Because, unlike Simović's actors from the traveling troupe Šopalović, u Humor centers the theater did not save anyone. It seems that theater art in the whirlwind of war served to make actors earn a lot of money in one night, which they then squander on tickets, drinking and eating. The characters of Aleksandar Cvetković, Jovan Tanić and Žanka Stokić don't need to explain anything to anyone - it's a war, they have to survive and if possible manage as best as possible and eat as much as possible, spend... The character of Žanka Stokić excuses himself in front of the character of Ljubinka Bobić that he has to act because he can't buy insulin otherwise. In the context of this play, that's a poor excuse, because this character doesn't live like someone who cares about his health. On the contrary! She drinks, overeats and smokes. And not only that! At one point, Žanka says that the Germans arrested her lover, who is Jewish, and his entire family, and that every trace of them is being lost. Today, we all know very well that Jews were sent to death camps by the Nazis. However, Žanka, in the piece and the play, laconically goes over that circumstance and sings on the radio, all the while sipping brandy from the bottle, the famous hit song that Hitler's forces used as a marching band. Kosić did not dramaturgically explain the social context of occupied Belgrade and Žanka's need to survive at any cost. Furthermore, Kosić did not make enough use of the possibilities that existed in the piece - to sharply and analytically confront the attitudes of the characters Ljubinka Bobić and Mirko Milosavljević, who refused to play in Humor centers at the price of starving Ace, Tanić and Žanka who played. The opportunity to explain why the great comedian and comedy writer Aleksandar Cvetković, who successfully makes people laugh, is a self-destructive personality was also missed. Jovan Tanić, as he is presented in the play and play, could be not only a sketch writer and comedian, but also a potential Serbian Falstaff who participates in the Balkan historical drama hunting for his little charm. Unfortunately, it is not.

PLAYING AT WAR?

Đorđe Kosić and the director Anđelka Nikolić "spent" the entire first part of the play and the play watching the actors in the dressing room - both those who will play and those who will not play in the Humor centers - somewhat wittily and rather cruelly make fun of the newcomer Nikola Popović, who goes to the partisans right after the start of the war, only to return to Belgrade at the end of the piece (and the play) and mistreat those who mistreated him. The fact that the main (and only!) "villain" in this play is a communist, anti-fascist and partisan strongly "smells" of the eighties. The character of the actor Nikola Popović is, of all the characters, the most simplified. The writer of the piece missed a great historical fact for his subject. Namely, during the four years of the war, the historical actor of the National Theater, Nikola Popović, did not only kill the "Swabs", but together with Vjekoslav Afrić (the main character of Schneider's Croatian Faust) played in the National Liberation Theater which was on the opposite side of the war from Humor centers. It follows that real historical figures, Cvetković and Tanić on the one hand, and Popović on the other, did not have our contemporary dilemmas - to play or not, because both of them played - but for whom to play and what to play. If Popović as an actor performed in cheerful skits at the Theater of National Liberation, it means that the NOB fighters treated him as a people's artist, and the occupying army as a bandit who should be killed. In contrast, the actors who played with the approval of the occupying troops in Belgrade, skits in Humor centers the liberators of Belgrade were treated as collaborators of the occupiers. That is why the actress Žanka Stokić was sentenced to the loss of civil rights after the war and died in misery, and the actors Aleksandar Cvetković and Jovan Tanić were not only shot and secretly buried in an unknown location so that their graves would not be known, but also erased from the history of Serbian theater. A simplified and distorted attitude towards very complex personalities in a complex time is the biggest problem of this play and this play.

However, the director Olja Đorđević did not seem to mind this simplification, so the simplification was transferred to the interpretation of the play. It is not clear to us what we are supposed to feel while the actors tell various jokes about misery, about Hitler, about the shooting of Roma. The playwright-director solution to this problem could be found in the film Kabare Bob Fossey. In Cabaret the characters of the actors-entertainers very easily change ideological sides, as well as the heroes Humor centers. The director of the film carefully follows their changes caused by social changes. Songs Money, Money, Money i If You Could See Her they show that difference, but the artistry in each of those songs is unquestionable. In skits Humor centers, as presented by Olivera Đorđević, we do not see artistry but only the simplest folk humor and wonder why the biographies of these artists were worthy of a new interpretation.

SCENES TO MEMORIZE (SILK)

Consequently, the actors Radovan Vujović (Aleksandar Cvetković), Miloš Đorđević (Jovan Tanić), Jovan Jovanović (Nikola Popović), Vanja Milačić (Žanka Stokić), Pavle Jerinić (Mirko Milisavljević) and Suzana Lukić (Ljubinka Bobić) were not in an enviable position either. However, occasionally, as in the Russian Roulette scene, or in the interrogation scenes that open and close the play, we get something of exciting theater when we can glimpse the complex and difficult times in which the actors lived and worked. Humor centers, as well as their struggle not to be overwhelmed by trouble, but to preserve themselves and continue the life they like to live. The scene from the beginning of the play, when Radovan Vujović as Cvetković and Miloš Đorđević as Tanić try to animate us with jokes and provoke us to react, is repeated at the end of the play. We realize that the actors are, in fact, addressing the jury of the new government and demonstrating their spirit and commitment to comedy in the glory of life even in moments when they are sentenced to death and when comedy and telling jokes becomes the last remaining form of defiance. These scenes in which the comedians tell jokes to those who will sentence them to death and try to make them laugh will be remembered for a long time from the play Humor Center, which premiered on the "Raša Plaović" Stage of the National Theatre.