A love triangle and the suffering of the people

Drama Dusan Kovačević Saint George kills the dragon had its premiere in Atelier 212 in 1986. At the time when this drama was first performed, it was the peak of a theatrical wave that in the eighties of the 20th century dealt with the subject of the suffering of the Serbian people and the army during the First World War, after which the kingdom of SHS was created. It had several similar characteristics to the popular plays of the Ćosić-Mihiz tandem: an intense narration soaked in sentences, the Serbian people are the only victims of the war suffering in which Yugoslavia was created, a Serbian officer commands the audience as if he were his army. However, dramaturgically and meaningfully, this drama is more complex than Kolubar battles i Valjevo Hospitals and it remained in the repertoire in contrast to the then popular and performed dramas/dramatizations about the First World War.

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How it works on the modern scene Saint George kills the dragon in ensemble performance Yugoslav Drama Theater and direction Milan Nešković? Quite good! The drama basically has a melodramatic conflict within the love triangle formed by Đorđe Džandar, his wife Katarina and the smuggler and war invalid Gavrilo. That love triangle serves to dramaturgically hold together a much broader picture of Serbian society, which is exhausted and crippled due to the negligence of the government, which conducts war policy on the backs of the poor and suffering people. Through Gavrilo, a whole set of tragicomic crippled characters (war invalids or crippled by birth) enter the drama, who, while narrating their life stories, utter the famous Kovačević paradoxical sentences. Đorđe Džandar is an example of a virtuous man who was disappointed in both the people and the state, and only his love for Katarina keeps him from completely falling apart and giving up on life. Katarina is a rebel in traditional society. On the one hand, she refuses to come to terms with the position of a woman, but on the other hand, she is, and thus rebelled, part of a patriarchal society because she does not see the meaning of her existence outside of love for her chosen man, while he is nothing but a lover, he can be, if he wants to be. , smuggler, father of the family, head of the house... Dušan Kovačević wrote in the play's subtitle that it is a dramatization of an unwritten novel. In a way Sveti Georgije... that is because there is a lot of narration in the drama: letters are read, proclamations are written, stories are told, speeches are made... All that narration is soaked in paradox, humor and the realization that great suffering is not magnificent but grotesque. Those two motifs of the play - the love triangle and the suffering of the people due to the effects of the government abusing it for its own purposes - are the aspects of the play that work best today.

The director of the play Milan Nešković and set designer Gorčin Stojanović intelligently divided the stage into two areas where these two plays take place. In the foreground, right next to the portal, is the area of ​​the tavern where cripples gather. Above them, in the background, is a large slope where the first love scene takes place. That slope allows the love scene, although in the background, to be seen as well as the scenes in the tavern, on the ramp itself. In the third plan, there is some kind of decor made of birch trees. There is something gentle and poetic about the birch tree, and the way the trees are arranged suggests a forest, but also a thicket behind which is the river on which the smuggler Gavrilo and his crew's boat sails. Both the decor and the costume (costume designer Biljana Grgur) have harmonized tonal palettes and act as a harmonious whole. At the same time, earth tones are associated with nature, earth, mud and misery.

photo: nebojša babić, jdp promo

Playwright Jelena Mijović and director Milan Nešković were very scrupulous about Dušan Kovačević's text, but they did not miss the opportunity to better clarify some relationships. For example, it was well done that the effective choreographed love scene between Gavrilo (Milan Marić) and Katarina (Jovana Belović) was inserted as a kind of prologue. At the beginning of the play, Gavrilo in the perfectly tailored uniform of a Serbian officer stands as a kind of monument to the ideal soldier. Captivated by his Apollonian beauty, Katarina wraps herself around him, moves him from his military balance and together they enter into a light passionate dance that gradually sinks into the scene of the love meeting between Gavrilo and Katarina next to the village stall (choreographer and stage movement Andreja Kulesević). After that vision of an Apollonian handsome soldier, Katarina's motivation to be with Gavril is clear to us - she doesn't see a cripple, she sees the magnificent soldier she fell in love with. Gavrilo, for his part, cannot bear his "fall" and is rude to everyone, including the woman he loves. Milan Marić and Jovana Belović were a very good loving couple. Thanks to her hairstyle - hair that is all fluffy and scattered like a kind of mane - Jovana Belović seems like some kind of wild fairy and we believe that she is driven by her passion and that it is a passion that can burn both her and those next to her. Costume designer Biljana Grgur wisely dressed Jovana Belović in a skirt slightly shorter than the one that would have been worn at that time (before the First World War) and deep leather boots. Thanks to the costume, the actress can convincingly play a female jumbo who goes against the established order and morality. When Milan Marić plays the crippled Gavrilo, one of his hands is tied, and he shows us very well the constant feeling of tension and nervousness of a man who lacks an arm to perform the simplest action. The struggle with a deficiency that makes everyday life difficult, together with the simultaneous struggle to not be treated as handicapped by close people and the shame that Gavrilo is objectively handicapped, makes Milan Marić playing a character on those three strings believable and clear. The third point of this love triangle is Đorđe Džandar, played very well by Nikola Rakočević. Unlike the Apollonian Gavrilo, who was squeezed to an unnatural extent by a physical handicap, Rakočević plays Djordje Džandar as a man who has internal inhibitions. Đorđe seems to be all small inside and squeezed to the size of the model of the country house that represents his home. This metaphor of a small house, a small man, becomes completely clear when a huge room is placed opposite it (neither in heaven nor on earth Katarina's Aunt Slavka, played by Anđelika Simić). Those tight, small movements of his against Katarina's broad gestures eloquently explain Djordje's inability to keep his beloved woman close to him and clarify the misfortune of this triangle. In a world where men should be big and powerful, the two of them are each squeezed for their own reasons. That's why Katarina was condemned to her great tragic amplitudes. Actors who played the group from the tavern (Nebojša Ljubišić (Grandpa Aleksa), Teodor Vinčić (Vane Siroče), Zoran Cvijanović (Teacher), Srđan Timarov (Greek), Aleksandar Đurica (Ninko Belotić), Aleksej Bjelogrlić (Krivi Luka), Joakim Tasić (Rajko Pevac), Miloš Samolov (Reci Vojo), Ognjen Nikola Radulović (Mile) are mostly good.

That whole part of the play around the events in the tavern works quite well because we manage to relate to the situation of the poor, distressed and neglected citizens through whose backs the government conducts its policies. Vlada Pejković's music and the lyrics of Duda Buržujka's songs contributed a lot to that feeling of modernity: "(...) That's life! / when evil people plan evil. / Where the dead is forgotten / when he is gone / and where the guilty defends the guilty, / the law is there for the sake of order." Those songs really made the overall situation of Kovačević's piece resonate as something that is contemporary and concerns us.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the second part of the play, which takes place on the front. The second, final part of the play, in which the famous speech of Lieutenant Tasić, seems to have experienced a fall at the premiere. Part of the problem lies in the text itself and its context. That part of the text - Lieutenant Tasić's speech, Svetozar Cvetković in Atelje 212 and Radoslav Milenković in SNP spoke directly to the audience as if they were commanding it, and that had a cathartic effect in the eighties and early nineties. However, in this time after the wars of the nineties, that battle cry has lost its strength and persuasiveness. Marko Janketić himself didn't seem to know what to do with that character. His lieutenant, Tasić, is all tense, with a strained voice, suffering from some strange pains that confuse the audience more than they explain the character because the actor makes seemingly illogical interruptions in his speech. Set designer Gorčin Stojanović and director Milan Nešković tried to give his appearance grandeur and drama at the beginning - the slope that represented the field where Katarina and Gavrilo fell in love opened up and became a military trench over which Janketić as Lieutenant Tasić stands sprawled. He didn't look convincing in that pose because we were afraid that the actor might fall. That problem will surely be overcome by playing, but the bigger problem remains, and that is the question of what his cry means to us today: "when they break a knife - on your hands, when they break both your hands on your teeth, when your last tooth is knocked out, as long as you move, as long as you are there - attack!". The play would have been well served by the playwright Jelena Mijović and the director Milan Nešković if they had condensed the text as we approach the end of the play - enthusiasm for the heroic age in which one shouts the charge and everyone rushes after him to victory or death has long passed, which does not mean that it cannot be return in a new guise along with new reasons.

Drama Saint George kills the dragon it definitely belongs to one time and one view of our history, but manages to catch up with the contemporary moment as well.