Periša Perišić is a playwright and translator, but we have also seen him in other roles: performer, editor, essayist, theater critic... Like the professor he mentions in the interview, he is a Renaissance figure, an author in the complex sense of the word. He most often collaborates with Miloš Lolić, but also with other directors - Nikola Zavišić, Snežana Trišić, Ana Tomović... Among the awards, we will mention the Mira Trailović Grand Prix for the play Coincidence, on which he worked as a playwright and directed by Miloš Lolić, the annual award of the Yugoslav Drama Theater for the play Kaspar, also directed by Lolic. In an interview for "Vreme", he talks about the fragmentation of time and the terror of the screen we live in, about the relationship between theater and reality, which is open and healing only when it is complex. And all the time we have Wilde's in mind: the truth is rarely pure and never simple.
"WEATHER" Since we are having a conversation while the student blockades are ongoing, somehow it seems most natural to start the story there. How do you understand what is happening?, especially since you, while we were arranging to talk, mentioned that we are the generations that have spent half their lives in protests?
PERIŠA PERIŠIĆ: It seems to me that we live through traumabonding continuously, precisely because of the experience we had in the nineties, so I have no doubt that it creates ambivalent feelings. I know many are cynical, disillusioned or simply tired, but I have to give credit to the students and younger colleagues who have found their voice and have no problem calling a spade a spade. The totalitarian dystopia we are living today is irresistibly reminiscent of the classics of science fiction that we devoured as youngsters, with the difference that in the meantime we have realized that it is not fiction but anticipation of the future. The matrix we have found ourselves in is simply unscrupulous and directly reflects the problem of engagement given the possibility of media and other manipulation. But since we know that we live in a politicized society, we also know that the political reality denies us. We were talking the other day about how much it got to our heads whenever we tried to ignore her...
After all, you said that performances always work in the context of the times we live in.
Which should be the standard. That contemporary directing is done in the context of the times in which we live. Theatrical works are also immanently political, I mean, of course, the complex ones that stand the test of time. I mean the classics. We inevitably have to face the fact that we live in a nightmarish parody, cheerless, ominous, from which we have to start and position ourselves critically in relation to it, it seems to me. Irony is cruel: it's time to sober up and understand why we allow ourselves to live in a bad joke. All that we are talking about does not represent anything exclusive, new, but sometimes it is necessary to sum up the favorite general places: we are witnessing a time that the day after tomorrow will be characterized in history as decline and fall.
From the position of a playwright, how do you understand what is happening?
Rehearsals take place in an alternative world of a process that continues, but it also continues in some interior, in some building, in the present time. It's also interesting that getting to that space means going out into the street, walking a certain distance, entering the theater building, going through the corridor, I mean, no one can teleport from the bed to the rehearsal room. It seems to me that the very process of working in the theater is interestingly framed, significantly positioned in relation to everyday life. Through the juxtaposition of those plans, you see the work and the quality and communicativeness of what you have chosen to do, the clash of worlds and optics is indelible.
When did you feel the urge to do dramaturgy??
From a young age, it developed spontaneously, with a love for literature, languages, performing arts, music, and film. I remember that I have always been obsessed with books, manuscripts, libraries, the written but also the spoken word... A difficult flashback - writing a novel in the manner of Aleksandr Dima in primary school, and then studying at the Philological Gymnasium and being involved in the drama sections, where we attended and with the support of the mentor, we found a way to adapt and stage dramatic works, and it was Wilde's Ernest or Shaw's Pygmalion or The Christmas tree at the Ivanovs' of Vedenski... The encouragement of the young, gifted lecturers in Philology, who had the ear to recognize what we were authentically interested in and to help us shape it together into a kind of prototext. Perhaps those papers in the Philological Gymnasium were the first valuable and formative ones. The plays were not always performed as they were written, they had to be seriously adapted, especially some of the titles I mentioned. I think it was exciting to live and play the Soviet avant-garde (laughs) in the mid-nineties, on and off the stage.
How did the theater look to you then and how does it look to you today?
A different view, for sure, we are talking about the time when professors such as Jovan Hristić, Vladimir Stamenković, Slobodan Selenić taught at the Department of Dramaturgy... The relationship, it seems to me, was different since many of them were intellectuals of Renaissance education. When you are young and want to study dramaturgy, of course you tend to idealize both the profession and the professor, then you are a student at the same faculty, and you go through different stages of transformation, unfortunately or fortunately, we lived them during the second half of the nineties, so that they were, again, in serious collision with reality. We remember and do not want to forget that period of our lives, until the first professional engagements in the theater and other media, which in a practical sense is a new and precious experience that cannot be easily imagined. Rich selection of content and freedom of viewing. We are also talking about a time when the value system was also different, literary standards, attitude towards culture, oral and written word was much different compared to today's instant generations who have not read any book from cover to cover. This inevitably reflected on the fragmented attention and opinions of those who were educated on excerpts, re-reading and ultra-short formats that are mainly related to screen media. We also experienced the death of journalism and print media, because we all found ourselves on the cyber merry-go-round, so the transformation of print media into electronic media affected quality, style, and the attitude towards journalism, in a professional sense. Not to say that before it was normal that, if you wanted to be at all informed, you should also read "Vreme" and "Politika" and "Nin" and "Borba", to follow the press from the region and other countries, so it is already that collective experience is a kind of informative section.
Much of this is due to the speed in which we are trapped, then the frequent absence of proofreaders, overcrowding with information gives a blurred picture of reality, so to speak.
To that extent, that work is rendered meaningless, either by small fees or by not recognizing its importance. Because we still lived in a country that had serious publishing houses, that had serious editorial boards. The lecturers I have already mentioned, whether they taught me or left the faculty just before I enrolled - Jovan Hristić, Slobodan Selenić, Mirjana Miočinović - wrote, translated, edited. A more thorough approach was cultivated. What's happening today didn't happen, little by little, some Google translated translation appeared, and the most terrible material, semantic, stylistic and other errors crept in. It is not clear from the text whether you were chased by jacuzzis or you are in a jacuzzi. 🙂
Have your fundamental principles regarding theater changed since the beginning?
The experience of theater and work in it is a variable category. Very probably also because of working with Miloš Lolić, who has a very specific sensibility in carefully choosing the text in relation to the theater company where he works. It is no coincidence that they are Coincidence performed in the Yugoslav Drama Theater, or Kaspar, for example, what is Mister Dollar selection for the National Theatre, a Yankee rose for Belgrade Drama. Namely, if you have an honest attitude towards the institutions in which you grew up and which formed you, then you will try not to perceive every text and every theater process as a stall, precisely out of respect for the legacy of those institutions.
A broad context is considered.
It seems to me that nowadays there is less and less hearing about it, possibly because of the general acceleration, superficiality and selective memory; we don't even delve into more elementary things, so we don't take into account the culture of memory either. I got to know theater criticism in practice in my first year of dramaturgy, because by chance I started writing in "Dnevni Telegraf", and that while Ćuruvija was still alive. A valuable experience that helps you quite a bit to break that somewhat romanticized image of the position of a playwright or a playwright, anyway. The experience of practical work and writing in a short period of time is unusually focused. You write for some newspaper and that night, after watching the play, you write a review and hurry to hand it in because it needs to be approved by both the proofreader and the editor by morning. It seems to me that it was a valuable experience for me, as well as cooperation with Ritma srca on radio B92, as well as growing up with the Bitef festival and cooperation with the Bitef newsletter, among other things.
You actually know Miloš Lolić from college. How does that cooperation last so long??
We started to hang out, and as it happens, from exchanging books, watching the director's exam papers and reading ours, through that cooperation on Bitef's festival bulletin, all of that, especially our long-term friendship, led to our love and creative collaboration. . Your friends really become an alternative family at this age. Those with whom you share similar principles, aesthetic, ethical, even when your view or taste is different. These are values that you begin to recognize first on a friendly level and then apply on a professional level as well. It sounds rational, logical, everyday, and of course it is not only that.
You interpolate quotes into the text especially skillfully, how do you do that "sine"?
Partly from a creative dialogue with the director, partly from some private feedback or flashback in relation to what we do, since the job of a dramatist also requires being present at rehearsals throughout the process, and that is actually an exclusive position, because you participate in the creation of the process. To something that was then and never again, which is the charm and courage of theater art itself. And as for quotes and paraphrases, I personally love and live them, they are part of my private expression (laughs). It must be that what I read was a foundation, and then it appears both when it should and when it shouldn't (laughs). I think we grew up in a time where you cannot perceive reality differently if you are genuinely interested in such content: the books you read, the movies you watch, the music you listen to, what you create... Over time, you expand and upgrade them and they naturally become part of your reference value system.
You are present at the rehearsals., as far as I understand, very dedicated, intensively.
Simply because theater is created, and the playwright is expected to be present, the play is not created by arranging segments, it requires checking and processing through the process, and I am increasingly excited by such theater: unfixed, open, a theatrical act as a kind of experiential experiment . Regardless of the fact that already when choosing the text you seem to know something well, only through exchange and work with actors and other collaborators, as the process dictates, the final creation is reached. Theater actually excites me the most as a free and unexplored territory. Sometimes, even for the most brilliantly conceived concept, for one reason or another, it turns out to be inapplicable or to require radical interventions or simply other solutions.
You also have performing experience..
That's right. In the Philological High School, I played Wilde and Shaw and Wedensky, because acting is, logically, the most visible aspect of a theater act. From the performance, to delving into the depths of text formation and stage expression.
Both Miloš and I played in the film of our colleague Saša Radojević Kisses, it was important to him that they were colleagues from FDU who were not actors.
You are a playwright and a translator., Is there anything you would like to achieve??
Good question. I loved zoology as a child. I also played the piano and music is very close to me. Your question is interesting because it makes you think and brings you back to your childhood. Although I think that zoology can also be explained in the context of the choice of chosen professions, to give a voice to those who do not speak the same language as us, for the sake of creating a universal expression, and yet it has to do with the promotion and defense of certain views, principles, freedoms. For me, astrology and psychology and dramaturgy are comparative disciplines, because they require knowledge of narratives and relationships, let's just remember Mirjana Miočinović, who once edited a book about modern drama for Nolit. Pay attention to the chapter "Cosmic Dramaturgy".
As well as other divination methods.
That's right, it's all basically trolling.
It seems to me that the time of spectacle in the theater has passed, We are returning to the narrative. (it's been going on for a while). How the theater could develop, how do you see it and how could it be addressed to a viewer who is used to both speed and the presence of new media?
Since we live in a society of spectacles, then we have to look for an alternative to the terror of the screen; in this sense, theater is valuable if you do not perceive it only as a visual art. It is precisely because of screen terror that we should fight for the spoken, living word. I think this is one of the reasons why I still collaborate with Miloš, because his attitude towards the written and spoken word is also special. Since in our time there was an insistence on the writer's theater, on the so-called to the Anglo-American model, especially in dramaturgy studies, it seems to me that today, in this post-dramatic, post-theoretical time and society, the very position of the text is repeatedly called into question. We also witness the influence of director's theater, and when I say that, I mean Germanophone influences, where actually the prototext is just a kind of training ground for further theatrical play. Now, it seems to me that we are also fed up with that and now we are trying to find new narrative or expressive means. In the context of everything we talked about, the death of journalism, the concentration of young people who often don't have the attention span to read anything longer than a short story or a post on social networks - all of this affected the treatment of narratives in the theater. The post-drama brought both verbatim freedom, but also freedom in expression, which in an instant went into relativization in the wake of automatic writing. It seems to me that the time has come for us to experience narrative in the theater in a completely new way.
Returning to the narrative is a process., you mean?
I don't know what exactly I want to say, everything is twisted and adjusted in a strange way, something that was common for you or me today has to be shortened, to adapt to the attention of the modern audience. On the other hand, modern generations are also inclined towards the consumption of multi-season series. The search for new freedoms of expression continues. In that sense, podcasts are perhaps the closest to what radio was for our generation. And they last.
In ZKM, together with Miloš Lolić, you are working on a play based on a comic based on the work of the famous economist Tom Piketty.. Besides, you studied international relations, you yourself say that the history of political theories has always been your favorite.
Piketty likes to emphasize that he is a multidisciplinary scientist, and now, there is the key question of how economics affects the development of different systems, and given that we are working on the motifs of a comic book inspired by his book, it will certainly be an endlessly interesting experiment. It is part of the compulsory literature Capital and ideology. For all that he is voluminous, Piketty is also a reader.
And the star is.
Yes, his books are sold as popular science bestsellers. Perhaps it is precisely because of this interdisciplinary spontaneity that it is read.
You recently worked with Nikola Zavišić An imaginary patient at the National Theater in Belgrade. In what way does Moliere address us today?, to what extent we recognize the cracks then and today?
First of all, we could not understand why the two versions of Bogdan Popović's translation are so different, one was made in collaboration with my colleague Dragoslav Ilić, who is our famous Germanist. Those two translations are heaven and earth. The version of the translation with Ilić is much more successful, because it is stylistically and linguistically closer to the comedy-ballet hybrid genre. Today Molière is performed with his hair cut. Deprived of eclogue, intermezzo and interlude. It's a pity, because the time we live in is not only interdisciplinary but also transdisciplinary, so it has the potential to recognize Moliere's baroque handwriting. Behind all these layers lies the universal sacrifice of the individual for ideals and the struggle for the collective.
