Broken figurines of life

NO ONE IS FORGOTTEN AND WE REMEMBER NOTHING

A performance No one is forgotten and we remember nothing it was based on the novel of the same name by Mirjana Drljević. The novel follows a thriller plot about the disappearance (kidnapping) and finding of three girls in New Belgrade. The whole case is led by inspector Lepa, and through her investigation, stories about life in the New Belgrade blocks of the eighties, about the wars of the nineties, about the consequences of those wars that linger like ghosts until today, because - no one is forgotten and we remember nothing. This sentence, which is both the title of the novel and the title of the play, contains a paradox that accurately describes our modern, local relationship to the past. We pass on our inner disharmony, as bad genetic material, to the next generation, which struggles with domestic violence, crime and senseless crimes, unaware of the real causes.

Slobodan Obradović's dramatization is of the kind that retains the narrative parts of the novel in a basically dialogic form - actresses play characters and occasionally step out of character to tell us some part of the story. The director Bojana Lazić and the playwright Slobodan Obradović sharpened their conceptual idea by narrowing it down to the mother-daughter-friend relationship. The male characters are represented by actresses, so we have a completely female vision of a case that was caused by the fault of absent men. This is both unusual and interesting since detective stories are mostly told from a "male" point of view. The drama about the disappearance and finding of the girls is played and narrated by one grandmother - the mother's mother (Snežana Savić), three very different mothers who are also friends and daughters: Marta (Borjanka Ljumović), Danica (Radmila Tomović) and Katarina (Aleksandra Janković). The investigation follows the life stories of these four women and their daughters so that we get a clear picture of the position of contemporary women in Belgrade. At first glance, this woman is independent, emancipated, but basically she is desperate and in constant search for money to feed her family, while remaining eager for love and pleasure. He is also a victim of domestic violence here and there, or at least neurotic due to overwhelming pressures and conflicting demands. The play has a whole series of beautiful acting moments. For example, the scene in which Katarina (Aleksandra Janković) describes her lovers and at the same time plays a character telling a story, moments of the character's memories of a certain situation and the heroine's comment on the behavior of her lovers. All in all, her story is at the same time very charming and witty and somehow sad because it testifies to a fact that is generally ignored in our traditional society - when she becomes a mother, a woman does not stop being a woman. Radmila Tomović in the role of Danica in the scene when she talks about how she cut her daughters' nails shows the exact image of a woman who suffers from the syndrome of a person exhausted to the point of insanity. Through the acting of this actress, we see the shooting and the heroine's memory of that painful and difficult situation. Snežana Savić plays a mother who obsessively puts together the fragments of broken figurines, unable to put her life back together, which fell apart when Yugoslavia was torn apart, and her husband, a military man, took part in it. On the outside, she wears the mask of a solid, orderly, almost cold woman. That mask angers her daughter Marta. The character of Marta played by Borjanka Ljumović is the coldest. The reason could be that although she is angry with her mother, she is even colder than her mother. That's why with her daughter she repeats the conflict she had with her mother, but now in a new role. Opposite these characters is the character of Inspector Lepa. Lepa is played by Anastasija Mandić and she is the complete opposite of those overdressed detectives in high heels that we see in TV series. At first glance, she has masculine energy, but this is a wrong impression. Our grandmothers once had to have such energy in order to overcome difficult times together with their families. And there are many difficult moments in Inspector Lepa's life. Her job is not easy at all, and when she returns home from work, her three sons are waiting for her, one of whom has serious health problems.

Director Bojana Lazić is in the play No one is forgotten and we remember nothing created a good balance between what is called a play with an emphasized director's concept and a play dominated by actors, i.e. actresses. Apart from Slobodan Obradović, she was helped a lot by set designer Zorana Petrov, costume designer Biljana Tegeltija Jovanović Bojanić and composer and sound designer Vladimir Pejković.

photo: atelier 212

HEROES OF THE AGE OF CRISIS

Last season, the director Andrea Pjević quite successfully staged Sara Rul's play on the "Petar Kralj" Stage Clean house. This was probably the reason that the young director was given the opportunity to stage an American play at the "Mira Trailović" Stage Heroes of the time of crisis Villa Arberija from 2016, translated by Ivana Đurić Paunović. According to the author, the piece was inspired by the atmosphere that led to the first presidential term of Donald Trump. The author, who obviously has the opposite views of conservative America, decided to "give a voice" to conservative youth in his piece, to "let" them explain their beliefs at length and at length at a drunken party and expose them in this way. The idea of ​​Will Arberia is not new. In the drama About to retire We watch Thomas Bernhard as a respected judge, a former Nazi, secretly celebrates Himmler's birthday in his home. Nevertheless, Bernhard's plays, no matter how much they are "narrated", are at the same time exciting because they constantly cause surprise and disbelief in the audience when they encounter human inadequacies.

Unfortunately, the writer Will Arberry failed to "astonish" us with his discoveries. First of all, in his piece there are many references to writers, themes and motives that are completely unknown to us. Beyond that, what the characters are saying feels like a principled discussion of topics that may be relevant among American conservatives, but have very little to do with us. Worst of all, these conservatives have remained too polite. It would be interesting to find out how someone justifies to himself the feeling of being threatened by the "other" even though he is not personally threatened by that person. Also, it should be clarified what is the connection between these feelings, the need to bear arms and preparing for some kind of war against an unnamed power that allegedly threatens American values. Instead, the characters strictly stick to the principled debates about God, the Virgin Mary and abortion, and in the play we do not get a sense of the concrete consequences of those debates - the only victims of the illusions from which the characters suffer are themselves. It may be sad for them, but it is irrelevant for us, who are placed in the position of not sharing their views.

The piece might have been more interesting to us if the director had left only the most radical statements of the characters. Unfortunately, she had too much regard for the writer and his extensive theoretical discussion. The scenography by Milena Grošin was particularly appealing to the play. The colors and appearance of the scenography lead us to the wrong conclusion that everything is happening in some kind of military or prison camp with an observation post (instead of a house with a garden as written in the play). The scenography "phones" us the potential aggressiveness of the characters, but the actors play in a completely different style. In addition, the scenography is set so that the actors are far from us for most of the play. If they are to convince us of the attitudes of their characters, it would be better if they were closer to us. Also, in the middle of the stage there is a pool that the actors have to go around, losing the best part - the center stage for the play.

In this situation, it is not surprising that the actors did not find a way to create convincing characters. The most convincing was Isidora Minic as the director of Djina. Her Gina was a firm, orderly, collected, conventional and conservative person, who basically has no feelings for anyone, not even her daughter, and maybe not even herself. She is so convinced of her correctness and superiority that she ignores the fact that new generations, using her matrix, are going in a completely different, much more aggressive direction. Alisa Radaković plays a hipster who cultivates conservative chic and flirts with aggressive political views to attract public attention on social networks. Kevin Slavena Here comes a lost young alcoholic who is a conservative because he is too much of a coward to be anything else. Luna Pilić plays Emilia, a character who seems to have fallen out of a play by Tennessee Williams. It was the hardest for Ivan Mihailović, who plays Justin. The piece begins with Justin killing a deer in front of his house. Citizens in rural parts of North America have a problem with deer that have multiplied and are damaging their properties, but hunting them is prohibited. So, by killing the deer, Justin broke the law. He tries to groom the animal, but he can't because his hands are shaking. In the play, Justin stands on some sort of observation deck, shoots into the distance and then drags a large black plastic bag onto the stage. We think that he shot a man in cold blood and we wait to see what will happen, but nothing happens, instead the stories about the Virgin Mary, culture war, discourse and abortion are endless. We are far from all that, for now.