Life and death of truth and justice

The twenty-ninth Yugoslav theatrical festival in I will enjoy it - without translation took place from November 1 to 7. Seven plays were planned to be performed, and six were performed. I watched the selected plays during the previous theater season and at the very beginning of this one. I watched plays from Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. So, plays from the countries that once made up Yugoslavia, and now, despite all the divisions, are united by language, that is, the fact that the plays can be watched without translation. My selection idea was to show how, apart from language, we are united by the great need to cooperate and create together. That's why I invited to the festival two plays from Serbia based on new Croatian dramatic texts (People of wax Mate Matišić performed by NP Sombor i Disappearing Tomislav Zajec Atelje 212), then the performance Death on leave, directed by the Serbian director Kokan Mladenović in Zagreb's "Kerempuh" Satirical Theater. A co-production play Protection one Serbian theater (again NP Sombor) and one Montenegrin festival (City Theater Budva). I wanted the selection to show how different theaters from the region approached the "classics" - JDP performed Michael Koolhaas, and CNP The Ibsen machine. The idea was also to close the festival with the promotion of the latest generation of theater artists. That's why I invited the play Birdcage of GDP. Writer Nikola Stanišić, director Slobodan Stanković and a whole new generation of excellent young actors made their debuts with this play. In our country, it was customary that festivals must have their own catchphrase. So I was given the task of coming up with the title of the festival and a short explanation of the festival selection in the context of the title. I decided to ask a question instead of a title. The title-question of the festival was "Where do truth and justice live?" I reasoned like this: at a time when the possibilities for creating virtual content have developed so much, the burning question is how to get to the truth. If we do not know what is true and what is not true, what happened and what did not happen, what is cause and what is effect, how will we know what is just? So, I expected that at the talks after the performances (led by Aleksandra Glowacki, and the festival critic was Andrej Čanji), we would have a polite discussion about the impact of artificial intelligence on our reality, about media literacy... And then, on November 1, before the very beginning of the festival , the canopy fell at the railway station in Novi Sad. Fourteen people died, and the question of where truth and justice live took on a completely, completely different meaning.

The beginning of the festival was extremely tense and completely under the shadow of a great tragedy. In the theater foyer, no one talked about the theater but only about the accident: how many are injured, how many dead, who is responsible, are there any of our acquaintances among the injured and dead, are there trains on the route Belgrade - Novi Sad, what is happening now... The performance began with a minute of silence, and then Vojin Ćetković came on stage, who was played by Michael Koolhaas. He seemed very tense to me, and probably our tension was transferred to him. Because, at the moment when Ćetković plays the fighter for justice and avenger Michael Koolhaas, 240 kilometers from Užice rescuers are pulling bodies from under the ruins. Koolhaas was wronged, his servant was injured and his wife was killed. That's why he decided to take justice into his own hands and take revenge on those who made him unhappy. While we were watching the play, questions were running through our heads: does a man who has been inflicted with an obvious injustice have the right to take justice into his own hands? What are the consequences of such a decision for the individual, the guilty and the whole society? If the society cannot provide the citizen with basic justice and protection from the arrogant powerful, how can the citizen reach the truth and justice on his own?

The next day was declared a day of mourning and performances Disappearing which talks about crimes committed against children was not held - it was postponed to December 5. It's probably better that way, because our minds and hearts were with the citizens of Novi Sad.

On the third day of the festival, a play was performed The Ibsen Machine. The play is based on several plays by Henrik Ibsen. Pillars of society which is the dramaturgical basis of the play, talks about speculation in the shipyard. Wanting to finish the job as soon as possible, the Mayor forces the workers to launch the ship, which is not ready for sailing, into the sea. The ship, of course, sinks, the passengers drown, and among them the child of the main actor. The themes of Henrik Ibsen's plays (media manipulations, financial speculations, interference of the church in politics) have been very current in Serbia for years, but the drama about a sloppily repaired ship that killed dozens of people was uncomfortably current that day. At the round table, the question was raised, what can the theater do to achieve more truth and justice in society. Maybe we should play Henrik Ibsen's plays more often? He is now the most contemporary of all the classics.

photo: jpf promo

On the fourth day we started to recover from the shock. More and more people are talking about who is to blame for the tragedy, what the architect said, who resigned and who should resign. Perhaps for this reason, the audience responded very well to the satirical comedy Death on leave based on the famous novel Death and its vagaries Jose Saramago. The audience was delighted with the actors of the "Kerempuh" Satirical Theater. She enjoyed watching how the powerful behave in the face of death, how they make money from the death of others, how the absence of death in society represents a severe crisis for them and how they try to make a profit out of that crisis. The scenes where politicians "introduce" the thesis about the "eternal people" through the media, how they mess with the mafia and incite their citizens against the citizens of neighboring countries, and then they are greatly surprised by demarches from the neighborhood. It was healing to laugh at the powerful who are as (im)mortal as the rest of us.

On the fifth day of the festival, in the evening of November 5, there were large demonstrations in Novi Sad, demanding the truth about the tragedy at the Railway Station and justice for those responsible for the event. That evening NP Sombor played Wax people Mate Matisic. This remarkable piece is about hiding the truth and its different interpretations depending on the needs and interests of the actors. In this struggle over the truth, justice and fairness naturally "perish", and man is left to deal with major and minor injustices as best he knows how. At the round table, the director of the play Ivan Vanja Alač, a student from Novi Sad, told us that it was extremely important for him that his play came to the festival, but that during the play he could not concentrate on the performance itself. He was watching the broadcast of events from Novi Sad on his mobile phone. He informed us about what is happening in Novi Sad and openly asked the question of what we are going to do about it and whether not only this festival but all theaters in Serbia will stand up in the name of truth and justice. There was an unpleasant silence. We were all silent. I was also silent, and I thought to myself that the theaters did not stop either when the war started in the early nineties, or when NATO bombs fell on us. Why didn't we stop? Because we theater people cannot live without the theater. To paraphrase Simović: if during the war the baker is in the bakery, the milkman in the dairy, where should the actor be? Both at that and at the next round table, the actors of NP Sombor spoke very loudly and very harshly about the current situation in the country and the need for the theater to resist repression in its own way.

photo: jpf promo

The next day, the sixth day of the festival, before the performance, we discussed the detentions and arrests of demonstrators. They showed me their photos, asked me if I knew them, if I taught them, what kind of students they were... That evening, a play based on Nušić's early comedy was performed. Protection. When I watched it at the very end of the summer, it was a cheerful, cheerful comedy with vaudeville elements that talks about the abuse of social position, but also the need of young people to find money, get married, progress... In Užice, under the pressure of social circumstances, that vaudeville lightness has evaporated. I tried to explain to everyone that it was Protection, when I watched it, it was a beautiful, witty and firmly staged play. Everyone looked at me grimly and muttered "yes, yes". No one believed me, because the experience of a theater play essentially depends on its context. This was clearly visible in Užice.

On the last day of the Festival, we watched Birdcage. The play is extremely difficult - it talks about the suffering of young people in a home for juvenile delinquents. The young people in this home have the mark of the guilty on them and few are interested in their truth, and those whom society has appointed to take care of them do injustice to them. Although the topic is very dark, the excitement of young people because they got the opportunity to work and showed that they know how to create good theater was also transferred to us. They gave us faith in the future of the theater. We needed that for the end, but the end of the festival is nowhere near. We will gather again on December 5th to see the Atelier 212 show Disappearing and for the expert jury to award the prizes. This year's, pre-jubilee, 29th edition of the Festival will end then. Will we find out by then who is to blame for the accident in Novi Sad? What will happen to those responsible for the canopy falling and killing 14 people? Where in Serbia do truth and justice live except in the theater?