HAMLET
IN EXILE
For
Mira Furlan
In his seminal work Shakespeare Our Contemporary,
written almost thirty years ago, Jan Kott argues that
every generation should have its own, contemporary Hamlet.
For him and his generation that Hamlet was definitely
a Hamlet of the mid-century; Hamlet in a conflict with
Stalinism. Perhaps every generation has its own Hamlet,
perhaps every social community in the same historical
period has its own contemporary Hamlet. What is theatrically,
historically, politically and socially relevant in a
certain period to one community and what makes a theatre
performance contemporary in a specific environment is
not automatically relevant to some other community at
that same time. Different environments and different
cultures existing in the same historical period on two
opposite sides of the world may have, very often, different
social artistic and cultural beliefs and needs. This
so-called specifica differentiae is probably
one of the most important factors in the theater determining
what makes a given performance contemporary and at the
same time socially and culturally relevant to a given
community.
From this point of view one approaches with wonder and
confusion the events and the theatre in that part of
the world once known as Yugoslavia. Faced every day
with the shocking images of death, destruction and brutality
from that part of the Balkans one might well ask who
is or who could be Hamlet our contemporary in that theatrical
space? Or rather, where is Hamlet today in that environment
torn apart, burned down, raped, slaughtered, ethnically
cleansed and purged? Or, is Hamlet possible at all?
I would reply that Hamlet is not possible there and
will not be possible there for a long time. And this
is why not. In former Yugoslavia, for many years Hamlet
tested his contemporaneity and validity in the medieval
Castle of Lovrjenac in Dubrovnik. For many of us who
were active in the artistic environment known as the
Yugoslav Theatre Space, Lovrjenac - that ancient prison
for those who had a free spirit - was, and still is,
the most attractive theatrical space/stage in the world.
"This magic fortification, Lovrjenac, has been
transformed into streets and squares, into ballrooms
and brothels, into monk's cells and dark graveyards
without any kind of scenery."* Countless number
of significant theatre artists from all over the world,
exploring their rich artistic imagination and talents,
have transformed Lovrjenac into the home of a contemporary
Hamlet - his Elsinore.
There, in the exciting space of the Lovrjenac Castle,
for more than fifty years Hamlet and his friends - the
actors - celebrated life and enacted the magic art of
theatre. Over and over they proved in practice that
theatre is always in a direct, immediate communication
with its social community; that its function, among
others, was and still is to pacify the conflicts, to
harmonize the life of the community, to heal the wounds
of the social environment, to reconcile the discrepancies
in the human soul, "to show virtue its own
feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body
of the time his form and pressure", to show
the road from chaos to cosmos.
That
was in the past. Today, an indifferent world watches
other sad and horrifying scenes from that part of the
world. Lovrjenac - Dubrovnik's Elsinore - is deserted
today. Instead of seagulls and doves, black birds bringing
death fly around Lovrjenac. In that space "the
time is out of joint" and Hamlet, the noble mind,
the one who was born and cursed to set the time and
the world right, is overthrown and forced out of his
home. His theatre is dead, his home is empty, his people
are betrayed, his country is devastated.
Lovrjenac, Hamlet's Elsinore, is today the most truthful
metaphor of a sad and unhappy country which had a chance
once to be a good example of ethnic diversity, multicultural
co-existence and integration. There was something rotten
in that state of lost illusions. There were more rotten
politicians than true artists, more rotten national
leaders, insane "fathers of nations," than
true patriots. These senile ideologists and demagogues
have taken over the people's hearts and minds and turned
the wheel of history backward to barbarism. Preaching
blood and soil, these masters of death have unleashed
the ghosts of the past and urged them to take leading
roles in their horrible performance. In so doing, they
have brought to life national extremism and terror,
madness and hatred, blood and tears, smoke and ashes.
In an instant historical turnabout, many theater artists
from all over the world - actors and directors, musicians
and stage hands, lunatics and lovers - who once made
Hamlet alive and possible in Lovrjenac were deprived
of their human and artistic right to exist and create
in Lovrjenac-Elsinore. These artists who have grazed
their skin on that magic castle stone, who have climbed
its 193 steps twice a day for years to present the idea
of freedom in various languages on its stage, who have
braided their diverse ideas, cultures and talents, are
not there anymore. They are either in exile in their
own ethnic environments or they are fugitives in the
endless Western archipelago of marginal existence.
One may say, therefore, that there are no credible actors
left in that disintegrated and fragmented space to perform
today in front of the "national fathers",
the usurping kings who "like not the comedy."
The theatre is expelled from these small and self-isolated
islands of primitivism and there is no one to present
the play about hypocrisy and violence of the rulers,
about their tyranny and despotism. There is no one there
in dust-covered Lovrejanc to show these creatures the
mirror in which to see their features. The theatre -
that human imaginative free-play - has always been something
dangerous and horrifying to such authorities. The theatre
for them has always been a devil's art which ought to
be purged from the community. These narcissists would
like every artistic deed to glorify their national exclusiveness
and their personal greatness and beauty. Everything
else which sounds different is prohibited. Everything
which overshadows their beloved image in their mirror
- "mirror, mirror on the wall..." must be
cleansed and destroyed. Everything has to be "pure,"
"ours," as they define it. What is not ethnically
pure and "ours" - must disappear. And Hamlet
is not "ours." He is theirs. He is alien.
There is no place for him any more in "our proud
and brave fatherland." We, the pure, and only we,
have the right to be here.
So, a new play is performed today in that wretched part
of the world. In the strong directorial hands of the
fatherland's über-directors, theatre and life have
changed places and roles. While the theatre is marginalized,
life is theatricalized to its utmost. Pushed forward
on that merciless stage and directed by their national
saviors, new actors dressed in full metal jackets perform
their Dance Macabre in the ancient Balkan castle.
Divided between ours and theirs, between patriots and
traitors, natives and foreigners, defenders and conquerors,
these ghosts from the past perform the old show of hatred
and self-termination. The screams are heard all over
the world. Viva la Muerte, Wir Über Alles.
And while Hamlet - "the courtier's, soldier's scholar's
eye, tongue sword, The expectancy and rose of the fair
state," as Ophelia puts it - is expelled from his
natural habitat, cleansed out and forced into exile,
leaving Elsinore to Fortinbras' mob, his "list
of lawless resolutes," drunkards and scoundrels,
murderers and robbers who have made this part of the
world into a Balkan beer hall smelling of sweat and
urine. "This heavy-headed revel east and west /
Make us traduced and taxed of others nations. / They
clepe us drunkards and with swinish phrase / Soil our
addition," Hamlet would cry, if he only could.
As for Ophelia in that male dominated environment Ophelia
is just a thing.
These new "actors" have traded Elsinore's
freedom for a fistful of lies. The castle above whose
main gate is written "freedom is not for sale,
even for all the gold on the earth" is in possession
of ignorants and illiterates. In darkness - no matter
their costumes and masks, no matter their ethnicity
- these death squadrons conceived by black milk and
nurtured by hate, "go to gain a little patch of
ground that hath in it no profit but the name,"
"go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
whereon the numbers cannot try the cause."
On their road to "our ethnically pure fatherland"
paved by graves, they have transformed Hamlet's home
- "which is not tomb enough and continent to hide
the slain" - into endless field of ruins and despair.
In some better future under the piles of stones, burnt
flesh and ashes in the deserted landscape some children
will perhaps discover Yorik's skull. And perhaps, they
will be afflicted by his theatre disease and his admiration
of freedom. Perhaps.
Meantime, goodnight, sweet prince.
*
* *
Some
brief notes about the leading characters of this Balkan
"play."
Mira Furlan - a leading film and theatre actress, an
outstanding talent, and probably the most tragic figure
of the Yugoslav theatre. Mira Furlan was adored and
respected both by the broad Yugoslav audience and by
her colleagues. She was definitely the best Ophelia
this writer has seen in former Yugoslavia. Her breath-taking
suicide scene - a long dive like a wounded dove into
nothingness from one of Lovrjenac towers - deserves
a place in every theatre anthology. Croatian born and
married to a Serb, for the past several years Mira was
equally present on the Zagreb and Belgrade stages. Mira
strongly opposed the war and believed naively as any
true theatre artist does, that the theatre could contribute
much to understanding and peace between people. In so
doing she aroused bitter anger against her. While the
war between the Serbs and the Croats was at its height
in September of 1991, she refused to put the nationalist
blinders over her eyes and continued to act her part
in the production of Theatrical Illusions at the Belgrade
International Theatre Festival in Belgrade. This event
caused a campaign against her on both sides. In her
native Zagreb she was accused of national treason, named
the "Serbian whore" and threatened with lynching.
On the other side, in Belgrade, Mira was accused of
being a Croatian spy and as a non-Serb was continuously
insulted and mistreated. Becoming "an actress who
had lost her country," as Slavenka Drakulic has
written in her book Balkan Express, Mira Furlan
had to act out her last role in the Yugoslav theatre.
At the end of 1991 she packed her suitcases, wrote a
farewell letter to her co-citizens and moved to New
York. Her first significant appearance on the American
stage was in the title role of Yerma, and this character,
one may say, reflects the future of her raped country.
Rade
Serbedzija - one of the most charismatic actors in former
Yugoslavia. A major theatre and film star, he was broadly
admired by the Yugoslav audience. In his very successful
theatre career he played at least three different versions
of Hamlet in Lovrjenac. Of Serbian ancestry, born in
Croatia, he spent most of his life time in Zagreb. For
the last ten years, as one of the founders of the integrative
artistic concept Yugoslav Theatre Space, he worked for
the most part in Serbia, although he felt equally at
home everywhere in former Yugoslavia. At the beginning
of the end of Yugoslavia, at the outbreak of the First
Serbo-Croatian war, as a non-Croatian, Rade Serbedzija
- the most elusive Hamlet in the post W.W.II Yugoslav
theatre - was forced to move to Belgrade. At the beginning
of the war in Bosnia between April 3 and 6, 1992, Rade
Serbedzija was among the citizens of Sarajevo demonstrating
against the approaching war and national insanity. Several
months later he was accused in Serbia of betraying the
"Serbian national cause," and an assassination
was attempted on him in a provincial Serbian pub. According
to the latest news Rade Serbedzija lives today in Lubljana
as a Slovenian citizen, not allowed to go either to
Zagreb or Belgrade.
Irfan
Mensur - one more name on the long list of excellent
actors in former Yugoslavia. Several years ago he played
with remarkable success the role of King Lear's fool
in Lovrjenac. He could have been a very good Hamlet,
but was not offered a chance to show it. Irfan is Muslim,
born in Sarajevo. He graduated at the beginning of seventies
from the Belgrade Academy for Theatre, Film, Radio and
Television and was one of many actors who chose to live
and to make his acting career in Belgrade. With the
rise of Serbian extreme nationalism Irfan became an
alien in the city where he had made his life and created
his best roles. At the beginning of this year Irfan
Mensur was attacked in a Belgrade restaurant by a group
of drunk paramilitary soldiers, dragged out on the street
in front of the silent restaurant guests who witnessed
the event without making a single move to protect him,
and beaten almost to death.
Dejana
Divljan and Nermin Tulic, prominent young actors from
Sarajevo, have spent most of their life and acting careers
in Sarajevo. They remained in their native besieged
city continuing their efforts to be human beings who
could create theatre under unbearable war conditions.
According to the poor information from Sarajevo, at
the end of January this year returning home one day
from the performance of HAIR, Nermin and Dejana were
seriously wounded by grenades. Nermin Tulic lost both
legs, while Dejana's left leg was amputated below the
knee. They are not able to work as actors any more.
Milan
Milisic, one of the leading poets, and the dramaturg
at the Dubrovnik Marin Drzic Theatre. In addition to
his poetry he was especially recognized for his outstanding
translation of Tolkin's The Hobbit in Serbo-Croatian.
Milan was a liberal pacifist who opposed any type of
militarism, aggression and violence. He was among the
first victims of the senseless civil war in former Yugoslavia.
Milan was killed during the Yugoslav Army shelling of
Dubrovnik in the fall of 1991 while having lunch in
his home overlooking the sea.
____________________________________________
*Dr. Marko Fotez as quoted in "Dubrovnik Again"
by Slobodan Prosperov Novak, Festival Dubrovnik - Sveucilisna
Naklada Liber, Zagreb 1989.
All quotations from Hamlet are from Signet Classic's
edition. New York 1987.
