Copyright
© 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All
rights reserved.
Performing Arts Journal 53, 18.2 (1996) 2-12
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/performing_arts_journal/v018/18.2panovski.html
Prelude
To War
Naum
Panovski
THEATRE, NATIONALISM, AND DISINTEGRATION OF
THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
"They
won't say: the times were dark,
Rather: why were their poets silent?"
Bertolt Brecht, In Dark Times
Maps
As a result of nationalistic madness many theatre artists
from the former Yugoslavia now live as emigrants all
over the world. All that remains of their former cold-bloodedly
murdered country are old maps reinforced by tapes to
last longer, images of places that do not exist any
more, and memories of years living in a country which
had a good chance of becoming a multi-ethnic democracy
based on equality, justice, freedom, and creative intercultural
integration.
What
were the processes--historical, political, social, economic,
cultural, artistic--that brought about the violent disintegration,
fragmentation, and collapse of the former Yugoslavia?
What was the role of the theatre in that collapse? What
did theatre artists--playwrights, directors, actors,
scholars--do to prevent or to enforce that destruction?
Why was theatre transformed into an instrument and misused,
while life was theatricalized to the utmost?
National
sentiment and general party line
At the end of 1990 there were 88 professional and state-subsidized
theatres in the former Yugoslavia. They all looked alike.
Most of them were built in the tradition of the old
mid-European Burghtheater-style in the second half of
the last century. In one way or another, they all had,
and still have, the same prefix "national"
in their names regardless of the ethnic identity: Macedonian
National Theatre, Skopje; Serbian National Theatre,
Beograd; Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad; Croatian
National Theatre, Zagreb; Slovenian National Theatre,
Ljubljana; National Theatre of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Sarajevo, to name a few.
This
conception of art dominated by national sentiment emerged
in Europe during the nineteenth century as part of the
Romantic philosophy and its rediscovery of [End Page
2] national values. In that period the first nation-states
were formed; immediately along with them the first national
theatres in Europe were founded. Theatre as an art,
therefore, was intended as a means to serve the nation-state;
its purposes and aims were to protect and affirm state
policy. Under such circumstances any form of theatre
was, and still is, perceived as an expression of the
collective consciousness and the will of the nation.
1 This "theatre" represents the very identity
and emancipation of the nation. In return, the nation-state
protects and supports the theatre, a conception that
by and large characterized the theatre in the pre-war
Yugoslav republics.
In
addition to this "national" element, the theatre
in Yugoslavia was significantly dominated by party ideology.
The party interfered in all matters of society, political,
economic, cultural, artistic. Following the general
party line, the party strategists and ideologists required
theatre to be an ideological means of expression of
the "class struggle." In fact, they imposed
a form of theatre which accorded with Lenin's writings
on the importance of literature and the arts to society
and with his idea of art as a weapon in the hands of
the working class. Yugoslav theatre was, as a consequence,
generally dominated by two contrasting elements: a)
a publicly declared socialist ideology striving for
a classless society, and b) a covertly supported, protected,
and encouraged repository of national sentiments.
In
this complex conglomerate of divergent forces and conceptions,
there was no aesthetic diversity. No matter what kind
of punctuation mark stood in front of a given kind of
theatre--one which emphasized the national sentiment
or one which displayed ideological meaning--it signified
a politically colored form of art dominated by its ideological
content. Either way, the aesthetic point of departure
was within the framework of the traditional psychological
realism inaugurated by Stanislavski. Any artistic attempt
which focused on development of the form was seen as
meaningless formalism and/or liberalism, while the artists
were accused from both sides, nationalists or communists,
of attacking either the national dignity or, even more
seriously, of attacking the fundamental values of Yugoslav
society.
This
secret alliance between official party ideology (supported
by a demagogic and faceless bureaucracy) and expressive
national passions (represented by drunk counselors in
the male dominated "Balkan bar") was hidden
behind various masks. This alliance trapped many theatre
artists, transforming them into passionate warriors
fighting for dubious ideologies. Fortunately, many theatre
enthusiasts, lunatics, lovers, and poets also had the
strength simultaneously to raise their voices against
these small islands of imposed communist happiness and
nationalist pride.
Years
of illusions
The early eighties was a period known as "Yugoslavia
after Tito." Although he was gone, the majority
of people behaved as if he were still alive. Many immature
Yugoslav politicians, on the one hand, were obsessed
by their own narcissism and hunger for power and, on
the other, were incapable of carrying Tito's legacy
on their [End Page 3] paper shoulders. They artificially
cultivated and maintained that "pale copy"
of continuity in order to remain in power. As a result,
no one thought or saw that the country was falling apart,
that the center could not hold any more, and that their
politics could be the beginning of the end because,
behind the official political and cultural scene, the
nationalists had already raised their heads. No one
believed in that period that the peoples of Yugoslavia
would begin to fight and kill each other again as they
did during World War II. No one could have imagined
at that time that it could happen again in Europe--in
"civilized" Europe. The world seemed united,
and no one dreamt at all that we are going to witness
the most violent destruction of a culture on European
soil.
That
disintegration, which shares many forms and characteristics
similar to postmodernism, was experienced many times
before in history as a tragic consequence of the nationalist
blindness and madness in that corner of the world. It's
now a generic political term: "Balkanization."
This similarity can be briefly clarified. Balkanization
is a "genuine" invention introduced to occidental
culture in the period of Romanticism and national awakening
as a process of the disjuncture and fractioning of the
Ottoman Empire during the last century, forced by the
immature national tutors on that doomed Balkan peninsula.
Consequently, for a century and a half, Balkanization
has shown that it is a retrograde state of mind and
a degenerative process which violently transforms society,
brings destruction, deconstruction, death, and disappearance
of humanizing culture, including theatre. As a result
of this partition, fragmentation, and confrontation
of the Ottoman Empire, new words were invented. "Balkanization"
and to "Balkanize," which means a) to divide
(a country, territory, etc.) into small, quarrelsome,
ineffectual states and b) to divide (groups, areas,
etc.) into contending and usually ineffectual factions.
Balkanization also means deconstruction, disintegration,
fragmentation, confrontation, self-orientation, isolation,
break up of a whole into smaller and often hostile units,
and a return to experienced forms from the past.
Test
balloons
Balkanization as an old/new process in the former Yugoslavia
began, on the one hand, as a recycling of the national
mythology (Ihab Hassan would say that history is "palimpsest").
On the other hand, it is a disassemblage ("a will
of unmaking" in Hassan's terms) of the communist
federal system which was hidden behind the republic's
outcry for independence. This glorious return to national
values and ethnic roots in the self-isolated nationalist
beauty parlors and "the ideology of fracture,"
which later brought a violent discourse between the
fragments, began in literature in the first half of
the eighties. A few novels like The Pigeonhole by Jovan
Radulovic, A Book About Milutin by Danko Popovic in
Serbia, A Life With My Uncle by Stojan Aralica in Croatia,
along with some other similar novels and plays created
in other parts of Yugoslavia, became raised banners
in the hands of the nationalist gurus. Once again art
was dominated by the century-old Slavic syndrome of
self-pity, national pride, and martyrdom. From many
sides one could hear pathetic and farcical outcries:
"Our nation was victimized the most in the past.
We have suffered [End Page 4] the most. We have been
conquered and partitioned the most. We have the most
enemies. We have sacrificed for our nation the most.
We gave up the most intellectuals for our freedom. They
are our national martyrs."
In
the grotesque context above, A Book about Milutin (13
printings in 1985) is a story about an old Serbian peasant,
a courageous and decorated soldier in Serbia, who is
arrested after World War II by the communists as a kulak.
During his term in prison he tells his life story to
his young inmate. Actually it is his message to the
new generation, emphasizing Serbian suffering, the sacrifices
and heroism of earlier wars in which his father and
two brothers were killed. He is skeptical of "liberation
projects" undertaken in his Serbia by the communists
and is very critical of the basic tenets of all ideologies,
including the ideology of "Yugoslavism." This
straightforward narrative implies that the whole of
twentieth-century history has conspired against Serbian
national interests. Everyone on all sides of the world
has been against the poor, unprotected Serbian people.
The Vatican, the Comintern, the West, everyone has been
plotting against Serbia.
In
the case of The Pigeonhole, the flame of nationalism
is even more explicit. This novel, which was turned
into a theatre production, focuses on war atrocities
committed during World War II by the Croatian Nazis,
the Ustashis, against the Serbs in Croatia. The bottomless
"pigeonholes" and caves that were used as
mass graves during the war in Krajina serve as a metaphor
for Serbian national suffering as well as a backdrop
for settling old national accounts from the violent
past between Serbs and Croats now living in a common
country. Who has done what to whom in the mutual fatherland?
Who was victim and who was villain? Who was fighting
for liberation and who was a traitor in the war?
Adapted
for the stage and presented by an independent theatre
company in Belgrade, 2 The Pigeonhole provoked a volcano
of controversial reactions and a storm in Yugoslav artistic
circles. While it was glorified by Serbian nationalists
as "a renewal of the antic tragedy on the Yugoslav
stage" which bravely treats and heals the wounds
of a glorious past and proudly discloses the crimes
against the Serbian nation that the communists would
have liked to hide and forget, it was simultaneously
denounced by Croatian intellectuals, criticized for
its national hatred by party officials, "diplomatically"
avoided, and banned at the Sterijino Pozorje Festival
in 1985. The production was broadly supported by the
majority of liberal--democracy-oriented--intellectuals
in Yugoslavia who, paradoxically, defending the essential
principles of freedom of artistic expression, did not
recognize the danger of these divisions, separations,
segmentations, and recyclings of history. Underestimating
and neglecting the power of nationalism disguised behind
the mask of a call for democracy, freedom of speech,
and artistic expression (including freedom of expressing
nationalist sentiments), they did not see the growing
nationalist hot-air balloon expanding overhead. Many
theatre artists felt it but did not want to admit that
the catastrophe was impending. Is it that this production
was just a test balloon floated by the nationalist gurus
to judge the receptivity for their future demonic experiments?
Rebels
In opposition to the national choruses, significant
theatre artists resisted official policy and were permanently
searching for a different kind of theatre, culture,
and society, and quested for real democracy, freedom,
tolerance, and justice. The people around Kazaliste,
Gledaliste, Pozoriste, Teatar project may be considered
a good example of these resisters. Founded and led by
a group of theatre artists from Serbia (Ljubisa Ristic,
director; Dragan Klaic, dramaturg and writer), from
Croatia (Nada Kokotovic, choreographer; Rade Serbedzija,
actor), and from Slovenia (Dusan Jovanovic, playwright
and director) KGPT included theatre artists of varied
ethnic backgrounds from all over Yugoslavia. KGPT's
actors, directors, playwrights, set and costume designers,
and composers were Bosnians, Macedonians, Serbs, Croats,
Muslims, Albanians, Gypsies, Slovenians, Turks, and
Hungarians. They created theatre in various cultural
centers in different corners of the former Yugoslavia.
In so doing, they expressed Yugoslavia's rich and diverse
ethnic community, and focused on the enormous possibilities
for intercultural integration in the region as a microcosm
of United Europe. KGPT, in fact, advocated cultural
pluralism on the Yugoslav theatre stage, sought to overcome
national boundaries, and wanted to create a Yugoslav
theatre.
At
that time--the early eighties--the founders of KGPT
and its leading artists were very often accused of "Yugoslav
unitarism (centralism) from the position of Serbian
hegemonism," or for being elements who would like
to see the disintegration and disappearance of Yugoslavia,
or for ambitiously attempting to establish their personal
monopoly over Yugoslav theatre in general. Unfortunately,
some of them, like Ljubisa Ristic who took the Serbian
side and recently became a president of the United Yugoslav
Left (a political party founded by Slobodan Milosevic's
wife), proved that there was some truth in these accusations.
Simultaneously
with KGPT, another process (or rather, an unformulated
movement) was carried out mostly by a group of theatre
directors of various ethnic backgrounds who lived in
different republics. These directors were not willing
to be part of the nationalist choruses inaugurated and
protected by their republic's bureaucracy. They worked
mostly out of their native environments but felt equally
at home everywhere. Liberally and democratically oriented,
they perceived Yugoslavia as a united multicultural
environment. Instead of national self-isolation, their
work suggested a particular artistic braiding among
the people and the cultures of the former Yugoslavia.
Although not always personally close, they had as individuals
aesthetically similar approaches to many current issues,
shared many ideas, and respected each other's differences.
They comprised a significant artistic force aware of
the resurgent ghosts of nationalism. Most of their performances
anticipated the tragic events of balkanization, but
unfortunately they were a minority in their own country
and lived in a curious state of internal exile.
Paradoxically,
these artists (mostly from Slovenia and Macedonia, and
including a naturalized Yugoslav of Italian descent,
Paolo Magelli) were both praised and [End Page 6] blamed
for their theatre work by all sides. While praised by
party officials for their creative achievements and
international affirmation of Yugoslavia, they were often
accused of anti-communism, liberalism, and/or for not
being politically correct. While praised by the nationalists
for attacking the communist system, they were also accused
of betraying national interests, of selling out to their
enemies (i.e., those of another ethnic group) and of
not showing enough patriotism.
Significantly,
state-sanctioned neo-Stalinism and neo-nationalism,
assuming shapes and meanings similar to those explored
by postmodernist performances, conquered the mainstream
theatre, opened "the discourse of fragments"
and began with "good intentions" to pave the
road to hell. One could often hear the apparatchiks'
voices in the mid-eighties: "The only good theatre
is the one which serves the party and praises the working
class and socialism." On the other side of the
barricades the national prophets and apologists screamed:
"The only good and valuable theatre is one that
affirms and praises the nation and protects the national
interest." The new red Nazism or rather black communism
was on the horizon.
Festivals
The major Yugoslav theatre festivals--MESS 1986 (Festival
of the Yugoslav Theatre) and Sterijino Pozorje 86 (Yugoslav
Festival of Domestic Drama)--had a special place on
the Yugoslav theatre map and played a crucial role in
the future developments of the theatre and political
life in Yugoslavia. Special attention and treatment
was accorded theatre festivals in the former Yugoslavia.
These festivals, like those of ancient times, were organized
as professional competitions and existed mainly to serve
non-artistic aims. Victory was the most important goal
for the competitors. They dreamt of returning home with
as many "golden laurel wreaths" as possible,
which meant that they were winning politically and ideologically
rather than artistically. For many parties (political,
social, artistic, cultural) involved in the Yugoslav
struggle for power, they became places where political
goals could be achieved and ethnic dominance established.
Awards received at these festivals were celebrated in
the "victorious" republic for days, if not
weeks. The festival meant everything: affirmation, emancipation,
the apology and confirmation of certain ideas, the superiority
of a given national community.
The
forces of power in the former Yugoslavia, both official
(communist party, republic governments, cultural and
artistic institutions) and unofficial ("intellectual"
circles, "artistic" groups, "nationally
concerned patriots"), interested in obtaining various
types of power, knew very well the significance of victory
at one of these festivals--and they fought for it. If
one looks at the Sterijino Pozorje 86 and MESS 86 programs
today, one should rather say that these two festivals
became more divided than ever that year. Each was definitively
transformed into an open battlefield where everyone
was fighting for his or her own side on behalf of his
or her nation-state, each glorifying respective national
values at the expense of all others, confronting and
contrasting in that way their small corrals with the
small corrals of the others. The battles were merciless.
Losers
and Winners
MESS and Sterijino Pozorje festivals 86 could be remembered
today for their "losers" and "winners."
Namely, for productions like The Metastable Grail, The
Petit Bourgeois Wedding, Croatian Faust, and Titus Andronicus,
which resisted the hypocrisy and totalitarian idea of
community, and productions like The Traveling Theatre
Sopalovic which danced to the nationalist drums. The
former group of performances courageously, critically,
and openly questioned the real possibilities of theatre
expression in Yugoslav society at that time. They tried
to identify theatre's humanistic endeavor to influence
social changes, to differentiate truth from falsehood,
art from kitsch, culture from barbarity. This "loser"
theatre anticipated what happens to theatre and society
when they experience deepening social and political
crises in which society begins to fall apart at all
levels, and tried to admonish what happens when theatre
loses the sense of decency, beauty, and truth.
A
significant representative of the first group was the
production of The Metastable Grail 3 by Nenad Prokic.
This production brought to the stage the unbearable
conditions of intellectual life in a totalitarian community
and became, as well, a symbol of that intellectual life.
In so doing, it touched a raw nerve with both nationalists
and communists. Attacking the party bureaucracy and
ridiculing the nationalists' primitivism in a way not
presented then on Yugoslav stages, Prokic questioned
the fundamental principles of art, democracy, freedom,
and existence in a single-party Yugoslavia. What is
the place and the role of the theatre artist in a time
of deep social, economic, and political crisis? What
can theatre artists do when society and the prevailing
times are unstable, or rather metastable, when the evil
of Nazism and fascism overshadow the future? Is the
artist able to do anything in such an authoritarian
and xenophobic environment to stop the madness and prevent
slaughter?
The
Yugoslav artist's dream--the longing for freedom--was
transformed, as it was presented in The Metastable Grail,
into the nightmare of a rebellious artist who refuses
to be a house pet in the backyard of insane and primitive
authorities. The only move that the theatre artist could
make in such a society was either to be a servant to
despotism or to withdraw, leaving the field open to
the "artists" and another theatrical form:
a totalitarian and theatricalized society in which illiteracy,
hypocrisy, passions, and immorality prevail. The only
means of escape, the last exit from this nightmare and
from the ruthless theatre that takes place in reality,
in which no room remains for poetry, imagination, love,
and beauty is Death. It is the exit to definite silence,
4 silence in a metaphoric, theatrical, and literary
sense. Further developments of events and the current
Nazification of the remaining fragments of Yugoslavia
confirm the apocalyptic vision expressed in The Metastable
Grail.
In
the group of productions which defended the revival
of the national cause, The Sopalovic Traveling Theatre
5 by Ljubomir Simovic (the official winner of Sterijino
Pozorje 86) played a particular role and accelerated
the inflaming of nationalism in [End Page 8] Serbia.
This play, produced in the traditional framework of
poetic realism, was praised by the designated representatives
of the nationalist block as a real artistic break-through!
Break-through to what? Back to the state of hatred,
Nazism, and barbarism?! Writing about that production,
many nationally concerned critics expressing their highest
concern about the health of their nation claimed that
The Sopalovic Traveling Theatre is about love and transformation.
They wrote: "Simovic brings the actors of a traveling
company to [Nazi] occupied Uzice in 1941. The wandering
troupe of four actors becomes, in the setting of a merciless
war between the people and the occupying forces, a vehicle
of an eternal message of love. Around them cluster the
oppressors and those who fight for their freedom. In
the play, the function of the traveling theatre is to
condemn both the fascist evildoers and the people who
rise up against them--and all in the name of love and
art. Under the beneficial influence of the actors, the
most brutal occupying bully is transformed into a human
being. This metamorphoses is supplemented by a melodramatic
situation, realistic characters, juicy humor, unexpected
turns in the plot and, especially, superb acting. Moved
by this, the spectators are entertained, and accept
the arbitrariness of the fairy tale for the moral and
the message."
What
was the message and the moral conveyed by this production?
Hiding their real beliefs and intentions behind the
colorful fan of expressions like "poetic language,"
"rich characters," "excellent dramatic
plot," "message of love," "superb
directorial approach," these "critics"
were actually applauding something else: a déjà
vu world. Digging in the backyard of recent Serbian
national history, The Sopalovic Traveling Theatre supporters
used the production as an attempt to rehabilitate the
dark forces of the past and to reconcile the ideological
divisions in Serbia that appeared during World War II.
6 What the spectators were offered was the notion that
those who fought against Nazism were just as violent
as their murderers. According to these critics, a Chetnik,
a Nazi collaborator and executioner in the play, was
a pure personification of love. As for the theatre,
these passionate lovers of the past argued that regardless
of what happens in reality, the theatre is an "illusion"
which should stand above reality and remain disinterested
in any currents of interest to the community. What kind
of reality is it in which the theatre exists in a vacuum?
What kind of theatre is that which is not at the center
of society, which does not harmonize and humanize life,
but turns its back to it and closes its eyes to terror,
violence, and destruction, or even participates in it?
Unfortunately, these issues were not raised, neither
among the Yugoslav "intellectual" supporters
of The Sopalovic Traveling Theatre, nor among those
who really fought for freedom.
This
outspoken piece was meant to open the process of reconciliation
between the Serbian fascists' sordid World War II past
and the actual communist reality of the eighties. But
not only that: it seems now that within the framework
of this production the Serbian nationalist gurus planned
to introduce the villains from the past as old-new national
heroes who would reappear and become leaders chosen
to form a devastated archipelago of nationally purged
fragments/fractions called Greater Serbia.
SANU
Memorandum: forward in the mud of the past
The foggy fall of 1986 will be remembered as the beginning
of the end for Yugoslavia. While many Yugoslav theatre
artists unsuccessfully struggled for freedom and the
enhancement of theatre possibilities, some other "theatrical"
or rather paratheatrical processes were taking place
in society. The Yugoslav disintegration and fragmentation,
which began with the Albanian riots in Kosovo in 1981,
moved toward the final stage of balkanization. The publication
of the semi-official declaration of the famous SANU
Memorandum was a catalytic event in the escalation of
the deepening crisis. That document, inspired and conceived
by Dobrica Cosic and his lieutenants--fellow members
of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, like Antonie
Isakovic, novelist and playwright; Dusan Kanazir, scientist;
Matija Beckovic, poet; Slobodan Selenic, playwright
and professor of theatre and drama, to name a few--was
in fact an expression of Serbian nationalist discontent
found in many of Cosic's writings.
Cosic,
called "The Father of the Nation," was an
advocate of the xenophobic idea that Serbia's tragic
fate had been to win her wars and then lose the ensuing
peace, because the postwar arrangements made by the
great powers on behalf of Serbia's neighbors have robbed
her of her wartime gains. This pathetic idea, expressed
in various ways in his novels Roots, Divisions, Time
of Death, as well as in the dramatic adaptations of
these writings, would prove a solid foundation for the
Serbian war-manifesto, SANU Memorandum for National
Renewal and Prosperity of Serbia. This document was,
in fact, a detailed action-program which promoted hatred,
national separatism, return to the glorious and heroic
past, ethnic cleansing, self-isolation, national purity
and, finally, the unification of all Serbs under one
banner in the state of Greater Serbia. This program
came about as "a resolute defense of the nation
and its sovereign territory" attacked by the Serbian
enemies. The Serbian state had to be reunited and its
people protected by all means necessary, even by undertaking
"violent transhumanization" of the environment.
March
of ghosts from the past
The Serbian intellectuals who resuscitated the ghosts
of the past were not alone in their outcries of discontent.
Militant nationalists in the other republics were also
significantly visible. They played a dominant part in
their miniature feudal societies: in artistic, political,
and in everyday life on the streets. These self-proclaimed
"caretakers" of the national health from Slovenia
and Croatia, through Bosnia and Montenegro, to Serbia,
Kosovo, and Macedonia used theatre, literature, rock-music,
film, and television not as aesthetic forms but as negative
socio-political matrices for inflaming nationalist sentiments.
In so doing, and supported by the narcissist Yugo-politicians,
the Yugoslav "intelligentsia" paved the road
to neo-Nazism masked by hopeful demands for freedom,
democracy, and independence. Yugoslavia began to look
like a wolf's den in which people, with uncontrolled
passions and senses dulled by hatred, bit each other
and raged furiously.
And
while theatre stages all over the country were overloaded
with sentimental, neo-romantic, and insignificant "rediscovery-of-the-national-past"
productions, life itself was becoming more and more
dramatic. In that galvanized atmosphere of deepening
social and political crises, theatre and reality exchanged
places. Instead of the communists' ideologized art and
life, in a short period of time Yugoslav neo-Nazis and
neo-Stalinists theatricalized life. In a period of only
three years a list of spectacular paratheatrical events
took place across the country, and in that poignant
parade of the shadows of forgotten ancestors, anarchy,
intolerance, and hatred, enthusiastically supported
by the official media, became part of everyday life.
The unbelievable acceleration of disaster was structured
like a perfect theatre script which ultimately led to
balkanization and the violent transformation of Yugoslavia
into a landscape of burnt bones and ashes.
Triumph
of styles of radical will
In a very short period after 1986, the people of Yugoslavia
witnessed the death of communism, the birth of a multi-party
system, the emergence of nationally exclusive political
parties, a renewal of militant Croatian nationalism,
the reappearance of Macedonian national consciousness,
a surge of Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia, Sanjak,
and Kosovo, the establishment of new non-communist republic
governments, the rise to power of the new primitivism
and neo-Nazism, the appearance of petit bourgeois kitsch
and mediocrity, and . . . instead of a birth of democracy,
they witnessed how the totalitarianism of Party ideology
was replaced by the totalitarianism of the nation.
After
that, war broke out and the most horrible world surfaced:
an entire community of clashing armies, paramilitary
troops, clans, and gangs of both old-timers and newcomers
had lost their minds in a bloody orgy in which every
violent act was answered by the opposing side with a
violence ten times greater, more out of pure relish
in revenge than out of a sense of justice. It was, and
still is, as the theatre critic Dalibor Foretic put
it, "a barbarian world in which there is no longer
anything human, a tribal world which yearns only for
blood, suffering, and slaughter. A world in which war
has seeped into the blood of these monsters, and no
one can free himself from it anymore. The maelstrom
of evil, aggression, and brutality, once accelerated,
trapped innocent people in its jaws and prevented anyone
from getting out of its hellish circle. Individuals
became victims of the force which has thrown the whole
fragmented community into the witches' cauldron. Evil
and violence increased geometrically in this ghastly
environment, in this orgy of gloomy atavism coming from
what was once Yugoslavia." And the world saw it
and still sees it there, in that land of demons, all
on television, drinking coffee and pretending that it
happens in some other world, not here among us.
Dubrovnik,
Vukovar, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Mostar. And . . . no
more bridges. What next? The narcissism of the small
ethnic differences made large by the "bright,"
"responsible," and "respected" Yugo-politicians,
intellectuals, and academicians brought about the horrifying
future. That future is the result of the triumph of
their styles of radical will for power in their small,
fragmented, irrelevant, ruined, burnt down, devastated
lands. The final deed, the deconstruction and balkanization
of Yugoslavia is complete. This is the end of humanism.
The rest is . . . post-history. Silence.
Naum
Panovski, a native of Macedonia, was for many years
one of the leading theatre directors and writers in
the former Yugoslavia. Currently he is the director
of the Theatre Program at Christopher Newport University
in Newport News, Virginia. He is the author of Theatre
as a Weapon (Kultura, Skopje) and Directing Poiesis
(Peter Lang, New York).
Notes
1. Nation as ethnos, a group of people with similar
lingusitic, cultural, ethnic, and territorial specifics,
not as demos, a group of people of diverse backgrounds
living together in the same state.
2.
This production was presented by the Student Cultural
Center in Belgrade led by Milorad Vucelic, currently
general manager of Serbian Radio-Television, a mouthpiece
of Serbian nationalism. The production was directed
by Dejan Mijac.
3.
The Metastable Grail was produced by two theatres only--by
Atelje 212 in Belgrade (directed by Paolo Magelli) and
by the National Theatre of Basanska Krajina in Banja
Luka (directed by Naum Panovski).
4.
Boro Draskovic, one of the most gifted directors in
the former Yugoslavia, did exactly that. In protest
against the officials who banned his production of When
the Pumpkins Blossomed in the late sixties, Draskovic
chose creative silence and stopped directing for the
theatre.
5.
The production was staged by the leading theatre in
Belgrade, Yugoslav Dramatic Theatre, and was directed
by Dejan Mijac.
6.
These divisions were mainly between the partisans led
by Tito, who fought the Nazis, and the Chetniks, who
were royalists and Nazi collaborators.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/performing_arts_journal/v018/18.2panovski.html.
