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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." 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. 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. 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.