In Search of Catharsis. Theatre in Serbia in the 1990s

Introduction. The Turbulent Years

In this paper, I shall look at how theatre in Serbia addressed the social reality of the 1990s, with my main focus being on publicly-funded theatres, where there was least change in that landscape. I shall examine their role in pacifying or mobilizing audiences to take part in the political projects which accompanied the processes of dissolution of Yugoslavia—or to resist them. I shall consider too the overall political, economic and cultural restructuring of post-Yugoslav society. I believe there should be a refinement in the general understanding of the social use of theatre in that specific social context, and an attempt made to reach a wider level of comprehension of how theatre can utilize its complex arsenal of expressive resources to respond to extreme social crisis.

Although slowly and belatedly, the Serbian theatre system in the 1990s entered a process of transformation which visibly changed the theatrical ‘landscape’ of management, production, financing and PR; and certainly altered the artistic postulates of the late socialist period of the previous decade. The changes were in fact a small part of the overall restructuring of a whole society in transition, and from an observer’s point of view, ‘average Serbian theatregoers’ during the 1990s were obliged first to witness a process of political democratization as multi-party government was introduced, and then experience the pseudototalitarian regime of the Socialist Party of Serbia (Socijalistička partija Srbije, SPS) which was heir to the property and political monopolies of the dissolved League of Communists of Yugoslavia.

Politicians—former youth communist leaders who once built (with their own hands) highways of ‘brotherhood and unity’—were now orchestrating the civil war in the already-dismantled Yugoslav state. ‘Deregulation’ took place under pressure that was more politically motivated than economically and for the general good, as formerly publicly owned property was transferred, chaotically, to private ownership. The banking system and social security collapsed, taking with it everything from foreign currency savings to pension funds. Pyramidselling schemes flourished along with waves of hyperinflation, and the whole process was accompanied by galloping devaluation of labour and the primitive amassing of private capital—in often illegal operations carried on in the guise of ‘legal businesses’ but largely based on war profits. From fear of the potential loss of votes which mass redundancies would bring, the existing employment structure was maintained regardless of the economic consequences.

Staggeringly large waves of migration saw an influx of refugees from war-afflicted areas. There was a brain drain as masses of the cheaply-educated population emigrated mainly to ‘hostile’ Western countries while new arrivals, without privilege, were condemned to a marginal existence without Serbian citizenship or even basic documents. All of this was accompanied by an official rhetoric of pan-Serbian concord and solidarity. Corruption spread throughout the judicial, healthcare and education systems while United Nations economic and cultural sanctions imposed isolation. Despite Serbia’s proclaimed neutrality in the war there were successive waves of military conscription accompanied by a rise in chauvinism and outbreaks of xenophobia supposedly in defence of ‘patriotic values’ and ‘national legacies’. The deregulation of the media was followed by the collapse of professional standards and a Radio Television Serbia monopoly of current affairs reporting. The global hegemony of the mass media industry was embodied in the local ‘turbo-folk’ idioms and what came to be known as the Pink Culture.^[2] However, even as standards of living fell rapidly the period saw the growth of consumer appetites and a mania for Western gadgets, leading in turn to individual economic dependence on relatives abroad and ‘alternative’ sources of income. And the list of grievances went on.^[3]

Transformations of the Theatre System. From Socialism to Postsocialism

In the years immediately following the Second World War the cultural politics of theatre production were guided by directives from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia as part of a general reshaping of society as the new socialist system was constructed. Communist Party leaders took the initiative in dealing with chronic and ubiquitous underdevelopment throughout the new country, as well as in addressing the difficult legacies of its past. They had to contend with widely differing levels of cultural and economic development, because over the previous centuries the different parts of Yugoslavia had belonged to different states. All had therefore operated under different economic systems and national and religious divisions and conflicts, and had all been involved in and affected by various war crimes. One aspect of the problematic legacies within the new Yugoslavia was the failure of the cultural politics of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Kingdom had been shaken by constant parliamentary and government crises, where organized political and cultural action would be understood not as the organizing and administering of social life, but as a usurpation of power and the manipulation of it in the interests of elite groups and individuals. The need to overcome difficulties of cultural underdevelopment in the Kingdom was subjugated to the interests of the daily politics among the Court and leading political parties. Furthermore, there was uncritical imitation of the ideologies and establishments created in societies seen as culturally more advanced. Cultural influences were largely dependent on economic relations which were themselves based on foreign capital and loans, and a pervasive cultural conservatism further diminished what were anyway altogether modest results of Yugoslav cultural politics. As a predominantly agrarian country in which 76.6% of the population lived on the land, immediately before World War II Yugoslavia was one of the least favourably placed countries in Europe, and its unbalanced education system in which only a third of children attended school had led to widespread but highly unbalanced illiteracy.^[4]

After World War Two the entire cultural production in Yugoslavia, theatre included, was placed at the service of a movement intended to solve that problem of widespread illiteracy. The idea was to ‘educate the masses’ while eliminating the remnants of a rejected set of social values, which were to be re-modelled according to the principles of a newly-established social order. However, the legacy of cultural backwardness represented an obstacle to further pursuit of revolutionary change. Socialism was intended to be a more equitable society, which while diminishing economic differences would completely erase cultural ones by increasing the number of users of publicly-financed cultural and educational institutions. However, the socialist economy was considered inefficient and could not be developed if working people were uneducated, politically unaware, and professionally unskilled. Accordingly, the Party’s main objectives in cultural politics were to overcome inherited forms of social and economic backwardness and radically to democratize culture. They sought to bolster the ideological upbringing of the masses in the socialist spirit by eliminating from their consciousness the ideological remnants of capitalism.

The creation of new cultural institutions, which included new theatres throughout the country, went along with the consolidation of the state apparatus. In the first years of socialist Yugoslavia centralist organization directly influenced the hierarchical structure of cultural institutions too. The pyramid of establishments at state, republic, regional, municipal and local levels were all subordinated to the state and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, called from 1952 onwards the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. More specifically they fell under the Ministry of Education, and the state services of ideological propaganda and agitation.^[5]

In creating a People’s Liberation Theatre (Kazalište narodnog oslobođenja) even while World War II was still going on (May 1942 – November 1944) the new government clearly demonstrated its belief that the theatre could be a powerful means of agitation.^[6] The Party expected theatre professionals to engage with the most pressing questions in the contemporary life of the new society, although inevitably for early postwar theatre goers there was a degree of escapism from a reality in which ‘everything was grievous, everything was scarce, everything was grey’.^[7] For the National Theatre in Belgrade, a national institution of central importance, the planning of a repertoire called for emphasis on works which communicated the current problems affecting the reconstruction and renewal of the country. The situation called for pan-Yugoslav brotherhood and unity, so that urgently required were representative works both from Yugoslavia’s own national literary heritage, and foreign works.^[8] All should advocate closeness and equality among the Yugoslav nations and nationalities. The political split from the USSR in 1948 saw changes in the theatrical repertoire in Yugoslavia. Soviet-style ‘socialist realism’ gave way to the works of Yugoslav realists, as well as classical Greek drama and the world’s literary classics, all at the expense of Russian authors. Nevertheless, the taste of ‘the masses’ was still heavily criticized in Party forums, as provincial professional theatres often relied on light entertainment pieces which had gained their popularity before the war.

The 1950s saw the introduction of the self-management system in the Yugoslav economy which greatly affected the cultural system also.^[9] The 1956 legislation on theatre opened new possibilities not only for theatrical professionals to launch new theatrical companies but for groups of citizens to do so too. The 1963 federal constitution encouraged decentralization from state level, so that local communities were encouraged to decide for themselves what they would produce and how existing theatres could be financed and new companies established. The 1976 Associated Labour Act (Zakon o udruženom radu, ZUR) introduced a new system of financing of cultural institutions, which on a declaratory level ascribed great importance to self-awareness and the social emancipation of professionals in the cultural sphere. However, in reality audiences maintained their more or less passive role and remained unable to affect cultural policies in the theatre. Any ‘self-managing community of interest’ (Samoupravna interesna zajednica, SIZ), as they were called, would regulate their own domain of respective public services, such as health care, social security, education, sport—and culture. This ‘SIZ-system’, by which subventions granted were independent of audience response, resulted in indifference to the numbers, composition and attitudes of audiences. Indeed, it was even compared to the old system of the ‘almighty intendants’ that had existed within the Habsburg Empire. As noted by Serbian theatrologist Dragan Klaić in 1989, ‘theatre is with its subventions largely isolated from the pressures of the market and, at the same time, normally free from political dictates, and perhaps that is exactly why it is attuned to function more as a social establishment for securing a living for its employees and less as an artistic platform’.^[10]

In the post-1989 context the art worlds in the majority of postsocialist countries retained and even consolidated their social and political prerogatives. According to the Slovenian philosopher Aleš Erjavec, in such circumstances the notions of ‘nation’ and ‘culture’ were inextricably linked:

‘It is politics that links them and that has caused art and culture to play such a significant role in the 1980s and early 1990s, enabling writers to become heads of state; painters and poets, ambassadors; and sociology professors, city mayors and foreign ministers, just as in 1918-20 or in the years following 1945.’^[11]

Moreover, in the other postsocialist countries of Europe the 1990s were a decade of transformation of production models. The rigid system of state support for institutions gave way to project funding, internationalization, networking, and the rise of independent arts scenes with contributions from private and public foundations, the European Union, the Council of Europe, and corporate sponsors.^[12] In Serbia, because of UN sanctions and the overall international isolation, transformation amounted only to occasional assistance given to an independent scene that was decidedly feeble. State-funded institutions remained largely untouched by the reforms, a circumstance which contributed even more to the atmosphere of lethargy and systemic inertia which dominated the official sphere.^[13] Another problem for Serbian theatre in the 1990s was confusion in its repertoire, which was heavily influenced by the financial circumstances of the theatre companies. According to theatre critic Petar Grujičić:

‘The loss of the repertoire profiles of the Belgrade theatres may, in that sense, also be understood as a consequence of a paradoxical condition in which the work in theatre, during a turbulent decade in social-historical terms, was not only on the margins of interest of the current political regime or the state, but also […] of the theatre professionals themselves.’^[14]

Accordingly, as a result of a routine of accumulated bad habits which included irrational luxury, egotism, arrogance, laziness and improvisation, theatres were gradually transformed into a ‘flawed structure that can barely at all approach some genuine theatre objective as a major preoccupation’.^[15]

As noted by playwright Stevan Koprivica, life would never be the same for Serbian theatre after the early 1990s. The engaged theatre of the 1980s, the poetics of Havel and Mroźek, became out-dated, or a new key for its reading could not be found. The engagement of local theatrical professionals was communicated in public life, on the streets and in the political parties, while the plays that would reflect the turbulences and horrors of the 1990s were altogether missing: ‘The theatre of cruelty was being played out around us, in the boiling Belgrade…’^[16] In the circumstances of overall confusion in Serbian theatre repertoire, stages were frequented by characters conceived by Georges Feydeau and Eugène Labiche, the ‘notorious’ authors of French farce. Comic relief and national epics therefore became a refuge from social reality rather than the place to reflect on and criticize it. According to theatre director and historian Anja Suša ‘the theatre in this period assumed the function of morphine for audiences bombarded by ghastly images of Sarajevo and Vukovark^[17] Such images caused theatrologist Mirjana Miočinović to resign from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade during the bombing of Dubrovnik in the autumn of 1991, but her gesture remained within the Serbian academic theatre community as an isolated protest against the war.^[18] Miočinović claims that the theatre in Serbia supported, in three phases, all the stages of Slobodan Milošević’s rise to power. At first it took pains to create the illusion of subversion of the communist system, but in playing with old prohibitions really only created space for new taboos. That then contributed to new indoctrination, adding fuel to the fire of national disputes with rhetorical clichés which accommodated new arguments for old nationalist hatred. In the second phase, when the war actually broke out a huge machinery of entertainment was put to work in an attempt to assuage the collectively guilty conscience. The illusion was created that the war and misery did not exist, or that if they did then they embodied some higher meaning. In the third phase, when the machinery of war had come to a halt and the conflict’s catastrophic outcome had been revealed, the theatre came up with the idea that all this perhaps made no sense, that none of us has a completely clean conscience but that there might still be some dignity worth saving. Only with the works of the young Serbian playwrights did the theatre in Serbia begin to testify to the guilty conscience of young people who had been unable to stop the war and their own social downfall.^[19]

Even theatre intended for the youngest audiences reflected the overall social circumstances. During the 1990s what little progress there was in children’s theatre in Serbia happened only very slowly, reflected in a dominant aesthetic of fairy-tales. Children as an audience were not concerned with the convention by which dramatic plots are topicalized, as was often the case with theatre for adults. With certain notable exceptions children were not encouraged to connect what they saw on the stage with their day-to-day experience—in fact quite the contrary.^[20] However, all the effort invested in conceiving and mounting children’s productions seems to have been focused on protecting them from the reality of everyday lives which in fact had nothing to do with fairy-tales. In reality their fathers received compulsory calls to military exercises; their mothers were under constant strain; every now and then teachers would go on strike for higher wages; buses were overcrowded; classrooms were cold; petrol was sold illicitly on the streets; everyone was moaning all the time; and everything was awfully, awfully expensive.

Nevertheless, in accordance with the overall policy of avoiding causing disturbance to theatre audiences by showing them unpleasant subjects, the regime in Serbia continued to give generous support to international events inherited from socialist times, such as Bitef, the Belgrade International Theatre Festival. The regime hoped thereby to maintain the illusion that despite the sanctions ‘everything stays the same’ and Belgrade ‘is still what it once was’.^[21]Part of the cosmopolitan gloss of the cultural scene of Belgrade and Yugoslavia was nevertheless a direct consequence of political speculation during the Cold War.^[22] Notwithstanding or, perhaps indeed because of that distinct tendency to maintain the status quo in every aspect of production, theatres in Serbia were still very well attended in that period. Enthusiasm remained high, even in a changed cultural landscape in which numerous new media and forms of cultural consumption and participation competed for the free time of potential audiences. According to Dragan Klaić,

‘a troubled and confused society, its spending and speculation binge curtailed along with frequent holidays abroad, turns to the public theatre for an artistic, but also social and intellectual experience, for collective soul-searching, critical insight and some self-assurance’.^[23]

Publicly-funded theatre in Serbia developed various strategies for dealing with reality and the bitter truth of finding themselves caught between a pseudototalitarian regime pursuing catastrophic policies but which were nevertheless still financing theatres, and the theatres’ own self-proclaimed artistic and social objectives—indeed the reason for their existence. Just as in socialist times theatres still addressed the ideal audience member, informed enough to appreciate ‘true art’, the artistic concept and the virtuosity of performance. However, the public theatre still feared the potential conservatism and lack of sophistication of their ‘ideal’ audience member, who was above all by no means to be ‘upset’.

Theatre and the Past. Revisiting the Classics in Turbulent Times

In the context of the transitional structuring of the postsocialist Yugoslav nation states the theatre became part of the ‘cultural infrastructure’ inherited from the socialist period but administered by the new political leadership. In an ostensibly democratic manner therefore and without explicit censorship the theatre was expected to follow the political agenda of the state, for it was still seen as a public resource which should conform to the ideological approach of the new postsocialist order.

As was the case in certain other countries of the postsocialist world, the 1990s in Serbia was a period of major reconstruction of a national identity which a decade earlier had been seen as various combinations of Yugoslav, Serbian, Montenegrin and other minority identities. Every citizen of the country to some degree experienced drastic consequences of the massaging of identity. The processes of ‘de-Yugoslavization’ and ‘Serbization’ of Serbia’s theatrical repertoire did not quite coincide with the actual dissolution of the Yugoslav federation in the early 1990s, but can be traced as a distinct tendency already present in the previous decades, especially the 1980s. According to Serbian theatrologist Ksenija Radulović

‘that in those years our repertoires were dominated, as certain theatre professionals later somewhat dismissively called them, by “S-productions” [S-predstave] […] is the commonplace notion of the local theatre community. No less common is the opinion that the works in question were markedly anachronistic in terms of stage expression and manipulative on the semantic level, and that they failed to have any aesthetic effect on our theatre life; in fact their effect was in inverse proportion to their increasing presence in the repertoire.’^[24]

Radulović blames Serbian intellectuals during that period—including theatre professionals—for the permanent over-excitement of audiences into an obsessive cycle of self-pity, bias, and xenophobia which only served as a prelude to the catastrophe of the 1990s. The main characteristics of the ‘S-trend’ in Serbian theatre were engagement with the traumatic events of Serbian national history, such as war crimes committed against Serbians during World War Two. Subjects like that were largely suppressed in official histories of the socialist period. ‘Serbhood’ as a political category was superseded by the egalitarian socialist ideology of ‘brotherhood and unity’ in the political construct of Yugoslavia as a common state for all the South Slavic nationalities. Accordingly, during the late socialist period ‘S productions’ and the preoccupations of their authors undermined the very ideological foundations of the political system. They acquired an aura of subversion, and a peculiar sort of symbolic capital which accompanied the particular brand of Yugoslav anticommunist dissidence which was largely both sponsored by the state itself and controlled by it. Notwithstanding the genuine motives and national resentments of the authors, which might have been utterly different from one another, there were a number of notable examples of ‘S-ploitation’ in the Serbian theatre. They included Golubnjača by Jovan Radulović (Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad; d: Dejan Mijač); Seoba Srbalja by Ðura Jakšić (National Theatre, Belgrade; d: Cisana Murusidze); Propast carstva srpskoga by Miladin Ševarlić (Atelje 212, Belgrade; d: Milenko Maričić); the Kazalište Pozorište Gledališče Teatar’s (KPGT, Belgrade) ‘socialist musical’ Tajna Crne Ruke directed by Ljubiša Ristić; Kolubarska bitka by Dobrica Ćosić and Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz (Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Belgrade, d: Arsenije Jovanović); or Valjevska bolnica by Dobrica Ćosić and Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz (Yugoslav Drama Theatre, d: Dejan Mijač). To that list should be added a production of Sveti Sava by Siniša Kovačević (National Theatre, Zenica/Bosnia and Herzegovina; d: Vladimir Milčin), a play about St Sava, Serbian medieval prince and the first Archbishop of the autocephalous Serbian Church, ‘including his sex life’. It is best remembered for the aggressive interruption and abrupt ending of its performance in the Yugoslav Drama Theatre on 31 May 1990 by activists of the Serbian Party of St Sava (Srpska svetosavska stranka) who had been among the audience. Twenty five years later the incident inspired the production Sveto S ili Kako je „arhivirana” predstava Sveti Sava conceived by Tanja Miletić-Oručević (Bosnian National Theatre, Zenica, 2015). Other examples of ‘S-ploitation’ are productions with ‘Kosovo themes’ which either recounted the events of the famous medieval battle against the Ottomans in 1389 or the plight of contemporary Serbs in the turbulent southern province. Such productions included Kosovska hronika by Rajko Ðurđević (National Theatre, Belgrade, d: Cisana Murusidze); Kosovo by Miladin Ševarlić (Belgrade Drama Theatre, d: Branislav Mićunović); San kosovske noći, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (Zvezdara Theatre, Belgrade, d: Petar Božović); even Boj na Kosovu directed by Ljubiša Ristić (National Theatre/Nepszínház, Subotica and KPGT). During this late socialist period both the distant medieval past and the more recent constitution of the Serbian bourgeoisie early in the 20^th century and continuing between the world wars were ‘subjects of permanent glorification’.^[25]

As noted by Elin Diamond, ‘the past is always under construction’.^[26] In 1990s Serbia, whether because of the preceding decades over which disparate national identities were suppressed for ideological and political reasons, or for other reasons, the focus for reconstituting personal and collective identity was on the national-ethnic-religious nexus. It was that social sphere which experienced the most intense turbulence, with the most obvious political consequences. The situation inevitably influenced the theatre, especially the dominant dramatic productions, especially those which aspired to reflect social matters and current changes and made different approaches to the problems of transformation of national identity and interpretation of national heritage. Nevertheless, two basic approaches to the ‘construction of the past’ and reconstruction of the present may be identified in the drama production of the period.

The first and probably dominant approach was a staging of canonical literary pieces, spectacular whenever possible and usually with biographical content on the ‘glorious dead’. A notable example of the tendency was the production of the dramatic biography of the Montenegrin nobleman Maksim Crnojević (1457–1528). Written by the Serbian Romanticist poet Laza Kostić the play is often referred to as ‘the Serbian Hamlet’. It was first published in 1866 and opened at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad in 1869. Nikita Milivojević’s production of Maksim Crnojević premiered in the National Theatre in Belgrade in April 2000 with sets of lavish Venetian interiors and wild Montenegrin exteriors. The intimate tragedy of the main protagonist, wracked in turn by love, his sense of guilt and a disfiguring disease was characteristically communicated by the extensive use of spectacular stage imagery, as was noted by theatre critic Vladimir Stamenković. Stamenković claimed that in the Serbian theatre production of that time, which was predominantly chamber-sized and generally short of money, ‘the staging of Maksim Crnojević which consumed large amounts of money (as much as was needed to produce a complicated romanticist drama) appears as an unusual, almost unreal phenomenon’.^[27] However extraordinary in terms of its high production standards, Maksim Crnojević fell neatly into the category of productions reinventing the national repertoire and ‘aesthetizing’ the national past using specifically theatrical techniques which responded to the current turbulence and transformations in the ‘Serb nation’s’ perception of itself. In productions in that category there was a distinct tendency to set historical and literary figures and their stories firmly in their own historical epochs, and to discourage audiences from making direct connections between events on stage and the audience’s own experiences and preoccupations. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal of this strategy was indeed to glorify the antiquity of the nation and its rich and complex history. Benedict Anderson remarked pertinently that the image of antiquity is central to the subjective idea of the nation.^[28] Its strategy may then similarly be seen as Serbian theatre’s response to attempts to reinvent the Serbian nation and its history by trying to construct an ‘ideal past’.

The second distinct tendency was a different approach to the Serbian national literary heritage. That approach amounted to displacement of the canonical plays from their historically fixed contexts and their ‘topicalization’; they were translated into the present tense, calling to mind Michael Bennett’s observation that ‘narration of the past is largely an act of translation’.^[29] In 1999, the year of NATO’s bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, director Gorčin Stojanović staged Jovan Sterija Popović’s ‘Patriots’ (Rodoljupci). Described as ‘a jolly play in five acts’ the piece was also seen as a ‘private history’ of the Serbian national movement in the time of the Habsburg Empire. The play had been inspired by the revolutionary events of 1848-1849 and is a paradigmatic comedy in Serbia’s literary canon.^[30] It deals with the hypocrisy of trading on patriotism and other people’s lives, with obvious potential to be related to the context of current political hypocrisies. The approach to currency is now different, with almost everything in the production distanced from the play’s historical context to be set instead in a bleak contemporary interior with features such as fire-hydrants, vents, fire-escapes and emergency exits. Such an approach to the national literary canon establishes a dialogue between the national past and the present, again insisting albeit by different means on the longevity of the nation while refusing to exclude its less glorious moments and controversies.

Other notable examples of ‘revisiting’ the national literary heritage and newly interpreting the national past include productions focusing on the more or less controversial biographies of national leaders, such as Knez Pavle by Slobodan Selenić (Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Belgrade, 1991, d: Dimitrije Jovanović); Knez Mihailo by Svetlana Velmar Janković (Yugoslav Drama Theatre, 1996, d: Dimitrije Jovanović); or Ðeneral Milan Nedić by Siniša Kovačević (Zvezdara Theatre, Belgrade, 1992, d: Jovica Pavić). Relevant too in this context are works by contemporary authors which include many historically important figures or literary heroes. I mention only Je li bilo kneževe večere written and directed by Vida Ognjenović (National Theatre Belgrade, 1990); Zmaj od Srbije by Miladin Ševarlić (National Theatre Niš, 1994, d: Slavenko Saletović); Srpska Atina written and directed by Radoslav Dorić (Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad, 1994); Vožd Karađorđe i Knez Miloš by Žarko Komanin (National Theatre, Belgrade, 1994, d: Gradimir Mirković); Izvanjac by Igor Bojović (Montenegrin National Theatre, Podgorica, 1995, d: Jovica Pavić); Banović Strahinja by Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz (City Theatre Budva, 1996, d: Nikita Milivojević); Stefan Dušan by Mile Kordić (Savez dramskih umetnika Srbije (SDUS), Užice, 1997, d: Miodrag Milanović); and Kako zasmejati gospodara by Vida Ognjenović (National Theatre Užice, 1998, d: Kokan Mladenović). A very important place was then claimed by new or ‘revised’ readings of the historical events of World War One, for example, in 1918 by Božidar Zečević (Theatre Joakim Vujić, Kragujevac, 1990, d: Aleksandar Lukać), Rado ide Srbin u vojnike by Bora Ćosić (National Theatre Užice, 1992, d: Branko Popović); or Veliki dan by Slobodan Stojanović (Belgrade Drama Theatre, 1999, d: Radoslav Dorić).

Some remarkable returns to Yugoslav literary classics included productions based on works by important literary figures like Ivo Andrić, Petar II Petrović Njegoš, Miloš Crnjanski or Meša Selimović: Devojka modre kose written and directed by Vida Ognjenović (Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Belgrade, 1993), which is based on a short story by Ivo Andrić; Gospođica by Ivo Andrić (KPGT, Belgrade, 1995, d: Ljubiša Ristić); Prokleta avlija by Ivo Andrić (Kruševac Theatre, 1999, d: Nebojša Bradić); Lažni car Šćepan Mali by Petar II Petrović Njegoš (Yugoslav Drama Theatre and Theatre City Budva, 1993, d: Dejan Mijač); Gorski vijenac by Petar II Petrović Njegoš, (Montenegrin National Theatre, Podgorica, 1997, d: Branislav Mićunović); Maska by Miloš Crnjanski (National Theatre, Belgrade, 1993, d: Nikita Milivojević); or Derviš i smrt by Meša Selimović (Kruševac Theatre, 1995, d: Nebojša Bradić).

Works by the classical Serbian comediographers Jovan Sterija Popović (1806-1856) and especially Branislav Nušić (1864-1938) whose work was much in demand, enjoyed a privileged position in the repertoire. They offered both comic relief and room to discuss contemporary matters in a way that would not antagonize audiences.^[31] In addition to the ever topical Rodoljupci mentioned above, other notable productions of comedies by Jovan Sterija Popović (all directed by Egon Savin) included Laža i paralaža (Serbian National Theatre, Novi Sad, 1991, and Atelje 212, Belgrade, 1993); Kir Janja (National Theatre, Belgrade, 1992); and Pokondirena tikva (National Theatre, Belgrade, 1998).

I would argue that there were two basic ideological reasons for the never-ending return of the classics to Serbian stages during the 1990s. On the one hand, with their enduring nature the classics manage in a process of naturalization to reassure audiences that both good and evil are timeless. On the other hand, a process of suppression helps audiences forget their own time and its traumas, allowing them to escape into a mythical golden past, at least for a time. Examples of different paths of return to the classics not only in terms of interpretation, but ideologically too include productions based on plays by Shakespeare and Molière, for example ‘Troilus and Cressida’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, or ‘The Misanthrope’ and ‘The School for Wives’. I shall go into more detail in due course to describe the phenomenon in Serbian theatre of the 1990s.

Shakespeare’s cynical assessment in ‘Troilus and Cressida’ of disenchantment with the futility of war and its fragile morality has often proved successful in communicating resentment of social reality. The play contains allusions to the continuing imperial conflict between England and Spain following the defeat of the Invincible Armada. In the fourth year of the Wars of Yugoslav Succession (1994) it seemed that unlimited possibilities for interpretation had inspired director Dejan Mijač to stage Shakespeare’s ‘problem play’ in Belgrade and set it during the siege of Sarajevo at some time halfway between the Vance-Owen plan and the Dayton accords. His staging was received as a work of remarkable value, intellectually challenging and effectively amusing while still artistically sublimating present everyday experience.^[32] The classical heroes and minor characters wore a rag-bag of remnants of the archaeological past, taking on the appearance of epic warriors from ancient ceramic pots and marble statues. At the same time, they seemed like invisible traces of the traumatic present and visible signs of the fictional future, having been mostly adopted from cyberpunk literature and apocalyptic visions of the sort of militant society sustained by the contemporaries of Mad Max.

By comparison with ‘Troilus and Cressida’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is less likely to tackle contemporary ethical matters. The play usually serves as an escapist manifesto; it is a spectacle of forgetfulness. That certainly applies to the production by Nikita Milivojević for the Budva Theatre City festival, which was founded in 1987 (Grad teatar Budva).^[33] Milivojević’s production took place sometime between the Dayton accords and the NATO military intervention in Yugoslavia. Within ‘rump’ Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which consisted of Serbia and Montenegro, Budva’s cultural importance grew considerably during the 1990s. Economic sanctions were imposed by the international community and there was an overall decline in buying power. Furthermore, rigorous visa regimes for the people of Serbia and Montenegro, who had become accustomed to spending their summer holidays in Greece, Spain, Italy or tropical destinations (not to mention Croatia and Slovenia) forced them to go to the Montenegrin summer resorts instead. Budva became the preferred choice of theatre lovers, and under the auspices of the Montenegrin government the Theatre City festival somehow managed to present attractive and dynamic programmes, so that during more successful seasons it would become a true centre of the theatre in what remained of Yugoslavia. From its first seasons the festival used the medieval fortress called the Citadel, among other unconventional spaces selected by directors and producers of guest performances—places like the island of St Nicholas or sites in neighbouring towns along the Montenegrin Riviera. The set design for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (San letnje noći) by Miodrag Tabački was described as ‘perhaps the most spectacular’ in his entire career and was compared with the empaquetage projects of Christo Javacheff.^[34] Two enormous ostriches, heads buried in the ground, symbolically communicated the ‘midsummer night’s dream’, reminding the cheerful and well-tanned festival audiences that they were not the only ones inclined to bury their heads in the sand of Budva’s beaches when faced with an unpleasant social truth. As noted by Ivan Čolović in his description of the festival’s opening ceremony in 1996, ‘The masters of the Theatre City received a mandate in this other reality. Their job is not to change and eventually improve the reality, but to ritually expel it from the city.’^[35] So it was that during the festival and within the safe confines of Budva’s ancient walls, the City Theatre could abolish the ‘real world’, forgetting about it completely for fifty days and nights. In its unique settings audiences were surrounded by the aura of what Elinor Fuchs called ‘you’ll-never-be-here-againness’.^[36] Balancing those opposite tendencies of engaging with contemporary social reality and escaping from it—at least temporarily—other theatre makers, both in institutional theatres and on independent stages, made their artistic statements by revisiting Shakespeare’s timeless works.^[37]

As for Molière, the greatest French comediographer, his story of ‘The Misanthrope’ is one of moral uprightness and stubbornness, of non-compliance with lies and hypocrisy in a time of majority rule. It is also a story of the right to one’s own opinion, one’s own attitude—in fact of the right to be in the minority. ‘The Misanthrope’ (Mizantrop) as staged by Dejan Mijač for the Yugoslav Drama Theatre in 1997 was a didactic spectacle, an aestheticized spoonful of medicine against hypocrisy. In another lucid design by Miodrag Tabački the mimesis of architecture from Molière’s era combined with shaggy surfaces had the surrealist texture of Meret Oppenheim’s famous ‘Luncheon in Fur’ tea cup of 1936. Such Tapezierung (upholstering) had the additional purpose of creating another metaphor for the social reality of the 1990s by isolating the protagonists of a salon piece from the reality of the outside world. The suggestion was that the salon in question was indeed ‘a relic of a world which is collapsing’.^[38] The production was born into a life that was turbulent right from the beginning. Its premiere was held on 12 February 1997, during the dramatic days of mass civic demonstrations and student revolts against the government’s election fraud.^[39]

In fact, Belgrade was a city under occupation and few Belgraders cared to take part in any kind of public entertainment, theatre included.^[40] On 17 October 1997 a dark cloud of smoke rose into the sky over the city as fire destroyed the Yugoslav Drama Theatre—although it has since been fully restored. It also consumed the earthly remains of Molière’s salon, which literally collapsed into dust.

On the other hand, ‘The School for Wives’ (Škola za žene) directed by Zoran Ratković and staged in Belgrade somewhat earlier by Atelje 212 (1994) was a spectacle based on similar principles to those behind ‘The Misanthrope’. Božana Jovanović’s lavish costumes nicely evoked Molière’s era, with the curly wigs of early baroque and other recognizable details of the sort which led Roland Barthes to remark that ‘the whole of Molière is seen in a doctor’s ruff’.^[41]Such props provide a safe distance and create the kind of ‘alienation effect’ so characteristic of theatre which instead of aspiring to topicality and relevance in the present avoids ethical questions and aesthetic enigmas, preferring simply to entertain the audience. In ‘The School for Wives’ the plot revolves around the project of the middle-aged bachelor Arnolphe to groom his young ward to be a perfectly faithful and virtuous wife, and the impossibility of his succeeding in his project. ‘The School for Wives’ may be considered one of Molière’s emancipatory pieces because like ‘The Misanthrope’ it advocates a form of human emancipation—this time the right to free choice in love. However, within the overall context of the 1990s this production by Atelje 212 cannot be considered to have been particularly emancipatory.

The revolutionary 1960s had seen an initial enthusiasm in Belgrade for new trends in theatre, which resulted in both the creation of Atelje 212 and the Bitef Festival.^[42] In the 1990s the demise of the old revolutionary zeal had led to a degree of refocusing of the repertory onto boulevard and lighter subjects among which the eternal battle of the sexes became dominant. Nevertheless, such emphasis did not give the impression that there was any concrete goal. There seemed to be no form of social emancipation for either side in the conflict; rather, if anything it confirmed the status quo, with the dominant patriarchal model firmly in place, of gender relations based on heterosexual relationships and the institution of marriage. It would seem then that motives for watching such theatre might have been dangerously close to those for following South American soap operas on television. This escapist mode of theatre saw the topicality of the classics in the inherent and therefore eternal human flaws dissected in the plays rather than because ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’. That approach often served as a justification for an exclusive preoccupation with amusing an audience with (non-political) comic plots.

As was the case with the works by Shakespeare as well as many other classical authors, including Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Gorki, Kafka, and Oscar Wilde, Hendrik Ibsen, Georg Büchner, Friedrich Schiller, Pierre Corneille, Edmond Rostand, Webster, Rabelais or Dante, Molière’s works were ‘revisited’ either to serve as social commentaries or to offer a place of escape and comfort, often being used to serve both purposes simultaneously.

A different approach to the legacy of ‘world theatre’ was adopted in the admittedly rare attempts to communicate the contemporary concerns of the theatrical community in Serbia through the narratives they borrowed from theatre history. So far, I have discussed variations in approaches to the works of literary classics and their application in the overall social context of 1990s Serbia. However, contemporary Serbian author Nebojša Romčević addressed a ‘classical subject’ rather differently. He wrote a biographical play, Karolina Nojber about the actress who was both one of Germany’s first female directors and a theatre manager who ran her own acting company. Carolina Neuber (1697-1760) was acknowledged as a reformer of the German theatre of her time and is an undisputedly authoritative figure in the history of the theatre of another dominant European culture. In a certain sense she is herself a ‘drama classic’. The premiere of Karolina Nojber was on 10 August 1998 at the festival Grad teatar Budva. Verdicts on the topicality of Romčević’s play noted its difference from the currently dominant model in Serbian dramaturgy, namely that it was certainly not ‘spoiled’ by subjects more properly belonging to the sphere of journalism, popular jokes, daily intrigues, political scandals, or parodies of the so-called social reality.^[43] That sufficed to arouse great interest from theatre professionals; in her own battle to reform popular theatrical entertainment and her arch-enemy, the touring comedian Hanswurst,^[44] Neuber had advocated major changes of repertoire and called for the appearance on the stages of Germany of classic French plays by Corneille and Racine. In the context of Serbia of the 1990s this was acknowledged by dedicated professionals as a struggle for an artistic theatre against populists and their abuse of popular taste, which as far as his colleagues were concerned made Romčević’s a topical piece. The aesthetic clash between Carolina Neuber and Hanswurst became a metaphor for organized resistance by ‘true theatre artists’ to the debased taste apparent in theatres in Serbia and their social surroundings.

Theatre and the Present. War and Social Reality of the 1990s on the Stage

The 1990s have been described by certain authors as the ‘last decade’^[45] in which the arts in Serbia, including the theatre, were characterized by two mechanisms of isolation. There was external isolation, in that access was blocked to the zones of global exchange of information, experience, commodities, and labour; and there was internal isolation in the sense that artists isolated themselves^[46] using mechanisms mainly communicated through some form of ‘active’ escapism’.^[47] It may be concluded that the theatre, especially state-funded theatre, found itself in an ambivalent position balanced as if on a swing between self-proclaimed engagement and overt escapism. On the one hand there was the adopted convention or unwritten rule (or myth, in Barthesian terms) that serious theatre of artistic merit must be engaged in a meaningful dialogue with social reality. For instance, Aleksandra Jovićević had remarked that ‘the role of the playwright has from time immemorial signified reflection on universal problems and persistent moral and social engagement’,^[48] a view explaining the importance attached in the 1990s to the works of contemporary authors such as Biljana Srbljanović, Goran Marković, Nebojša Romčević, Vladimir Arsenijević, and the Macedonian author Dejan Dukovski.^[49]

The ethical questions raised by those and other authors about personal and collective responsibility for the circumstances and consequences of life under Milošević’s regime in Serbia did not remain in the ‘ghetto’ of independent theatre production. As we have seen, those matters might have been unpopular in the overall context of mainstream theatre production, in accordance with Jovan Cirilov’s remark that ‘in such complex circumstances, the theatre adopted the attitude that the role of art was not to criticize the regime directly, or even to concern itself with it at all’.^[50] And yet, they were present, occasionally even occupying a prominent place in the repertoire. Among the most ambitious projects was the Yugoslav Drama Theatre’s production of ‘The Last Days of Mankind’ (Poslednji dani čovećanstva) by Karl Kraus. Its adaptation by Nenad Prokić was staged in 1994 at the climax of the dissolution of formerly Austro-Hungarian Bosnia and Herzegovina and drew a parallel between Austro-Hungarian and Serbian notions of totalitarianism. Kraus, portrayed by actor Predrag Ejdus, addressed the audience directly with the question: ‘And what shall we do with Dubrovnik, Vukovar and Srebrenica?’ As an anti-authoritarian and antiwar statement ‘The Last Days of Mankind’ displayed similar intentions as other 1990s productions by publicly funded theatres in Serbia.^[51] Certainly we should include here the numerous stagings of works by Bertolt Brecht, the undisputed authority on authoritarian political regimes, social hypocrisy, and turbulence. The number and variety of such productions, especially in 1998 during the 100^th anniversary year of Brecht’s birth, testifies that theatre in Serbia in the period did not succumb to what Frederic Jameson called ‘Brecht fatigue’.^[52] In mainstream theatres, works like ‘The Dresser’, ‘Taking Sides’, ‘The Handyman’, ‘Guests’ by internationally renowned contemporary British author Ronald Harwood often served as a form of social commentary. That was largely due to Harwood’s sympathetic or, rather neutral attitude to armed conflict in former Yugoslavia.

It appears that the National Theatre in Belgrade, the ‘beacon’ of national theatrical culture, displayed a high level of antiwar engagement only during the NATO military intervention, known as Operation Allied Force from 24 March 24 to 10 June 1999. The theatre building, conveniently located on the main central square (Trg Republike) even carried a conspicuous ‘target’ as a symbol of resistance to that ill-famed military campaign. The Christian feast day Good Friday, which in 1999 fell on 9 April saw a performance of ‘The Persians’ by Aeschylus (d: Božidar Ðurović) at the National Theatre. Unlike the other productions which premiered in Belgrade’s theatres during the NATO operation and were rehearsed before 24 March, the hastily produced ‘Persians’ was a direct response to the circumstances of the war, and an overtly political statement. It was announced as a ‘work which presents the inevitable demise of a powerful and arrogant conqueror in the battle against the small, proud and brave people who defend their country and their freedom’.^[53] An earlier attempt by the same company at a direct response to the war in Yugoslavia was the announcement that Dejan Mijač would direct Vožnja ćunom ili komad za film o ratu based on Peter Handke’s 1996 essay A Journey to the Rivers. Justice for Serbia.^[54] However, rehearsals were suspended and the production never came to life. Handke had high media visibility in Serbia because of his pro-Serbian attitude during the wars in former Yugoslavia, but his works were deemed too ‘intellectual’ and therefore unattractive for audiences and so remained outside the realm of publicly funded theatre. The only opportunities for Serbian audiences to see Handke’s plays were provided by the semi-independent theatre company KPGT (Kazalište Pozorište Gledališče Teatar) led by theatre director and active politician Ljubiša Ristić, who was president of the pro-Milošević party Jugoslovenska Levica (Yugoslav Left, JUL).^[55] In autumn 1999 KPGT staged five productions based on Handke’s works, including Kaspar, Publikumsbeschimpfung and Der Ritt über den Bodensee.

According to Ksenija Radulović the more important problem is that both in society at large and among theatre professionals the period of the bombing campaign, once it had ended, failed to prompt questioning of all the circumstances and causes that had led to the bombing in the first place and which resulted in ‘devastation and collapse of the value system of an entire country’.^[56]

The few theatre productions which somehow communicated the experience of day-to-day life in Serbia during the NATO operation left ephemeral traces in the theatrical life of the decade, including the Atelje 212 productions of Goran Marković’s play Parovi, ‘Collateral Damage’ (Kolateralna šteta) by Tariq Ali, Howard Brenton and Andy de la Tour, and Radoslav Pavlovic’s 11 nedelja in the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, all staged in Belgrade.

The theme lying at the heart of the wave of ‘new realism’^[57] in 1990s Serbian theatre was the dissolution of both the traditional and modern family, including the problems of forced migration during the war and the ‘pseudo-war’. For his first novel ‘In the Hold’, Vladimir Arsenijević (born in 1965) received the NIN Award for the novel of the year, the youngest winner in the award’s history.^[58]The novel, which has been translated into more than twenty languages and judged as ‘more dramatic than its dramatization’^[59] is essentially a convincing testimony from Belgrade about the civilian background of the 1991 war in Croatia. It includes a sequence of authentic episodes about the tragic survival of the thirty-something generation mutilated by war, and according to critic Željko Jovanović, hiding from mobilisation, the return of the wounded, and escape from the all-consuming madness were merely the starting points for a story covering almost unbearably painful subject matter. The theatre adaptation directed by Nikita Milivojević in 1996 suggested no distinction between fiction and ‘our overwhelming reality, barely conceivable even by the most imaginative alcoholic’.^[60]

The critical reception of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre’s production of Arsenijević’s U potpalublju indeed raised the question of how theatre fiction could ever match the incredible goings-on found in everyday life. In fact the lives of almost everyone in the audience were more turbulent and dramatic than those of the characters on stage who were attempting (with limited success) to communicate the experience of daily life in Serbia in the 1990s.

Conclusion. The Elusive Catharsis

In its present circumstances theatre in Serbia suffers from problems both inherited from its specific position in the 1990s and the sort of difficulties currently faced by public theatres throughout the world. In Serbia’s specifically postsocialist context politicians who have shut down hundreds of factories and laid off thousands of workers have been reluctant to do the same to publicly funded theatres, fearing that they would be accused of threatening national culture. However, theatre professionals too have remained reluctant to acknowledge the fact that theatre has become a minority choice in the face of competition for audiences’ attention and leisure time from an almost endless output of products of the cultural industry. Paradoxically, although both artistic motivation and available resources were affected by the extremeness of the social circumstances during the domestic administration of Milošević’s officials, influenced as they were by the international community, foreign foundations and diplomatic missions, the variety of productions and the artistic achievements of theatrical professionals then were all visibly greater than they are today. The post-Milošević governments of the early 2000s shifted the focus of their theatrical expenditure from high-quality productions to refurbishment of the old and dilapidated theatre buildings inherited from socialist times. Sadly, it must be recorded that their decisions were additionally motivated by the ample opportunities for corruption and misappropriation apparently inevitably attendant upon such endeavours. No new theatres were built but existing ones, at least those in Belgrade as the economic and cultural capital of the country, underwent considerable ‘gentrification’ which rather unexpectedly affected dramatic productions adversely, because less money was left over to spend on the actual productions. Regional and national tours by repertory companies, once particularly encouraged and indeed subsidized by the communist authorities, have become almost impossible because of prohibitive cost. Smaller towns especially are badly affected by drastically reduced and irregular theatre programming. The overall tendency to marginalize theatre as an artistic and social institution goes hand in hand with the cultural consequences of globalization visible in the tendency towards creating uniformity in theatre production. The emphasis in repertory has increasingly been laid on international hits, fads and bestsellers, as well as on the adoption of styles of acting borrowed from film and television. On the other hand the highly politicized nature of theatre seen in its dependency on current whims, and often on the private needs and interests of power elites, imposes a sense of tacit censorship and impossibility of challenging the prevailing consensus on what can and cannot be said and done in the theatre. Some producers rely on precisely such an atmosphere to provoke a sense of political controversy with projects focusing on sensitive political topics and protagonists, for example the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić in 2003, the independence of Kosovo, or the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

At the same time, reflection of the current social circumstances and the difficult legacy of the 1990s remains largely outside publicly funded theatre but is addressed only sporadically by ‘independent’ theatre groups. Feminism, the LGBT movement, environmentalism, human rights, solidarity with the unemployed, the impoverished, and sufferers from discrimination; the fate of refugees, the matter of domestic violence and other ‘unpleasant’ topics remain largely in the ghetto of the ‘independent’ theatre scene, which is once again—or perhaps could be said to have remained—largely dependent on foreign donations and occasional and minuscule government grants. The impossibility of maintaining any continuity of independent work has caused a mass exodus of talent, during the 2000s and after, to more prosperous European and overseas countries. It may be claimed that some of the best Serbian theatre professionals now work largely outside Serbia, and their absence greatly affects the shape of the national theatre production.

After everything that happened in Yugoslavia and Serbia in the 1990s, and after the cosmetic interventions in its ‘infrastructure’ in the 2000s, theatre is now an under-funded, weakened and marginalized form of public entertainment which aspires merely to its own economic survival in circumstances which are generally unfavourable. It is increasingly difficult to sell theatre tickets to audiences who are both short of money and indifferent anyway, and who have less and less free time and less and less steady incomes. From that perspective it seems, again somewhat paradoxically, that Serbian theatre in the 1990s with all its difficulties and setbacks was more interested in high quality theatre than it is today and achieved superior artistic results, however sporadic they might have seemed. In the 1990s what was lacking in resources was made up for in creativity and motivation, but today playhouses might look much better and are more comfortable than in the 1990s but they have lost their importance; and audiences are ever decreasing. Operating as inward-looking enclaves suffering from a kind of institutional autism, theatres are more marginalized than they have ever been since 1945. Accordingly, it is increasingly difficult for producers to predict and address the needs and expectations of audiences. The overall picture in Serbia conforms to the assessment of cultural policies in postcommunist countries which reveal more continuity than discontinuity and more effort to sustain the existing inherited infrastructure than to make it more effective by means of institutional and systemic reform. Today, to legitimize itself nationalist politics has less need for theatre than in other periods of history, even as recent as the 1990s. In fact the major reason for the marginalization of theatre is that politicians are increasingly able to rely on mass media to assert their influence.

The 1990s was a formative period for the political paradigms and the social reality which Serbia experiences today. The main paradox, and in my opinion the most interesting thing about publicly funded theatre in Serbia in the 1990s, is that whatever they did, whichever strategy they opted for to deal with social reality, they were still operating within the same system which sustained the military operations—the system which guaranteed their very existence and used them to embed a sense of normality in a social climate of permanent crisis. What eventually connected the ‘free’ territories of the theatre world in 1990s Serbia to those under occupation by Milošević’s ‘postmodern’ political regime was the cry for catharsis—a catharsis which, despite the political changes of the year 2000, has never actually occurred.