A theatrical performance should present to the audience the content and problem for which it, and not some other audience elsewhere, is responsible, and it should also point out the guilt and/or responsibility of the so-called social elite of that climate, says the respected theater director, writer and columnist Zlatko Paković.
That this is exactly what he is guided by is shown by his entire oeuvre so far, which is why he often received threats and comments of displeasure from the largest official addresses, and last year in Montenegro his performance was prevented. There are open questions about whether censorship happened, whether freedom of expression and creativity is directly threatened, whether works of art are still ordered, paid for and banned...
Hired to stage the play "Pier Paolo Pasolini directs the Last Judgment" as an author, i.e. director and screenwriter, a few rehearsals before the announced premiere, the producer Secretariat for Culture and Sports of the Capital City of Podgorica canceled support and automatically suspended work on the play, taking away the space for rehearsals, performance of the premiere, but also accommodation for Paković. "Vijesti" reported on all this in a timely manner, and the director informed about the current events through his Facebook profile. And as he announced in one of his speeches, he proved that "a demonstration of freedom is possible even in Podgorica".
It was impossible to find a free stage, so the play was performed in front of about 40 people in a small space of the "Empty Space" Drama Studio, a leader in Montenegrin independent production. Also, a live broadcast was carried out via the YouTube channel, as well as the "Vijesti" portal, so the dress rehearsal was watched online by thousands of viewers on 5.300 devices, not only in the country, but also far beyond the borders of Montenegro. The organization was taken over by the "Corifej Theater" from Kolašin, which is run by the director Zoran Rakočević. This whole situation largely characterized the events in the field of culture and art in Montenegro and showed the current situation and their position in society.
And while Podgorica almost succeeded in expelling him, invitations from numerous European addresses are arriving for Paković. A few days ago, his new play "Tomb for Boris Davidovič, as we are building it today" premiered in Zenica, based on the motifs of anti-Stalinist prose. Danila Kiša in the Bosnian National Theatre, and begins work on the play "Katalin Ladik experiences a nervous breakdown, quits her job as a bank clerk and becomes a conceptual artist" in the "Deže Kostolanji" theater from Subotica.
Paković speaks for "Vijesti" about the events in Podgorica, the situation in Montenegro, the task and importance of the theater, the responsibility that the theater has in all spheres, and also in the spectacle of climate change, and announces new performances of the disputed play.
One of the things that marked the cultural and artistic scene in Montenegro, perhaps your work during 2022, is the play "Pier Paolo Pasolini directs the Last Judgment" which, due to the cancellation of the support of the Culture Secretariat of the Capital City, premiered online. After all, how do you perceive the whole process now and, in your opinion, did censorship happen?
Let's call a thing by its official name: that show was suddenly canceled by the producer ten days before the scheduled premiere. In the middle of the rehearsal, he sent a certified document to the author and director of the play by courier about the momentary termination of cooperation, suspension of work, loss of the right to use the rehearsal space, as well as his immediate eviction from the rented apartment. This is a unique example of the banning of a theatrical performance in Europe in the 21st century, certified by the stamp of a cultural institution. Here, it's an identity card of the capital of Montenegro in the late summer of 2022.
How was the cooperation with the actors and the rest of the crew? It seems that in some situations it has become courage to persevere in theatrical creation, what does this say and is it the opposite of a series of guaranteed rights and freedoms that are (allegedly) respected in democratic societies?
The cooperation with the actors who stayed with me the whole time in the fight against the violence of a hanged city and palanquin government, which treats every form of criticism with barbaric recklessness, was magnificent. Those five smart and talented, brave young people knowingly risked their engagements, and probably their careers, in all the institutions that are under the paws of DPS or SPC. I pronounce the names of those wonderful people here with the deepest sincerity: Anđelija Rondović, Ilija Gajević, Slaviša Grubiša, Pavle Prelević, Danica Rajković. Together with me, they raised their dramatic voice against the terrible situation in which the guardians of the law are the greatest criminals, and the guardians of morality are the worst nothingness. We exposed the two supporting pillars of Montenegrin disintegration and disintegration, disunity and hatred, which drives fear into the bones: Montenegrin and Serbian narcissism and Nazism...
In your opinion, does the theater in Montenegro stand up to anyone when it comes to the themes and expressions used in order for the work to be accepted, supported and have an audience?
The most influential, most famous Montenegrin theater artists have just spoiled the government and with their servility have given it the right to treat their work sadistically. That theatrical elite, the open world is a disgraceful one, and its works of art are examples of masochism and cowardice. That, in turn, pampered, the theatrical crème de la crème of Montenegro, is tied to the power of the DPS or SPC by an umbilical cord and behaves like that, like a premature baby. In Montenegro, responsible theater artists can be counted on the fingers, just like in Serbia.
What does the attitude of the authorities and political structures in the situation "Pier Paolo Pasolini directs the Last Judgment" say about society and the state?
Society and the state have been usurped and divided, and from that stupid, irrational and tearing division and friction, both mafia-organized structures, DPS and SPC, squeeze profit like honey for themselves. The elites of those conflicting parties, perversely, do business with each other. While they argue with the electorate and spit in each other's faces in front of the world, they shake hands and ducats lie on the counters.
Is there any indication that the play "PPPazolini directs the Terrible Court" will soon be performed somewhere again, online or live, in Montenegro or abroad?
Starting in the spring, we will play that show regularly in spaces where theater plays have not been performed until now.
You were almost expelled from Podgorica, and on the other hand, in Rotterdam you are directing the play "What's Erasmus to Us, or We to Erasmus?" (What Erasmus (of Rotterdam) is to us and what we are to Erasmus) which will premiere on March 27, and you will give two lectures at the world's largest community arts festival, Community arts (ICAF). You are also invited to hold a masterclass for students in Brussels. What did you discuss with the students and was there anything they were particularly interested in?
First of all, I told them that theater art is essentially political. Namely, the aesthetics of the theater inherently implies a social effect. Theater is a critical, critical art by invitation. In this sense, I spoke to the Belgian students about the fact that a theater performance should present to the audience that content, that problem for which that audience (and not some other and elsewhere) is responsible. More precisely, the theater should present to the audience that content for which, or in front of which, the elite of its society is guilty. To illustrate this, I also analyzed two famous Belgian plays, plays by two respected Belgian theater makers, Jan Fabra i Wim Vandekejbus, showing how they simply avoided asking key questions about the responsibility of their own society, even though the theme of their own plays led them right there.
Your directorial style is recognizable by the fact that you raise topics of social importance without self-censorship, those that can also be characterized as "facing the past". How important is that and why, do you feel it is your responsibility, given that as a director you have a certain public influence and a larger domain of spreading words, thoughts, and attitudes?
Above all, I face the future; all the time with a prevented future, hindered, therefore retarded by our future. For the future to emerge on the horizon, it must be provoked by means opposite to those that brought us to this historical impasse, to this temporal deadness. For almost half a century we have been revolving around the same ideologues and idols: nationalism, religious fanaticism, profit relationship, interest as interest, efficiency as achievement, etc. Now, such an organization and this demand has been transferred to the organization of the artistic work, namely, to poetics, so poets yearn for the efficiency of the poem and its profitability, and the theater workers in that I do not waste words.
The premiere of the play "Tomb for Boris Davidovič, as we are building it today" was held at the Bosnian National Theater in Zenica, according to, as you say, "the motifs of Danilo Kish's anti-Stalinist prose". Speaking about it, you said that it was a tribute to man's rebellion and courage to stand against the state and ideological terror, which was once embodied by Stalinism. Today, neoliberal capitalism is a global ideology. How much has changed in the meantime on a global level and are the (wrong) matrices from previous centuries repeating themselves, which led to certain destructions, war, economic, mental...?
The whole edifice of Boris Davidovič's confession rests on a lie squeezed out of him by the worst torture, first on the body, then torture on the conscience. His interrogator Fedyukin knows as well as Boris Davidovich himself, that all this, the entire text of the confession that Boris Davidovich has to learn by heart, is the most ordinary fiction. Fedjukin wrote that fictional prose of Boris Davidovič's self-accusation - as Danilo Kiš testifies - on some ten densely typed pages during the long hours of the night.
He made a huge narrative effort to draw logical, realistic, documentary conclusions based on fictitious conditions that will preserve the rigor and consistency of revolutionary justice and the position of those who share that justice. Therefore, the positions of those who distribute such and such justice. Namely, there are no officials in the service of justice, but justice exists in the service of officials. There I find a similarity between that time from the thirties of the last century and our time, ninety years later.
But, despite that, I also see one difference, a huge difference, which is systematically forgotten today. With bitterness, with horror, I have to say something heretical, completely heretical and very dangerous, therefore aware of that danger. I want to say that I can clearly imagine how that interrogator Fedyukin, a Stalinist, appears before us in our theater, in our time, to be called to an examination of conscience by him, in our time. Fedyukin - it's scary - could tell us with a calm soul: how long will you shamelessly lie in front of the audience? How long? For you, the lie about communism serves to justify all the crimes you commit every day in your anti-communist, fascist, Nazi, religious, capitalist manner.
The sins of Stalinism, monstrous trials, false testimonies, false self-criticism, the black book of communism... your mouth is full of that, and you forget that when you talk about it, you are talking about the distant past, not about your own present! But do you ever tell your dear audience, your tame public, how many millions of workers lived a dignified life back then, which your slave labor force today cannot even imagine? Nobody can even dream of that today!
Do you ever talk about it, you Scheherazade of capitalism?! Anyway, how many workers do you have here in the audience? How much? Let's count them, here and now? Not a single one. And do you know how many workers were in the audience in the theaters from those dark times you lie about here? Do you know how many of them were members of libraries and attended classical music concerts? Is it possible today for a girl from your Montenegrin/Bosnian/Serbian hinterland to study for a doctorate in art history or reach a professorship at the most prestigious faculties, as was possible in the times of the darkest Stalinist terror?
You are a group of privileged people who can afford a ticket to a theater show one day! What are you thinking? You have so many identities and not a single idea in front of your nose. How many euros do you have in your pocket before the precarious future of your children? Why don't you state loud and clear before the audience the bare fact that he lives in an age where children can, at best, reproduce the social status of their parents, the class status of the families they come from? That is your important freedom; those are your famous human rights! Without any possibility of social dynamics. Unless, of course, your children are not recruited in time to become politicians or criminals, which is actually one and the same for you.
About the responsibility of the theater in the spectacle of climate change
The essay "On Theater's Responsibility in the Spectacle of Climate Change" has just been published in one of the most important theater magazines in the world, the most important American theater magazine, The Drama Review (TDR). Could you give readers a brief overview of what you've been writing about?
One way to screw things up is to deliberately give them the wrong name. This semantic fraud always hides some big fraud in reality. It is the same with the term "climate change". It has been established in the last twenty years, it is also used by NASA and the highest body of the United Nations for the given problem, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Namely, that term introduced more into science Milutin Milankovic, it refers to a natural process of long duration, which is measured in thousands of years. And now it was suddenly introduced instead of the term "global warming", in order to cover up the cause of those drastic changes in nature, which is not natural.
Namely, to use a term that describes a natural process (of long duration) for a problem that arises not as a natural process, but as an inevitable reaction of nature to anti-natural actions, and that in a short, very short period of time, means providing positions to those who cause that excessive, irrational and extremely profitable exploitation of nature that leads to almost inevitable and unprecedented ecological disaster. I have described a few key cases that show how the most expensive and loudest theater performances fall short of the aforementioned semantic hochstapleray (which hides the real, political and economic hochstapleray) and how they spectacularize the topic of ecological disaster, dealing with the consequences of the destruction of the world, but not with its profitable cause.
Katalin Ladik experiences a nervous breakdown and becomes a conceptual artist
Director Andraš Urban, manager of the "Deže Kostolanji" theater from Subotica, announces that towards the end of the season you will be directing in that theater for the third time, and the play will be dedicated to the image and work of the great Yugoslav and Hungarian performance artist and poet Katalin Ladik. Can you say something about that work in progress?
The curiosity is, of course, that Katalin Ladik herself will participate in that show as a performer. The content of that future play, entitled "Katalin Ladik experiences a nervous breakdown, quits her job as a bank clerk and becomes a conceptual artist", in short, I will give in the form of a question, because that's what the play will be, a play-question: What moment is that? - is it a moment? - when a man realizes that he has become an artist? Is it a matter of decision - to be, to live, to act as an artist? The basis of a work of art is a decision.
At the basis of artistic activity in the world is a decision; a decision that establishes a certain difference - the difference of artistic activity in society, nature and the cosmos, in relation to every other type of activity. Does a work of art necessarily imply an author who has an artistic existence? What is artistic existence anyway? One artistic existence, is it one particular, unrepeatable authenticity? Does the conscious decision to choose art as a means of communication mean sacrificing the usual comforts of civic existence? Does that decision necessarily imply resistance? Is the essence of that decision non-conformist?
These are the key questions I ask myself according to Katalin Ladik's model of life and work, and, above all, according to her clear decision to end her civil existence and embark on the adventure of an authentic artistic existence. With her decision to become a conceptual artist, Katalin Ladik provoked all the dominant contexts of that era: patriarchy, aesthetic conservatism, ideological rigidity.
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