The literary program of the 38th Grad Teatar Festival continued last night at the Poets' Square in Budva with the presentation of the monograph "San na javi - about theater from this end of the world", dedicated to the actress Varja Đukić.
Varja Đukić, Aleksandar Milosavljević, theater critic and theatrologist, editor of the edition, and prof. Janko Ljumović, M.Sc., who was in the role of moderator.
Ljumović titled the first part of the conversation "Varja Đukić and Grad Theater", reminding the audience of her roles in festival productions and co-productions of Grad Theater such as "Banović Strahinja" directed by Nikita Milivojević, "Jerma" directed by Ljuboslav Majera, "Fishermen's Quarrels" directed Ana Vukotić and "Blood Wedding" directed by Igor Vuk Torbica.
"There definitely stands out 'Banović Strahinja', one of the cult performances of the City Theater, a role for which Varja received the Steria Award. Also, I would like to point out that Varja Đukić, in addition to many other awards, is also the winner of the City Theater's award for theatrical creativity for the year 2015. The audience remembers the roles from the plays I mentioned, as well as from many others that were guests at the festival and in which we saw Varja Đukić," emphasized Ljumović.
Đukić pointed out that space is crucially important in theater because theater takes place in the context of space.
"It is my personal relationship to the theater in every sense, determinants such as space, time and place. It is crucially important who we work with, how we refer to the things we think about, in which we live and how this, directly or indirectly, is reflected in the long term on the audience. We do not make a play to be good, better, like this or that, but to leave a mark on the audience that we know it bears. The play 'Banović Strahinja' is, in this sense, for my generation and ours , perhaps the most important theatrical work that was created in 1996. This book testifies to that better than I. At that time, Mihiz was in deep isolation, and we knew that this isolation, at least for me personally, was very important because all that determined our life, the wars of the 90s, made us perhaps the most agile performance and the most agile generation in that part. We were all in full strength, in full mental and physical strength, and that performance produced what the audience remember the day today," said Đukić, adding that the book "San na javi - about theater from this part of the world" is not only a chronicle of the theater but also a chronicle of a time in which that theater operates.
"In that sense, Grad Theater was very important and significant for us," she pointed out.
Speaking about the play 'Blood Wedding' by Igor Vuk Torbica, in which Varja Đukić plays a notable role, Aleksandar Milosavljević said that it is one of the most provocative, deepest and most serious stage performances of any of Lorca's works in our country.
"The play is powerful because it has preserved Lorca's poetics, and the combination of the directing process and the acting tools and emotions that are woven into that play are truly a miracle. I think you are lucky that you still have the opportunity to watch that play. Igor Vuk Torbica is our flew through the theater sky like a meteor and every show he did, literally every one, even the last one, which was actually a kind of workshop he did with pyrotechnic actors, each one is significant in some way," he said, adding that he remembers when he first once watched the play 'Banović Strahinja'.
"I remember the premiere at the Citadel, it was like being hit by a fast train. It was so shocking for me and through 'Banović Strahinja' I want to connect directly to Budva and that's that slightly expanded context. It wasn't easy in the 1990s to engage in theater in Serbia for various reasons. Besparica was only one dimension, but it was a space in which Belgrade, at least when it came to theater art, was quite similar to a swamp. And the plays that were created in Budva were created in a context that freedom that we did not have in Belgrade. I will not say that we were under occupation in Belgrade, as in a certain sense we are today, but I want to say that there was no atmosphere in which you could engage in theater freely and unburdened. Especially if the subject is Mihiz's drama 'Banović Strahinja', in which Mihiz already relativizes the myth and the epic narrative, i.e. the epic story, placing it in a harsh political context. makes a play that removes that complicated story, which is a sharp political allusion to the political situation in Tito's Yugoslavia, from that context and transfers it to the reality we live in today. "I still believe, and I write about theater and have been involved in theater for some forty years, that 'Banović Strahinja' is one of the most significant plays that were created in our common theater space at the time," Milosavljević emphasized.
Đukić then read a passage from the book dedicated to director Igor Vuk Torbica.
Ljumović said that the book "San na java" offers a narrative about the methodology of the art of acting.
"It is a story about a dialogue with the directors, with many other collaborators who make up the theater, and that is really the preciousness of this monograph, which autopoetically emerges from the very dialogue that Varja and Saša have and offers something that rarely any book can offer as a combination of theory and practice Ljumović said.
Speaking about criticism, Milosavljević said that theater critics do not know that they are writing about acting, that is, there are very few who do. "
"It is unmistakably true that they can learn a lot about directing, they can learn about the history of drama, they can read plays, they can somehow explain it and establish some relations between the theatrical work of art and their critical judgment, but theater critics do not know that write about acting and few of them were able to say and explain exactly what the actor was doing on stage. Of course, I was particularly interested in finding out and determining what it was, to quote the title of the monodrama Goce Marić "The Elusive System of Acting". How does Varja Đukić become a "woman" in the production of "Banović Strahinja"? experiences of great actors, but whenever we met occasionally, that was actually the topic of our conversations. And when Varja invited me to work on this book together, I wanted to concentrate our sporadic meetings and conversations and talk about Varja Đukić as an actress. . And then something turned up that I became aware of afterwards, but actually I must have been aware of it much earlier. Varja is not just an actress in the theater, not even when she performs the work of an actress when she portrays a character. Varja in the theater is not only a director when he directs a play. Varja is a theater because she thinks, the system of her thinking encompasses the whole. It's tragic for me when I see at a rehearsal that the actors mark only their lines with that colored felt-tip pen. And then they doze until the inspector wakes them up and then they read what was marked for them with a marker. That's the thing that drives me crazy when I see it. Varja does not accept such a theater. "The theater is a very complex system of interactions that are established between the writer of the play, the director, each individual actor, and then the matter acquires a Hitchcockian dimension when all these relationships begin to intertwine in the mutual relationships between the actors," said Milosavljević.
Ljumović said that the book "San na java" is a register of significant figures in the history of Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav theater and that it is important for theater historiography, to which Milosavljević replied that no name in the book was mentioned by chance.
"A careful reader of this book will see that all these names are like a constellation, they appear and establish a specific coordinate system in which we recognize the contours of that particular dedication theater. And it is a theater, it is Varja Đukić's theater, and all these names make that constellation," he said.
Đukić is the founder, owner and manager of the Karver bookstore, and speaking of literature, she revealed that she regrets losing her reading skills.
"I recognized that in a large number of people, they lose it with age, some may even gain it, and I will try to get it back. It is not a small battle, but all the battles you profile as necessary must be won because you work for them. They are not me typically interested in fiction or novels, but above all in poetry and essays. I noticed very early on that this literature is extremely attractive to me, that I find in poetry the absolute pinnacle of literary creativity or civilizational power. I have to say yes I immediately have associations with ancient drama and with everything written in verse, with Shakespeare and with everything that is the heritage of the rhythm of verse. offer a drama when I know that the dramatic work will be interpreted by that director, and that I will obey that interpretation, that I always found more inspiration in prose or in poetry open, free spaces for productions and for my own interpretation of it, unencumbered by the fact that I am not a professional director, but an actress by training, looking for ways, above all through direct connection, how to express and express that work from my acting experience. And it seems to me that it was always to some satisfaction of the audience and to some kind of gain of the audience. That was very important to me because I was revealing to the audience some spaces that were inaccessible to them as theatrical works," said Đukić.
The evening was rounded off by questions from the audience, and at the very end, Đukić read another passage from the book "San na javi".
Bonus video:
