What women will never know

The feeling of a beard" by Ksenija Dragunska - is one of the most ingenious texts I have come across and it is based on true events.

"It was enough just to write it down," says Dragunska. In creating a unique specific atmosphere that is strangely pleasant and dangerous. It is safe because the end of the village in which the plot is located - a forest - "the forest is a friend, shelter and nurturer" and because the name itself is a secret.

Why "Beard Feeling"?, I ask Dragunska after the premiere. "Because that feeling is a secret for women - women never know what it feels like to have a beard, what it feels like when your beard grows."

Because, as Dragunska knows, the history of the world is the history of men and women. And that is why the last chapter of the play is called the beginning, and the beginning is preceded by an encounter.

Theater, the poetics of Boris Liješević has for some time been dealing with initiation, active initiation and inclusion of the viewer's imagination in the theatrical act itself. In the center is the actor, i.e. the game, the story, the atmosphere into which the audience is drawn by the actor's or the director's call and invited to listen and feel for themselves, and within the performance, create their own images. To participate specifically and actively.

Liješević, as stated in the preface to his second play "The Wizard" as well as in "Feeling of the Beard" (this is the intention that was also put into action in "Elijah's Chair", "Mirni danim u Miksing partu"), creates a performance - a space and in that space a game that is powerful in its own simplicity, into which the viewer necessarily enters as a co-creator who creates the show with his imagination.

Again, as usual in Liješević's settings, the scene is built in such a way that it hints, and the objects are not only multi-meaningful but also multi-functional (several small children's wooden tables under which they can crawl and eavesdrop with a cigar that has caught fire, for example, a reed fence that tells you that you are in the countryside, the obligatory ladder that eventually takes you wherever you want, as well as toy trucks, driven by the kings of the road, the Kamazov brothers, because we are in the theater for God's sake - it is enough incentive and everything can happen there) with all the Fellini scenes that are salutary in that Russian color - witty and powerful - imagine a large swinging deckchair hanging across the entire scene, diagonally, and reclining in it is a very round, even large woman in a peignoir with large sunglasses. And one leg casually sticking out over the lounger...

With the fact that in "Osećaj brade" I saw one of the most intelligent ways of using video in the theater, the most functional - namely at the bottom of the stage there is a huge video beam, at the front of the stage on the viewer's right behind a small easel sits a painter and paints - he speaks to us in an abstract language color - he paints the dynamics, the rhythm of the play, and how he creates in the moment, so we watch and feel the continuous movement of the picture, the movement and mixing of colors on the large screen at the bottom, that is, on the beam. Intellectual work and catharsis meet - in this meeting the viewer's imagination is triggered - with images, colors and words.

Exciting journeys

As, according to Aristotle, the purpose of the theater is to awaken the spirit and purify the associations, free the soul from accumulated contents - then the journey through the world of Dragunska as constructed by Boris Liješević and as played by the actors of the "Komedija" theater was precious for me.

I am saying this from the point of view of an expert observer - things that I had not been able to see before came out of my eye. On the one hand, Dragunska makes an unburdened revision of her own literary heritage, while Liješević's theatrical journeys are those that trigger excitement, are witty, sensitive and therefore gently invite you on the journey. But that's why they are never, absolutely never naive.