As part of the XXXVI "Grad Teatar" festival, on August 1, a conversation was held with Borut Šeparović, the director, and Ana Prolić, the playwright, authors of the hybrid media work "Worker's Road", which was shown the night before on the stage between the churches.
Director Borut Šeparović said at the beginning of the evening that he was pleased that they presented a project at the "Gradu Teatr" that is not actually a theater project.
"It did start as a theater project and we were thinking of making a black comedy, but everything around us influenced us to deal with these topics. The first topic is the position of the working class at the beginning of the 21st century and the issue of work at a time when we have an abundance of technology, artificial intelligence, robots and many tools for work that we did not have before. The position of workers was an important topic for me, and then that issue was further deepened by the pandemic, and the beginning of the pandemic is also the beginning of our project," he said.
The source was Burke's "Gagarin's Road", but also the realization that "Radnička cesta" will never be performed on stage, pointed out Šeparović and added that thanks to the courage of the people from "Grada Teatr", this work was presented on stage.
During the work on this project, playwright Ana Prolić wrote a diary of the process, which was her task at the very beginning, but that turned into something completely unexpected.
"Very quickly it became clear that we do not have control over that process, but that this process guides us and that the reality around us and the topics that are opened are very concerning to us in terms of the work process. So that diary became much more important than I initially thought, as a commentary on the work process itself, which was very long, lasting a year with interruptions due to epidemiological situations. I was very honest in the diary, I felt that the only way people who come to the theater or see the final result, is to actually read what it looks like. The process was extremely difficult, we were faced with the questions of what it is like to be an independent artist today during the pandemic, what is the meaning of theater and what was required of us in Croatia, and we are talking about the digitization of theater and this project tried to find, among other things, and the answer to that question", said Prolić.
The moderator of the evening was Bojan Munjin, a journalist and theater critic who pointed out that Šeparović deals with difficult and neuralgic topics in his thirty years of work.
“He's not really into nice, well-packaged pieces where he sighs or anything like that. He dealt with stray dogs, minefields, women who end up on the street, young people who are becoming more and more brutal, over 55 years old, he dealt with subjects that leave bloody palms from debris".
Šeparović explained that everything is a matter of taking a good look around.
"You need to let a few things pass through you. I did lead Montažstroj, but it was created by people who worked with me and were very important in the process. These are the people who make the work collective. In that sense, they are some theatrical acts, and I am a constant. I started working in 1989 on the day Ceausescu was killed, there was no parliamentarianism yet, it felt like a new time was coming and then we went through a lot in these 30 years. I think that the process that people like to call transition is something I wanted to make projects about," he said and added that theater must be grounded in the reality in which it is created, that it must have a context, and that the context will determine the theme.
"That's how we got the piece 'Radnička cesta'. As much as it touches the future of work, it also touches transition, and very directly history through that micro-location called Radnička cesta. It is synonymous with deindustrialization and transition, and those are the things that interest me," he said.
In response to Munjin's statement that "Radnička cesta" is full of swear words that associated him with Rabelais, Bukovsky and Milena Marković, Prolić explained that the huge amount of swear words in the play came about through the process itself.
"Even though I have a lot of experience in adapting texts, I didn't know what was waiting for me in the process of working with Boruto. He was the one who constantly brought materials and opened up topics, he asked the actors to master the topics of universal basic income and conspiracy theories about the corona, so that they retell it themselves, i.e. to talk about it themselves, while being very uncensored. He told them that they were not professors, but workers in a warehouse and that they were talking like that. So, quite naturally, a large number of swear words were used. My task was to record that text, and I have to admit that I often deleted those swear words, but it turned out that I was censoring something that was authentic and natural, which was the sweat and smell of beer that was really used in rehearsals to create the impression of hyperrealism", said Prolić.
Looking back at the entire work of Borut Šeparović, Munjin said that he recognized the director's personal tears for people without hope and piety for people who suffered, warmth towards them. Šeparović said that what happens along the way is important, although "Radnička cesta" does not offer too much hope because of the end itself.
"If we look at the fate of the characters at the end, it is clear that it will not end well. Their ideas about changing the world turn out to be quite barren, but what is important for us to make a way is to talk about precarious work, to talk about the working class, to see what the position of these people is, to check the draft dialogue of what would be a universal dialogue basic income and whether that would solve some problems, whether we should all be getting some sort of dividend to live on. That is one of the questions we managed to ask here. Today we have a basic question - what is capitalism and how to deal with it? I have often done works about collateral victims of the transition process, people who suffer in a process in which a small number of people will become very rich and a large number of people will be poorer than before. When we see what happened in the pandemic and when we see what will happen in this inflation, the little man will certainly not be protected", stressed Šeparović.
Prolić asked herself how powerful the theater is today, what is the meaning of the theater itself and pointed out that the role of the theater is the one that the theater only chooses to have.
"From the very beginning, the theater was very topical and talked about the concrete current situation, which it sometimes talked about through metaphors or cellophane. On the other hand, it always talked about universal, existential problems. When you see a theater today that forgets exactly those two themes, that tries to be out of context and time, that's not good. Institutional theater in particular is very slow and inert, it does not react quickly. Today, there is that space for both important segments of the theater, but the question is how many people who work in them are ready to face the issues and how much they are up to the audience, but in terms of - we think that you want to see it, you should be entertained. Maybe the audience wants and wants something else, that's the question," she said.
During the evening, the audience joined the conversation with the guests of Trg pjesnika several times, and Milena Lubarda Marojević, director of JU "Grad Teatar" pointed out that she is very glad that Prolić and Šeparović are guests of this year's festival.
"We very often think and talk about whether engaged theater makes sense at all and whether it exists, whether engaged art can be engaged. The audience that comes to the theater is not in a position to change anything, because if it were, the world would be much better. I am sure that in our Montenegrin area, after the reports from these evenings and a very important interview with Boruta in the daily newspaper that came out a few days ago, after the presence of Montažstroj and your work was made known here to the Montenegrin audience, and that interest will grow because Borut's theatrical work speaks a more direct, murderous, effective language. This is not often the case with authors who engage in engaged art. Because of all this, we are honored that you are with us, and I believe that the audience in the coming period will become aware of the importance of what we witnessed. Under the pressure of everything you talked about in your projects, alienation, endangered social categories and what you talk about in "Radnička cesta", a ripe time was formed for art to speak about it and for the audience to be eager for it. We see it in music, popular culture, but also in the highly aestheticized culture that you bring to us", said Lubarda Marojević, thanking them on behalf of the "Grad Teatar" festival.
Munjin concluded the evening by emphasizing that this is the first time that a performance that is actually a "video work" was shown at the festival and added that it is a sure sign that the "Grad Theater" festival is once again pushing the boundaries.
"We have seen a new genre of media vision and that is good for art and culture, regardless of whether some people prefer comedy, but I think it is worth showing what is valuable that is happening today," said Munjin.
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