The people of Nikšić will follow the people of Cetinje. They don't really let them rest on their laurels! That's how it should be!", announced "Glas Crnogorca" in the edition of February 19, 1884, after the play "Slobodarka" was performed three days earlier in the town under Trebjes. Manojlo Đorđević Prizrenac.
On February 16, 139 years ago, theater life began in Nikšić - a magic that, despite the "unfortunate cuts" of the state and the city in the past, still lasts. The Nikšić Theater, along with the Zetski Dom, is the oldest theater in Montenegro, despite wartime and peacetime destructions, shutdowns and re-establishments, it still tells the story of duration, of ups and downs, of culture and the link between three centuries.
The theater will mark its day with a three-day festival, from February 15 to 17, when three plays will be performed that were staged in less than a year - "Look back in anger" (February 15), "Boing boing" (February 16 ) and "People's Deputy" (February 17).
The new management of the Theater is satisfied with what has been done, they are happy, as they said, with the joy of creation and are already announcing that next year, when 140 years of theatrical magic in Nikšić will be celebrated, they will have a celebration that will make the institution and the city proud.
"What the new administration wants is to return to that beginning in 1884, because that brings with it the joy of the beginning, a naivety that is, it seems to me, very necessary in artistic creation, and a desire that with each new playing and with with each new artistic event we become better and to improve ourselves. It seems to me that somewhere in essence we do not deviate from that 'naive' thesis - that we can make the world better and more beautiful. This is also the basic principle of our theatrical thinking and action. If we long for anything, we long for those beginnings that were the beginnings of joy. As it is also our beginning, we are truly looking forward to it. What we want to present is that the Nikšić Theater is a meeting place, where we expect that from that meeting we will all become better and happier", says the director of the Nikšić Theater for "Vijesti". Radinko Krulanović.
Art director Janko Jelić points out that the new management has learned and grown together with the institution for a year and a half and that they are proud that in a very short time they managed to make serious production interventions, plays that live, but also to strengthen the cast.
"We inherited an acting ensemble of four actors and we managed to strengthen it by two more, and now we also got two trainee actors. In addition, we have very successful and important amateur actors and we help them, so that the directors have actors to work with. In a conversation with a famous Montenegrin actor Mirko Vlahović he told me that we cannot be a serious theater until we have ten actors. Now we are on the verge of being a serious theater," Jelić says with a smile.
Their vision, he points out, is to be an institution through which Nikšić and Montenegrin young actors grow, to have an ensemble that would be representative and able to represent not only the theater, but also the city.
"Sometimes we step out more than we can possibly carry. It's good. It is good that a person and an institution expect the greatest achievements from themselves, and if you don't strive to be better, then you are bound to be worse. We set ourselves the goal and obligation to do one show in the final part of the season, and another for the opening of the next season. It will be the same this year. We are finalizing agreements with a director to do a show in the spring, and we hope for a significant co-production cooperation with a large theater for the beginning of the next season, in the fall. We will also have a performance for children with local forces, and I hope we will be proud of it. It is possible that we will also do a smaller dramatic form in the interim period, which would refresh our theatrical life in the city", are some of the plans for this year announced by Jelić.
They were looking, he says, for what would be the stamp of the Nikšić Theater that the new management, together with the employees, would stamp.
"Through the production, we are trying to crystallize the repertoire for the next few years, to put on shows that, through the themes they cover, are the unique stamp of our theater. Now we have decided that in the coming period we will produce texts mainly by local authors. Let it be our seal", says the artistic director of the Nikšić Theater.
It also reveals what would be a breakthrough for the theater.
"It would be good if we put one of the newer young authors on stage. That would be a great thing and a great step forward for the theater, for local literature, an incentive for young people who create, but also for other theater companies in Montenegro and in the region to listen a little to what they have. There are many young talented people whose texts are lying around in some drawers, so it would be good if those texts were pulled out of the drawers, so that these awards would gain meaning through life on stage. If they were to succeed, I think I could say that the new administration is doing a really good job," Jelić said.
Preparations have already started for the 19th International Festival of Actors, which will be held, most likely, in the second week of November, and which is always an opportunity for the audience to enjoy the performances of theaters from the country and the region and the acting bravura. But they are slowly getting ready for 140 years of theater.
"We are shyly preparing for the celebration of 140 years. We are not going to show off and be proud of ourselves, but we are really preparing and that will be seen at the end of the calendar year when we will come out with new projects. I am sure that next year we will have something to be proud of and that 140 years will be celebrated in the right way", promised the director of the Nikšić Theater.
Every third day of the year, the stage of the theater is "occupied"
Last year, 134 events were held on the stage of the Nikšić Theater.
"Almost every third day of the year we had something going on in the theater. The theater was an event for the city. We had 31 performances for the evening stage, 28 guest performances and three from our own production. We make sure that we have one or two performances for the youngest per month, and in this way we educate a new theater audience and try to draw the attention of young people that the theater is the right place where they can face some things that they should not have to face in life." , Krulanovic said.
This year, the hall will be digitized, so the audience will have the opportunity to watch the most modern films.
"We are also planning new editions - collected plays that were published in the magazine 'Pozorište', these are plays by newer authors, mainly from Montenegro, and in the final stage, the plays of Veljko Mandić were chosen," announced Krulanović.
In 23 years, 30 prime ministers
The theater was shut down for a long period in 1965, by the decision made at the second session of the Council for Culture of the People's Republic of Montenegro, seven years earlier, to reorganize the professional theaters in Nikšić, Cetinje, Kotor and Pljevlja into amateur and semi-amateur ones. The reason was that the number of theaters allegedly exceeds the capabilities of small communities, that they are in a difficult financial situation, of uneven quality, that it is better to have one quality theater that will meet the needs of other places with guest appearances".
And the quality and work of the theater in Nikšić is best expressed by the fact that in 16 years of operation (from 1949, when the National Theater was founded, to 1965), they had 116 premieres of all genres of well-known domestic and international dramaturgy, that actors appeared on stage as guests such as Raš Plaović, Milivoj Živanović, Ljubiša Jovanović, Olivera Marković, that the world-renowned Russian ballerina Maja Pliseckaj was also a guest. Even a children's theater, the first of its kind in Montenegro after World War II, was founded in Nikšić in 1956. Nothing helped - the theater was locked in 1965 by unanimous decision of the councilors of the Nikšić Municipal Assembly.
The Nikšić Culture Center founded the Drama Studio in 1980, which was managed by the director Goran Bulajić and which, in 11 years of work, prepared 17 premieres and performed close to 500 plays. Although the Drama Studio was declared one of the best amateur theaters in Yugoslavia, it was shut down in 1991, when it was evicted from its premises and when the "Culture" hall also ceased operations. A cafe was opened instead.
By the decision of the Municipal Assembly of Nikšić, in December 1999, the Nikšić Theater began to operate, and the old theater building, the "Kulture" hall, was demolished in 2008. The renovation of the cinema hall "18. September" On January 30, 2015, the Nikšić Theater gets its home.
Since the restoration, they have had 30 premieres, including five plays for children. They renewed the "International Festival of Actors" and the magazine "Pozorište", the first issue of which was published in 1956, established the "Veljko Mandić" award, and are engaged in publishing activities. And they last.
Bonus video:
