All the roles I've played can be good and bad, like this and like that, they did something for whom, they certainly meant something to me, but no role I played asked me as much as Faust. This is what the actor and film producer said in an interview for "Vijesti". Svetozar Cvetković Cvele after he was a guest at the Grad Theater with the play "(Pra)Faust".
Cvetković, who marked Yugoslav and Serbian cinematography and theater with his art of acting, was watched by the audience of the Grad Teatar festival in the title role Goethe's ”(Pra)faust”, directed Boris Liješević with whom he collaborated in numerous plays that won high awards: "Elijah's Chair" (Gran pri 45 Bitefa), "Drunkens", "The Wizard", "Fifth Park"...
He graduated in acting back in 1980 at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and in the same year joined the ensemble of the Atelje 212 theater. He played in about 60 feature films, TV series and dramas that were mainly produced in the former Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro. He also worked on some projects abroad. He was a guest in various theater productions in Yugoslavia, Canada, Austria, Switzerland, England, Slovenia and Croatia. In the past 28 years, he has been awarded for his acting work at all major film and theater festivals in Yugoslavia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
How would you describe your Faust in this play and what, after all the great roles you've played, particularly attracted you to that character?
You are attracted to your age and exactly what you said - what you have done in your life. And Faust's basic dilemma is actually that, after all that he has done in his life as a philosopher and doctor and as someone who studied theology, he asks himself the question "What is it that I have done and does it make sense?". Then ask yourself such a question and identify with that hero and realize that this theme is universal in life and that life carries with it some, one might say, intellectual stereotypes.
But that's what life is about. Then you start dealing with it, the reasons why it is like that, something that is most important in life, such as human feeling, how much it can and must guide a person, how long its biological and mental duration is. So, there are thirty topics that we deal with in those two hours, which is the duration of the play we created. That's what kept me going, not to give up.
By the way, if we were to talk about what concerns work, that is the biggest provocation for me. All the roles that I look back today that I played, they can be good and bad, like this and like that, they did something for whom, they certainly meant something to me, but none of the roles I played asked me as much as Faust.
How much do you think people ask themselves these questions today, and how much is it possible to choose to be the devil?
It is impossible to choose. I think people today generally don't deal with that issue.
Why do you think they are not engaged?
Because time has completely changed and this did not happen only here in the Balkans, but in general in this world the values are different. That is, the values are correct, but it does not see who should see them. My friend has Misa Radivojevic, film director, one good sentence as a sentence: "It takes a great gift to recognize a great gift". So it is very debatable how much of a great gift there is today, and it is. And who recognizes him.
This work was created a long time ago, and it is more than relevant today, like many great literary works. Why do you think we are still dealing with these topics? Couldn't we have learned something by now?
I'm afraid that it is relevant for those of us who have dealt with it, and maybe it is relevant for these 250 people who came to the amphitheater of the Stanjevići monastery to watch this play. I'm afraid it's not like that in general. You know that when you say "Romeo and Juliet" you immediately have a precise vision of the fact that you are now watching or reading a piece that is in verse, that is sung in our country and that has a tragic love story. Then there was a movie that you could watch and you know what to expect.
Goethe's very name is difficult, difficult to bear. Faust's very name suggests some darkness and something that is not true at all. We have made something that is alive, that is humorous, that is emotional, loving, cheerful and that is also tragic in the end. And all that exists in human life. Every day you hear some bad information, it makes you a little sad, but during the day you laugh more than you cry.
I want to say that there are a lot of funny things in this life and so we found something in Faust, especially in the character of Mephisto, which is funny to us, something which is obviously funny to the audience that has seen us so far. Something very fun that is a pretty big question mark for Goethe and Faust and the question of whether anyone really wants to try to make it.
You often collaborated with Boris Liješević. Do you think he succeeded in that?
Boris Liješević is a man I have known for a good part of his life, he has very strong roots here in Budva and Montenegro. He has a very well-rounded education and is dedicated to what he does. For the last ten or fifteen years, the two of us have been doing some shows together from time to time, which mean something to him, to me, and to that audience.
What kind of director is Liješević?
It is not easy to say whether someone is a good or bad director. He is an artist. He is not one of those directors who at the beginning of work on something know what will happen in the end. He is like an unread book to you. You know when you pick up a book of a certain title and you like the title. Then you read a book and you don't know what happens next, but the book is winding down. That's how the work with him on those plays that we did takes place and develops. He often came to all the rehearsals we did with the question of what we are going to do with this, rather than we are going to do this one way or another. He always asked himself, and us, the question of what, how and in what way, with the desire to somehow discover it together.
What was the process specifically in the play "(Pra)Faust"?
He started with one idea at the very beginning of what the beginning of the play should look like, and I threw ten more ideas on top of it over the course of a month and a half. Then he took a bit of something from my two ideas and leaned on some of his ideas and that's how we put together the flow of how it should look in some logical way. That's the beauty of working with him.
The show is surprisingly funny. How did you come up with humor and witty moments in the play?
We came to humor together, first of all thanks Ozren Grabarić who plays Mephisto. He carries it with him the most out of all of us. The moment he crawls in, you immediately have to move to that side, and then it's very good. Usually in what you saw or what we saw on film, and it is important to say that all the films that were made based on Goethe's "Faust" were not based on the text that Goethe wrote, but they all had to be adapted.
Even the last film that was shown in Berlin and brought the director the Silver Bear for directing, says that it was based on Goethe's "Faust", and not as Goethe's "Faust". So we also did this based on "(Pre)Faust", which was created thirty years before "Faust" came out. Those thirty years are not a small period for a human life, but when you work on something for thirty years, it develops. And it can develop one way or another. We then combined that first variant with this last variant, we made some combination and that's why we call it (Proto)Faust.
You are someone who played many important roles at the Grad Theater festival throughout its existence, and you were also the program editor of this festival at one time. How do you view the City Theater now?
First of all, I have a very emotional and beautiful memory of a part of the past and as something that really had quality, because we did not only play the plays we did there, but later we played them around the country, around the world, we traveled. It's a romantic vision of theater that I see, and I'm glad that the current artistic management is trying and succeeding in maintaining that author's level of the festival.
Something that is an artistic attitude needs to be established in the theater, and that is happening
How is theater developing in Serbia and the region after the coronavirus pandemic? What topics and titles are current?
We all survived a difficult period together and the fact that the theater shut down in two years in a literal way due to the pandemic on the one hand, and on the other hand it needed to be revived. Then it slowly revived, but unfortunately you have to revive the theater in such circumstances with something that is commercial, something that the audience will come to see solely to be entertained. Now there has just come a time when something that is an artistic attitude needs to be established and I think that is happening these days. Directors such as Boris, such as Selma Spahić and Dino Mustafić, who come to work with us, are slowly starting to work. It seems to me that it is going in the right direction.
The weather has completely changed and this did not happen only here in the Balkans, but generally in this world the values are different. That is, the values are correct, but it does not see who should see them.
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