Veljko Mićunović is one of the most prominent Montenegrin directors of his generation, known for his energetic approach to classics and contemporary plays, rich festival experience and multiple awards. His engagement on the regional theatre scene makes him an important voice of theatre art in Montenegro and the region. He has directed numerous significant plays in the region and collaborated with leading theatre scenes such as the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, the Montenegrin National Theatre, the Belgrade Drama Theatre, the National Theatre Belgrade, the Slovenian National Theatre Maribor.
This summer, as part of the drama program of the 39th "City of Theater" festival, the audience will have the opportunity to see the play "Fathers and Fathers" directed by him, in the amphitheater of the Stanjevići Monastery on July 3rd and 4th, starting at 21 pm.
Adaptation of the famous novel Slobodan Selenić was produced by the National Theatre Belgrade. The dramatization is by Kata Djermati, scenography Zorana Petrov, costume design Marija Marković Milojev. She is a composer Nevena Glusica, the stage speech was given by Dr. Ljiljana Mrkic Popovic.
The play features: Miloš Đorđević, Nikola Rakočević, Aleksandar Vučković, Vanja Ejdus, Vanja Milačić, Sena Đorović, Iva Milanović, Nikola Ristanovski.
"Our fathers and fathers - our spiritual, intellectual, ideological heritage. what we inevitably live with to this day. Or we are forced to live. In the impossibility of removing it, for the sake of the constant excavation and digging up of history, fathers and fathers, dwell around us constantly - reminding, persecuting, monitoring and warning. From the fragments of Stevan Medaković's memory, they look at us, our divisions, endangered intimacies, family schisms and alienations. There is also an essential misunderstanding of diversity, whether at the level of basic nationality or in terms of purely ideological matters. While, at the same time, our internal exiles, painful captivity and feelings of guilt that we carry to this day become obvious," wrote director Veljko Mićunović, who spoke more about everything in an interview for "Vijesti".
What was crucial for you to decide to make a theatrical adaptation of the novel "Fathers and Fathers" by Slobodan Selenić?
The novel “Fathers and Fathers” carries within itself a burning question: how identity is transmitted through generations, and what remains of a person when history breaks through him. What was crucial for me was that Selenić does not write about the past as a museum, but as a living organism that continues to beat within us, whether we like it or not. I had the feeling that this is a novel that does not only talk about Serbia from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but about every society that tries to be modern, without actually knowing what to do with its foundations and its heritage. That this society is distraught and helpless. It is also a personal topic, because the question - who are our fathers, grandfathers, what did they leave us as a legacy, and who are we as their children and whether we have failed them - never ceases to haunt me.
How did you approach the adaptation of this multi-layered novel? What motifs did you particularly want to highlight in the stage reading?
The approach was twofold: on the one hand, I wanted to preserve Selenić's complexity, on the other hand, I knew that theater requires reading, new perspectives, contemporary context and emotional necessity. We kept the narrative line through the inner view of the main character Stevan Medaković, but we placed him in a constant dialogue with his closest people, living and dead. I wanted to make that difference in relation to the novel and bring all these characters together to watch and bear witness to the fates of their ancestors and descendants. Perhaps this is one of the key things that makes this play so moving, because a space of personal identification opens up in each of us.
How important is it to engage with texts from the literary tradition today, in a society that often has no time to reflect on the past?
That is precisely why it is important. Tradition is not just nostalgic material, it is an archive of our misunderstandings. Without reflection on the past, today's social discourse becomes shallow, reactive and without continuity. It is important to me that we deal with tradition as a space of struggle, not dogma. I do not think that we have to agree with the classics, but it is important to listen to them, not for their sake, but for our own. In this sense, “Fathers and Fathers” was for me the ideal novel to show how old our contemporary dilemmas actually are. Our unfinished business that we have been constantly putting off in blood throughout history.
What was your collaboration like with Nikola Ristanovski and the rest of the ensemble? How much did the actors contribute to the final version of the play?
Nikola is an unusual and important cog in this play, a kind of dessert. But everything that precedes him is much more than that, a trench battle of an ensemble that was more than an acting team, I could even call them my comrades. I am infinitely grateful to them for the trust they gave me in the process of making the play, on that path that resulted in the surreal result of almost fifty awards at various festivals.
The beginnings of your career are connected to the “City Theatre”, last year the audience saw your play “Švejk” which was awarded with a standing ovation. This year you adapted the play “Fathers and Fathers” for outdoor performance so that the “City Theatre” audience could see it. What does the festival performance at the “City Theatre” in the Stanjevići Monastery amphitheater mean to you and how do you approach it?
“Theatre City” is not just a festival for me, but a place of formative experience and growth. Every ambient performance carries an additional responsibility. Playing “Fathers and Fathers” in front of the Stanjevići Monastery is not only a technical challenge, but also a content one. I hope that this peace will please us and accompany the meditative thread that the play itself already carries. I always try to adapt in such situations, so that the ambiance becomes part of the play. I believe that this performance will have an additional layer of meaning and that the audience will feel it.
As a director of the younger generation, how do you see today's regional theater audience and what do you think it misses most in terms of repertoire?
I think audiences today have a great need for truth. Not necessarily for “realism,” but for the feeling that theater is a place of encounter with something that cannot be easily consumed. The problem with repertoire is not in the themes, but in the courage to really present them to the end. There is a lack of risk. There is a lack of plays that do not want to be liked, but to be edited. And I think audiences recognize this and increasingly seek the feeling that they have not come to please them, but to be shaken, moved, perhaps even challenged. Theater can do that. And it must.
What are your future artistic plans? Are you thinking about new dramatizations of the novel?
In these turbulent times, everything is quite uncertain, but what I know for now is that I have projects coming up at the Slovenian National Theatre in Maribor, the National Theatre in Belgrade, Atelje 212...
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