Exploring gender relations and the position of women in the Montenegrin patriarchy is not an unknown topic on the local arts scene, but the monodrama “Virgin”, performed on Thursday, provided a strong and original perspective and a different look at this social issue.
This monodrama was presented to the Podgorica audience at the KIC “Budo Tomović”, and can absolutely be considered a great success, considering the large attendance and the loud applause it received at the end.
The role of the virgin is played by a talented actress Marta Ceranic, and the play was based on the text Dušan JankovićThe plot follows a woman born in traditional Montenegro in the last century. Through a combination of circumstances, she grew up as a man and was treated as such by her closest friends and the entire community in which she grew up.
The uniqueness of this drama lies precisely in the fact that this is not just a depiction of the position of women in the society of the time, but a comprehensive description of the social mechanism that created specific gender roles. At the center of this mechanism is our heroine, who has a unique position that transcends our classical binary understanding of male and female roles.
Her deeply intimate confession of the difficulties and struggles against what she is and what she wants to be represents a realistic deconstruction of the mythologized past, but also of the present that is partly built on those myths.
Ćeranić told "Vijesti" that playing this role was very demanding, especially because she had high expectations of herself.
"Very demanding and, I can freely say, very difficult for me. I think I approached the task with a lot of expectations for myself. In that sense, it was difficult for me to satisfy myself, to fulfill what I had imagined," she said.
The actress adds that the biggest difficulty was convincing the audience to play specific roles.
"Basically, the hardest thing for me was to play the father, the mother, and the virgin herself, and have you believe me. Now, I don't know if you believed me," Ćeranić added.
This actress believes that Montenegrin society has not progressed much since its 20th-century depiction in this play, as it still places high expectations and demands on women.
"We have made very little progress, I think it's just that now the same things are called by different names. Well, for example, all this that is imposed as modern and as something you have to do. A woman today is expected to look fantastic, if she is, say, 60 years old, she has to look at least like she is 40, to be a great housewife, to be excellent, to have a phenomenal career, a husband, children, to have given birth to a son and so on. All these obligations are essentially unrealistic, they are not realistic demands," believes Ćeranić.
She adds that because of this, the process of turning into a virgin is not just turning a girl into a boy, but a denial of the free expression of identity.
"Whether you really wanted to or not, you're turning into some kind of virgin, because in my opinion, a virgin is not just dressing a girl up as a boy. A virgin is everything that you probably have every day, some of those situations, when you suppress something that you really want or wanted, but they didn't support you, so they told you to hide it, that it's better not to see it. That's all, in fact, a virgin," concludes Ćeranić.
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