Sašo Ognenovski at Poets' Square: "Theatre will never die"

The literary program of the 40th Grad Teatar festival continued last night at Poet's Square in Budva's Old Town with the presentation of the novel "Tour" by the North Macedonian writer, theater critic, and multidisciplinary artist. Saša Ognenovski. The author was interviewed by a writer and literary critic about this satirical work, but also about the deep mechanisms of theatrical life, the influence of politics on art, and contemporary European theatrical tendencies. Nikola Nikolic.

Nikolić emphasized that he is extremely honored to have the opportunity to introduce the audience at Poet's Square to an author who not only writes, but breathes and lives art with his entire being. Nikolić emphasized that Ognenovski is recognized as a poet, prose writer, communicologist and agile translator who intensively connects the cultural spaces of the region.

"When I started reading the novel "Tour", I had the impression: where will this lead? As a reader, I was a little scared of what Sašo had done and where this story was going. It is a dystopian satire that tells the story of an imaginary Balkan Macedonia and the imperial theater of that country that is embarking on a world tour in about fifteen countries to perform "Hamlet". This representative ensemble goes through extremely harrowing and unpredictable events. The text drew me into its vortex so that I "beat" the book in a couple of days. A warm recommendation to everyone, the prose is extremely quick to read even though it has 250 pages," said Nikolić, opening the conversation with a question about the choice of satire as a rare and challenging literary genre in our region.

Answering a question about his motivation for writing a satirical novel, Sašo Ognenovski explained that his long-standing attachment to theater was a key driver, and that tours are a specific phenomenon in which theater creators constantly share their personal, private, and professional lives.

"Speaking of tours, I told myself that one day I would write something about that life that is born on the road and that dies on the road. Satire is very rare in this region. When I wrote this novel, which is essentially about the dying of theater, I wanted the satire to soften it a little, so that theater would not die after all. Theater will never die, but touring is a place where great pressure is put on the very product of theater. It is a theater that is politically created. All politicians, when they come to power, say that they will create the best theater. In my vision of the near future, that Macedonian theater embarks on a big tour around the world and slowly begins to decline. Whenever it is under political pressure, theater falters and art suffocates. However, the actors in my novel are great, they do their job excellently, and what is around them is a shell from which they cannot emerge," Ognenovski pointed out.

During the evening, the question of the other side of the theatrical calling was also raised, about the arduous and salutary process of giving birth to a play, the feeling of exhaustion and cruelty that actors face outside the spotlight. Ognenovski reflected on the importance of the Pirandellian motif in his work and the search for a lost illusion.

"I was guided in a way by classical Pirandelism." Pirandello "It's about what happens if at some point in the theater the gun really goes off, then the most important thing is lost, what people on tour necessarily carry within themselves, which is illusion. Thinking about what I wrote, I came to the conclusion that this prose is actually a war of two illusions: the one that is in the theater and which is productive, and our personal illusions that, unfortunately, will never be spoken because we do not know our fate. The directors always told us that when you play Hamlet, half an hour before the start of the play you can remember what you are going to say in the fifth act, regardless of whether you know the text. Only when you enter the fifth act, everything reminds you and the text comes by itself. This illusion encourages us to create that most important illusion that the viewer later transforms into the meaning and message of the play," he explained.

Addressing the question of whether there is anything affirmative in the novel despite the tragic ending and the exposure of conformism as a "cancer of the wound of transitional societies", Ognenovski emphasized that satire must possess a direct and uncompromising critical attitude towards reality.

"It's hard to deal with euphemisms when you're dealing with literature and theater. Not everything is rosy. Maybe everything looks black, but we have to warn about our reality in which we live and in which we have to find our way. It's a great truth that theater is easy to imagine, but difficult to put back together later. That tragic ending in the novel is something we need to reflect on, to see how much we are dying, but also how much chance we have of staying alive in art."