Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade (June 28, 2016)
History always seems to repeat itself, but not in the form of analogies. Instead, it seems to take form in the shapes of those analogies. In my opinion, it all began before the war; or more precisely, the turning point where we could see that something was about to happen was the 8th Session of the Central Committee of the Serbian Communist Party in 1987. Even at that point, we could see that everything was being prepared. We saw the engagement of various people; we saw interviews; we saw the “public opinion.” We could see that the whole thing was headed towards nationalism. If only all the anti-war initiatives could have come together and prevailed at that point, I am sure that the war would not have happened at all.
So, for me, it all began there: with the elections, the street spectacles, the cranes, billboards and all the forms of populism that took place at that time. It then became clear how the 1990s were going to be and how they were going to look, but we could not foresee that it would end up being so dreadful. It all comes from this unbelievable paradox. We read so much about it. We saw so many films and television shows about it, but it is somehow unbelievable that we never foresaw it happening again. We were just not capable of recognizing it. Maybe only those who were familiar with Bosnia could predict the extent of things to come. The form of war that took place in former Yugoslavia was nothing more than a process of transforming a political system, or, as we now refer to it: privatization. That was the basis: nationalism was an upgrade. For instance, Slobodan Milošević instated a new law on the nationalization of state ownership in 1989; and the specificities of Yugoslavia lie precisely in that moment. Yugoslav socialism had the concept of social ownership. Yet we still must not forget that a vast number of intellectuals played a decisive role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
What was the role of theatre in all of this? I do not think that we talk about it enough, about the role of theatre during the war. Beyond a doubt, it is very difficult to talk about, as the war and all the other things that were taking place were really dreadful. How do you talk about that? We tried various things, we protested, we were active in the civil resistance, we staged public performances—at least we did something. However, all of this becomes meaningless when you realize that people were being bombed in Sarajevo for four years. Then you ask yourself about the meaning of such actions. Nevertheless, it is very important to talk about those times, to testify, although I am personally always worried that all this repetition of the same stories will make them somehow seem banal.
At the beginning of the war, I was the artistic director at the Belgrade Drama Theatre . What is interesting about this theatre is that the first major strike took place there: we protested with the goal of making the artistic administration of the theatre responsible for the management of the theatre. We thought that a theatre could not be managed while having its financial department functioning separately from its production department: that made no sense to us at all. The strike itself may have been more focused on the fact that the theatre had planned to stage Vučjak [Wolfhound] a play by Miroslav Krleža , and the management was against that play being part of the repertoire. They justified themselves by saying that we did not need Krleža, a Croatian author, at that time. So you can understand against whom this decision was directed. One day I came to the theatre and saw that an entire display case, containing photos of Tito and Krleža from the performance of the play in 1957, had been completely demolished. Furthermore, some of the people targeted by these actions also worked in the theatre, like Rade Šerbedžija , Žarko Laušević , among others. In fact, a theatre house is a lot like a state, because, in a way, the theatre is a reproduction of the state. This is how I began to understand that there are people who are based within theatres and those outside of them. There are always people from within, who are on the payroll, and then those people from outside, the freelancers. Some of those freelancers may be people of other nationalities, which can work well for a theatre, and the Belgrade Drama Theatre had a lot of freelancers whose surnames did not end with “-ić.” But those outsiders, the freelancers, provided an opportunity for the theatre to be able to reject anything that was different—such as different nationalities. Then I began to realize that some of the people employed by the theatre were subverting the theatre itself. For instance, we organized matinee performances and friends would call me asking whether I had any extra tickets for them. I would reply surprised, telling them that tickets were available at the ticket office. Then I realized that the people answering our phones were deliberately saying that performances were sold out, so that they would not have to work during the day. I found these types of disruptions from within quite amazing. I was never able to explain to anyone from within the theatre that the freelancers were not taking their jobs and money away. It was all about protecting their positions, their “territory.”
The censorship with which I was confronted was never direct, but it occurred in specific forms. For instance, we would receive letters addressed to our freelance actor, Rade Šerbedžija , saying that he should go back to Croatia and perform for the Croatian president at the time, Franjo Tuđman . Or we would receive bomb threats and the like. I will never forget the day when our doorman came into work wearing a Serbian armed forces uniform, with a big copper shell standing next to him. I remember telling him that this was a theatre and asking him what he was doing sitting there in that uniform. He replied “you are all going to see one day.” Then when Sarajevo happened, we received even more letters and threats. Haris Burina , one of the actors employed at the time, was staying in my father’s apartment, since the theatre was trying to cut down on costs. During one of the performances of the play Burn Me! people broke into the apartment and attacked his wife. They put a gun to her head! I went to report the incident to the police, and they convinced me that it was just an isolated incident.
Then, in 1993, I took part in a big travel of Belgrade independent intellectuals to Paris , along with Goran Marković , Mira Miočinović, Bogdan Bogdanović among others. We participated in an open discussion in the FNAC library, with Predrag Matvejević moderating the conversation. Then the scandal took place: we declared that a fascist regime had taken over Serbia , and the attendees started to attack us. We were escorted away into a hall. We were nearly physically attacked by members of our diaspora, who are always more heavily manipulated than people living in Serbia . When we returned to Belgrade , we were welcomed by articles declaring that we were traitors and the like. That rage grew worse and worse with each day, but we survived the media witch-hunt. I remember how I went to the theatre one day, and the director asked to see me. He told me that he had to drink two glasses of whisky before talking to me, and I immediately knew what he was going to say. I knew that I was being let go. Interestingly enough, though, that scandal was only one of the reasons I was asked to leave—a contextual reason, so to speak. One of the other reasons was a subversive action that we had undertaken with the performance of Seven Against Thebes during the fall of Vukovar . At the end of the play, Uliks Fehmiu , who played a guard, had a line that went something like “and to hell with everyone, Filoctetes and all of you, now I hold the power!” But Uliks was not able to work through that line. He could not find the right way to do it. At the time, however, the organization Bela Ruža was holding a rally in Belgrade , with Biljana Plavšić as one of the speakers. Then my friend calls me and says “Look Borka, look who is standing next to Biljana Plavšić !” and I recognize our theatre secretary there, standing proudly in a white suit. This was a man who constantly placed representative state photos and declarations in our display case—of which I did not have a key. Then, during our last rehearsal for the play, Uliks put on a fascist uniform—with a white suit over it just like the one our secretary had. Then he uttered the final line of the play while taking off the white suit, thereby remaining in the uniform. Our theatre secretary wa...