Spontaneous encounters with beautiful minds

On this solo kind of trips, you can predict meetings with some friends for a coffee or with organizers of some event, if they are not too busy to provide you with information. But, you also could read about unpredictable meetings with people, who brought some interesting information and nice shades to my trips so far.

Few days before the last part of my trip, director of show "Stand AP Serbie" in which I play in students theater, entered the bus in Nis, my city. In few minutes we had till his next station, he told me that he was preparing for Moscow. 

"Moscow? Great!"

"I am going to students theater festival there. What are you going for?"

"I will be professor at congress there."

"Oh, nice, see you..."

With Vladimir and Bojana 

That was Vladimir Cvejic (59 years)  - from Nis, Serbia. Actor, theater director and member of UDUS (The drama Artists Association of Serbia). He is Artistic director of Academic theater (Belgrade) for 9 years. He is committed to working on discovering new talent and new theater. He received 19 awards for best direction at domestic and foreign student theater festivals.

First day of the festival, I was looking for the theater hall. One man, talking in Spanish was looking for hall as well. We started conversation, were watching show, went for a coffee during the break, before the next show started.

He told me that he would give lecture at congress. I told him that I was there to make a research, powered by  Schwarzkopf foundation.

"I could tell you many interesting facts."

"I would be thankful."'

"For example, one of the professors here was candidate for president in Uruguay."

"Really? Who?"

With Raul Rodriguez da Silva

That was personally him! Raul Rodriguez da Silva (75 years) – Actor, director and theater pedagogue, specialized on Stanislavsky. Political activist, he suffered several years in prison under the dictatorships of Uruguay and Chile. He was a candidate as the President of Uruguay in 2009.

Last day of my trip, I decided to spent in Stanislavsky House Museum, temple for theater lovers. There weren't so many people inside...

"I am actress in students theater in Serbia", I was talking with woman at box office.

"Really?", one young man came to me. "I have cooperation with one theater in Serbia."

"Really? I am here at festival."

"Me too."

Leonardo - lecture time

That was my meeting with Leo, who also gave lecture at congress. Leonardo Mancini (31 year) - Born in Milan, he is currently a Phd student in History of theater at the University of Turin, in co-tutorship at the Université Paris 8. Beside his research in the theater, he has also worked as a consultant for publishing houses and foundations in the frame of cultural and artistic projects of cooperation financed by the European Union.

As I mentioned in my short report about MOST Theater festival and Congress of AITU-IUTA, organized parallel with it, I was missing shows inspired by actual social issues. This inspired me to ask these three men to give me answers on three same question.

What are the edges of theater today?

Leonardo: In my opinion the external edges of  theater somehow reflect our internal borders as human beings. As inner and empty spaces of freedom and creation are becoming more and more rare, our busy and interconnected society is progressively losing different possibilities into which life and art can be pursued and researched. At the same time, each one of us is becoming more and more “hyperspecialized” in a specific field of competence, forgetting about the whole and not looking at the human as a one. But the theater needs a broader, cultural and active approach to life, and the risk of reducing such a richness inside of us, in the name of conformism, could bring the world to a place where even on stage we could see less and less variety allowed to take place.

Vladimir: I think that modern theater is totally GMO, and that it doesn't have awareness of it. Firstly, it is needed that someone realizes that is sick and after that to start a process of detoxification. We live in time of big quantity of information, time of confusion. Suddenly, actors and directors are over-educated on some way, and from the other side essential action is missing. We need much more confrontation on artistic scene. And we could notice much self-sufficiency. People enjoy their titles and prizes. From the other side, the experiment is lost itself - it is being created for self-purpose. There are not big ideas or the ideas are financially covered by big capital. People are used to make experiments in theater and than nothing changes. Many happenings, but no changes.

Raul: Theater by itself shouldn't have any limits. Society creates the limits. Obviously, the theater has always had the important role in creation of awareness of society of every country. The writers also write with intention to illuminate the problems which are not clear to viewer. For example, in Latin America, theater should be deep, should thrill and make viewer thinking or pursuit him from theater. That is the reason why some actors were imprisoned, exiled and some theaters were closed. Why? Because the theater has power to light up the reality and explain it to people. How does the social limit theater? It is happening with censorship and dictatorship. They give finances to theater just for the shows which are not offensive, not dangerous. They support the shows which make people laughing, enjoying - but nothing happens, nothing changes. There are lot of contemporary artists which is not given the space. Many official theaters don't care a lot about new authors. Limiting the theater, we limit its possibility to reach the people.

Could the theater help solving any social issue? For example, the actual question of refugees?

Leonardo: The theater didn’t arise with that purpose and I find hard to imagine that it could solve by itself such a vast and difficult social and political issue. However, its power can still awaken in us important qualities, today sometimes even perceived as a threat: for example, the sense of communion and empathy with the other, especially when if he or she is different from us. Even when it refuses to necessarily communicate something, the theater can reconnect ourselves as human beings. In this sense, I believe that it can help each one of us, in a different and personal way, not to fall in a state of alienation from which, sooner or later, we can accept with indifference the cruelty perpetuated against the others.

Vladimir: Theater can help in solving any issue. As Shakespeare said: "mirror up to nature". There are desirable and undesirable topics. I was talking with some people here, and they mentioned that Jesus is exiled from University. When we go deeply in some story like this - we could call it philosophy, not even religion - the conversation stops on some way. It is "something else". In the story we are living, the words lost the sense. We could talk for hours and tell nothing, when we give back the sense to words, we will understand better each other. It is not important which language we speak - but the value of said. Words are free, and people spend them like money. What are consequences - that is the question?

Raul: I will give you one example. Before 30 years I directed "Hamlet" in Girona. The best friend of Hamlet is Horatio and he is black. So, I decided to choose one black actor from Senegal for that role. He was sitting on raise and when all people entered, expecting that "Hamlet" starts, he put on the clothes from his country, and he told that he had to cross over to come to Europe and he came to give the message to Hamlet, his best friend. I introduced black Horatio, because of the problems which they had there. Horatio also wanted to suicide, but Hamlet told him “You no, because you are secretary destined to my history. You can’t suicide.” After the show he was again American who migrated to Mediterranean. Theater gives me opportunity to touch that topics and illuminate that social issues. People just sometimes don't have the awareness of the problem. It is not easy to open these topics, because you will not get the financial support, but we always find some way. The theater was also my arm to fight against dictatorship in my country.

Do you think that young people are enough rebellious today?

Leonardo: Rebellion is intrinsic to youth and even today there is a lot of compressed energy that wants to be expressed: in which way it will find new voices and forms of realisation it has yet to be seen.

Vladimir:  We have two extremes - young people act between apathy and aggression. They are totally indifferent to art and theater or when they get into theater, they want fast results, so they became very aggressive - they want it now, immediately and at all costs – the same as with other things in consumer society.

Raul: I am 75 years old and as I have seven sons of different ages - between 45 and 13 years - so I can compare different points of view. In my opinion, it is a hard moment for young people. The children mature more slowly than we did. Because of political, financial and ideological reasons, young people don't put themselves against the system, but they find other ways from rebellion. Rebellion without reason is not offensive. Rebel with reason is danger. Nowadays, young people are often manipulated by communication media. 

Today big richness is in the hands of very small number of people and on the other side millions and millions of people have nothing. We all know that every moment children die of starvation. But still, I am very optimistic about the changes of society. As Fidel Castro said "if the planet survives that much aggression..." I think that it will come one epoch in 40-50 years. The way will be found. Artists develop their personalities faster. Now, young person often don't know what they want in life. We already knew clearly in that ages what we would like to do with life.

Youngsters should also be more interested in politics. They reject to be involved in political questions, but they should think on possibilities of change society and change world, creating new, better model of it.