MASARYK UNIVERSITY

THE FACULTY OF ARTS

Theory and History of Theatre

Student: Emir Zec

VÁCLAV HAVEL‟S PLAYS STAGED IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Master‟s Thesis

Mentor: M.A. David Drozd, Ph.D.

2011

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I declare that I prepared Master Thesis work independently, using listed resources and literature.

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Signature of author

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Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to: M.A. David Drozd, Ph.D. for guidance, valuable advice, comments and selfless patience, Amir Zec, Adila Zec, Suad and Ina Smajić, Kadira and Horst Hannibal, Fuad Smajić, Muharem-Hari Zahirović, Dušan, Snjeţana and Diana Miĉeviĉ and to Selma Đonlagić, Alma Tanović, Renata Tomić and Sanja Berberović for assisting me with English language.

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Contents:

1. Introduction 6 1.1. Briefly on Havel’s plays in former Yugoslavia 6 1.2. The structure of the paper 10 1.3. Havel’s life, work and political connotations 11 1.4. Reception of Václav Havel 15

2. Czech Authors on South Slavic Territories 20

3. Audience, the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, 28th December 1981 29 3.1. Brief History of the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica 29 3.2. Historical Background and the Political Situation in Yugoslavia in 1980 30 3.3. The Context behind Certain Motifs in the Text 32 3.4. Audience in the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica 34 3.5. Conclusion 37

4. Largo Desolato, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 20th February 1987 39 4.1. Brief History of the Chamber Theatre 55 39 4.2. The Context behind Certain Motifs in the Text 41 4.3. Largo Desolato in the Chamber Theatre 55 46 4.4. Conclusion 50

5. Unveiling, the National Theatre Tuzla, 5th March 1991 52 5.1. Brief History of the National Theatre Tuzla 52 5.2. Historical Background and the Political Situation in Yugoslavia in 1991 55 5.3. A word about the Director 55 5.4. The Context behind Certain Motifs in the Text 56 5.5. Unveiling in the National Theatre Tuzla 57 5.6. Conclusion 61

6. Audience and Unveiling, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 25th September 1995 63 6.1. Historical Background and the Political Situation in Post War Bosnia and Herzegovina 63 6.2. Audience and Unveiling in the Chamber Theatre 55 63

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6.3. The Context behind Certain Motifs in the Text 65 6.4. Conclusion 69

7. Translations 71

8. Conclusion 77 8.1. Few remarks on John Keane’s book A Political Tragedy in Six Acts 77 8.2. Václav Havel’s Contributions 80 8.3. Václav Havel in Bosnia and Herzegovina 83

9. Biography of Václav Havel 86

10. Annex 91 10.1. Audience, the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, 28th December 1981 93

10.2. Largo Desolato, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 20th February 1987 105

10.3. Unveiling, the National Theatre Tuzla, 5th March 1991 112

10.4. Audience and Unveiling, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 25th September 1995 117

11. References 121

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1. Introduction

Although plays by many other Czech writers were performed on the stages of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian theatres, Václav Havel was and remains the most imposing, stage- managed representative of the Czech drama creations in Bosnian and Herzegovinian. The reasons are numerous, but most of them are linked to a complicated political situation in both countries. Whereas Havel virtually had no rights in his home country in the 1970s and 1980s - totally prohibited and without any publication or staged drama, the Yugoslavian theatres were eager to stage his plays in various theatres.

The situation of Bosnian and Herzegovinian theatres, compared to other former Yugoslav scenes, was not particularly developed, nor was it rich in performance of Havel’s plays, but there is a sufficient number of staging to be analysed with regards to different areas and various contexts in which Havel’s plays have been set and performed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It would be quite tempting to analyse Havel’s works through the diversity of repertoire in different theatres, through decades in various historical, political and social contexts.

As matter a fact, all of Havel’s texts that were performed in Bosnia and Herzegovina had been added to the repertoire after being successful staged in Serbia or Croatia. Not only were the reasons mainly financial, because they mostly received the texts without payment for the translation, but they also resulted from the Bosnian and Herzegovinian poor theatre tradition and weaker cultural contacts with other countries, especially with the Czech Republic.

Briefly on Havel’s plays in former Yugoslavia:

The first theatre to perform Havel’s play in former Yugoslavia was Atelje 212 from Belgrade, Serbia, a theatre very much like first Havel’s theatre, Theatre on the Balustrade in Prague.1

1 The Theatre on the Balustrade (Divadlo Na zábradlí) is situated in Prague, Czech Republic. The theatre was founded in 1958. Its founders were Helena Philipová, Ivan Vyskočil, Jiří Suchý and Vladimír Vodička named their professional theatre after a street leading from the square to the river. Its first production, a musical collage titled If a Thousand Clarinets (Kdyby tisíc klarinetů), was premiered on 9th December 1958. Three months later Ladislav Fialka and his mime group joined the company with their production Pantomime on the Balustrade, and brought back fame to the almost forgotten theatre genre. Drama and mime companies coexisted at the theatre till Fialka’s death in 1991. In the early 1960s, with the arrival of director Jan Grossman, set designer 6 | P a g e

In 1965 Ljubomir Draškić set Havel’s The Garden Party (Zahradní slavnost), the same director presented Havel’s one-act plays Unveiling 2 and Audience to Belgrade audience in 1981, as well as feature-length play The Beggar's Opera in 1985. More details about these and other plays will be mentioned in the chapter Czech Authors on South Slavic Territories.

Audience and Unveiling are considered to be the most performed Havel’s texts, mainly by the acting academies, because of the benefits of the simple stage scenery, a small number of characters, the one-act play planned for a small scene and, of course, the quality of the text.

Havel was first shown on the Bosnian and Herzegovinian stage with his play Audience, in season 1981/82. (One year after the Croatian premiere at the Gavella Theatre in Zagreb.) First staging was performed by the Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, which, up to the nineties, was known as riotous theatre, in the first performances of new texts with delicate (questionable) issues. In Zenica, the environment known for its working class population, the most important industrial facility in the city was Steel factory built primarily under political decisions of the communist regime and not because of natural resources, or some industrial strategy, so Zenica population have always been feeling like they were being punished and they were trying to find a different way for better life by denouncing communism and decision-making structure in such a society, therefore Audience finds its right place on the repertoire of this theatre.

The second most often performed Havel’s play in Bosnia and Herzegovina was Largo Desolato. First Bosnian Largo Desolato was directed by Egon Savin and was performed in the Chamber Theatre 55 in Sarajevo, in season 1987/88. It is worth mentioning that this was, at the same time, the first and the last of Havel’s performance that was executed before other Yugoslav staging.3

Libor Fára and a stage hand and later dramaturg and playwright Václav Havel, the Theatre on the Balustrade became the centre of the Czech form of the absurd theatre (V. Havel: The Garden Party, Memorandum, Alfred Jarry: King Ubu, Franz Kafka: Process). Despite the fact that the theatre established itself abroad (or maybe because of it) as well as in Czechoslovakia, Jan Grossman and Václav Havel were forced to leave the theatre in 1968. In the 1970s and 1980s the theatre became a refuge for film directors of the 1960s “new wave”, whose film work was thwarted by the normalisation process.

2 Official English translation of Havel’s title Vernisáž has two versions: Private View or Unveiling. In my work I have decided to use Unveiling.

3 In Croatia, immediately after the Sarajevo premiere, Largo Desolato was set as well in the Drama Theatre Gavella, in season 1988. It is interesting that these sets each had a different translation. The Croatian name of the play was Desperately Funny, which is not adequate, nor to the original name of play, nor to the essence of 7 | P a g e

From its foundation to the present day The Chamber Theatre 55 has kept riotous and experimental characters and has regularly staged more experimental texts compared to other Bosnian and especially Sarajevo theatres. A performance caused diverse, tumultuous reactions. It was the time before the collapse of the Tito’s Yugoslavia, the freedom of speech and the national parties have largely begun to pull out on each side, so that the fate of Leopold Nettles4 would concern most prominent intellectuals, both in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in the entire former Yugoslavia. Zijah Sokolović, an actor, made very impressionable role playing the main character mentioned above, and his overall acting work in later years could be linked with the life of Václav Havel. It is a strange coincidence that Václav Havel started his theatre career as a military conscript. Besides his regular duties in the army he was involved in the theatre as a stagehand general, actor and writer. Zijah Sokolović, the leading Bosnian and Herzegovinian actor, compared Bosnian theatre with the army wall newspaper, saying that the theatre in Bosnia had been in crisis for the last 10 years–in lack of creativity crisis. The noun “army” is a single connecting point between the Czech (Václav Havel) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Zijah Sokolović) theatre I could think of at the beginning of my work. I must admit, it is going to be quite exciting and challenging to compare the two. The retired actress Dara Stojiljković (played the character Suzane), was personally inspired with the performance, and later she entitled one of her books by the name of a Václav Havel’s play.

Theatrical life in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in Sarajevo, would be unthinkable without the work and great personality of Jurislav Korenić,5 a theorist, director, playwright and

the play. A group of authors, The Repertoire of the Croatian Theatre 3, Croatia Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, 2002.

4 The character named in Largo Desolato English version of play by Tom Stoppard. The first production of this English text was at the Bristol Old Vic on 9 October I986.

5 Jurislav Korenid (born 1915 in Zagreb, died 1st March 1974 in Sarajevo) after graduating from Music School, he began an uncertain career as a professional musician playing the bass and piano. At the beginning of Second World War he became a stage manager and prompter of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, and then the accompanist and assistant director. After the war he graduated in directing at the Theatre Academy in Zagreb, and he went to Rijeka, the National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc and carried out various duties, as the secretary, director, and director of opera ensemble. He came to Sarajevo in 1952, by the invitation of a friend Boris Papandopul, where he was the director of the National Opera Theatre. Korenid was the first opera director with an academic degree in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He graduated in 1953, by setting an opera play Ivan pl. Zajc’s, Nikola Subid Zrinski, and the panel president was Dr. Branko Gavella (1885-1962).

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critic, and founder of two major theatrical institutions: The Chamber Theatre 55 and MESS.6 Over the years MESS has become the leading theatre festival in the region. Josip Lešić pointed out that Jurislav Korenić’s theatrical work had been characterized by imagination and professionalism, he was a man with a restless spirit, unable to settle down and calm down, constantly in motion, the actors and other collaborators of his were attracted by his extraordinary creative fire and immediacy. He was one of the few theatrical directors who understood actors and had his specific manner in approach and work with actors.

National Theatre in Belgrade opened season 1982/83 with Havel’s The Memorandum directed by Vladimir Aleksić, and the theatre staged Havel’s one-act play Protest (together with Pavel Kohout’s, Atest) directed by Zelimir Orešković in Belgrade 1984. Belgrade Drama Theatre played Largo Desolato directed by Dejan Mijać in 1985.

Nearly before the Bosnian War (1992-1995), Tuzla National Theatre performed Unveiling, in 1991, in co-production with the Sarajevo Academy of Performing Arts. It was performed by Zoran Tešić (who played Michael) as his graduate work.

Further comes the series of Audience and Unveiling by the actor, drama teacher and director Admir Glamoĉak, who was about to work for many years with these texts, starting from his graduate work and the staging in the Chamber Theatre 55, to re-directing at the Academy of Performing Arts.

Glamoĉak chose the plays mostly because of the possibilities provided to an actor, but as I said, texts which intrigue power, are always interesting and welcome. When it comes to the premiere of the two one-act plays at the Chamber Theatre 55 in the last year of the war, the performance had a great success.

Regarding these two one-act plays that were set as one, an interesting fact is that the author himself attended one of the re-runs of the performance in Sarajevo, which, considering the fact that Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina were still at war, was a very brave act on his

6 In 1960 Jurislav Korenid and his associates and colleagues established International Theatre Festival MESS, a festival of small and experimental scenes of Yugoslavia (MESS), which to this day has gathered artists in quest mood and innovative theatres from home and abroad. At the International Theatre Festival MESS the best young director award is named Jurislav Korenid.

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behalf. Intriguing is also the fact that 10 years before Admir Glamoĉak graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo with the play Audience.

Glamoĉak: “The very first time I did the play, as my graduate work, was in 1984, I was working with Mladen Nelević, in the role of Ferdinand. We performed it about 50 times on Otvorena Scena Obala. The second time, a colleague of mine Izudin Bajrović and I worked on the play in 1994 at the Chamber Theatre 55 in Sarajevo, we performed the play in Zenica, Tuzla, Mostar, Split, Dubrovnik, Ljubljana and Rijeka, which was very important during the war, because we did not allow anyone to stop us from working at the theatre and we somehow managed to travel through the war zones. One of the performances in Sarajevo was attended by Václav Havel. In 1999, once again we played the same roles on Otvorena Scena Obala. The performance was accepted very well by the audience as well as by the critics”, says Admir Glamoĉak.7

The structure of the paper:

One part of the work I will devote to translations of plays. It is interesting that the translation in which Glamoĉak played had the same names of characters mentioned in the plays, which in the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina culture and society does not tell anything (for example, the actress Bohdalova and the writer Kohout).

My work will be based on the analysis of the theatre situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the 1970s until today; the main reason for the popularity of Havel’s plays in Bosnia and Herzegovina then and now; a major review and the response on Havel’s works on Bosnia and Herzegovina stages.

Regarding the sources, I applied everything in the context of up-to-date theatrical work, using primarily dictionaries, newspapers, magazines and articles on the Bosnian and Czech Theatre, such as documents, photographs, programmes, posters, costume sketches, scenes, etc. as well as the literature published in former Yugoslavia, The Czech Republic and Slovakia.

7 In preparations for this work I contacted Mr. Admir Glamočak personally, and this was what he wrote to me in a personal letter on that occasion.

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The aim of the work is to find all possible answers in relation to Havel’s repertoire on Bosnian and Herzegovinian scene, how the plays arrived, what they were staging, reviews received by the audience, then reflections, and find all of that through the theatre documents and all about the people involved in these projects, who are still among the living. It is important to determine the accuracy of the written data, facts such as the premiere dates, names of the people who were in the projects, etc.

We should consider the fact that the archive of Yugoslav theatre, especially Bosnian (as some archives burned during the last war) is very poorly organized and that the Bosnian archivists are not educated, and therefore, the attitude towards the archives is often profane.

My intention is to analyse major Havel’s plays set on stages in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Also I would like to focus on the ways how these plays were perceived in these two different cultural, political systems and historic context. As well as what is maybe added to or lost in translation of Havel’s works.

Havel’s life, work and political connotations:

In the period from Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia until Velvet Revolution of 1989, Václav Havel, unfortunately, was not able to see any of its plays on stage in his own country, nor a single book on the shelf or windows of bookstores. Only one amateur group from Prague at the time of prohibition dared to stage his play The Beggar's Opera - but this group was disassembled immediately after premiere, and its members were punished. For twenty years Václav Havel, a writer of Kafkaesque fate, was banned in his homeland.

From the creative perspective though, this had been the most productive stage in Havel’s work - at a time of censorship he had written a dozen great plays, and a series of insightful essays and political articles. All these work where coursing in underground until the time of Velvet Revolution, or were published outside his country, by the independent Czech publishers.

The turnover of Havel's life stories indicates why I have mentioned him in the context with Kafkaesque fate. It is not a coincidence that Havel himself, in one of the Letters to Olga, said

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that he always seemed to understand Kafka's work better than other readers.8 Havel probably experienced Kafkaesque parables on his own skin. Due to dramatic changes in his life, from bourgeois son to the citizen of the last order, or a writer from Prague sent to work in provinces in the brewery (in the 1970s), from prisoner to the president of the republic, is not it in some way (with an exception of a happy ending in Havel's life story) similar to mysterious phases of Gregor Samsa in Kafka's, The Metamorphosis? Has Havel not been A Hunger Artist, a spiritual one, in the decades of prohibition and censorship? Has he not been from his birth constantly haunted by mysterious servants like in The Castle? Has he not been passing thorny paths of The Trial? Has he not been In the Penal Colony?

After his imprisonment, from June 1979 to January 1984, he was released from the prison due to the fact that he was almost like a living dead man because of starvation, and because of the fact that authorities were afraid that he might die in dungeons hospital of pneumonia. On photographs taken right after his release from the prison Havel often reminds of those people - skeletons - known from some other photos, war time photos from recent history.

At times of resistance, suffering and struggle, but also the time of the unquenchable Czech humour and irony, Havel converted into one of the most influential personalities of the Czech spiritual, artistic and dissident political figures during the period of “Normalization”. Kafkaesque experiences that saved him from the rubbish dump of history, and made him into something of Joseph Conrad’s, Lord Jim, as he defeated temptations and received cautionary wisdom from them,9 have shown us why Havel had a key role in democratic Czech and Slovakia Republics, which was set much before him by his predecessors - Masaryk, Ĉapek, Peroutka, Ĉernija and Patoĉka. Havel's presidential Hrad, the Prague Castle, surely is not some of Kafkaesque bureaucratic castle of secrets, tyranny and hidden, but effective, violence against human rights, freedom and fairness. Nevertheless, 1990s were the years of transition in Czech history and as such were painful in modern Czech history.

8 HAVEL, Václav. Letters to Olga, London: Knopf USA, Faber & Faber, April 1988, selected, edited and translated by Paul Wilson.

9 HAVEL, Václav. Letters to Olga, London: Knopf USA, Faber & Faber, April 1988, selected, edited and translated by Paul Wilson, letter 138.

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It has been reasonably often written about Václav Havel as a prisoner of conscience, as a writer who, for decades represented, the matter of liberty and spent almost five years imprisoned at the time of Brezhnev “normalization” period and at the time of occupation of Czechoslovakia. “His works and his actions reflect, on the one hand, a strong sense of moral order and of the need for justice, and on the other, a good-natured tolerance mixed with an absurd, zany sense of humour. An episode mentioned in Disturbing the Peace nicely illustrates the constant coexistence of these two inclinations.”10

But Václav Havel has accomplished quite successful writing career, as one of the most important playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd - we will always find his name next to Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Harold Pinter and Edward Albee. He earned his place on this list with his particular, satirical kind, of writing, which in his works has managed to combine “criticism of the society” with a certain universal knowledge about man, society, world and time. It is a well known fact that Havel started to write inspired by Becket and Ionesco, actually, his first independent work, one-act play An Evening with the Family, was written as reaction after reading the plays by these two playwrights. “I cannot remember details, I only know that I wrote this one-act play shortly after I returned from the army, which means at the turn of the year 1959/1960. At that time I was fascinated by Becket and Ionesco. I tried to write for myself, so to speak, a one-act play in an Ionescian way. It was merely a dramatic exercise, if I may say so.”11

Havel's plays can be divided into two main groups. The first are those plays in which the author explores and shapes what Czesław Miłosz called the “Collapse of History”, Jan Kott “Grand Mechanism”. Kott’s term “mechanism” might be the best for Havel's effort to clarify and expose the “rules” in a bureaucratic world of non-freedoms, where everything breaks and deforms - language at first, then morality and psychology, then individuals without integrity and identity, in the lack of any authenticity, just carrying out commands, impersonal, cold, inhumane and futile, they are just wheels and screws in a “big creaking machine”. In his plays The Garden Party, The Memorandum, or in, in the past relocated, Machiavellian’s The Beggar's Opera, Havel humorously highlights the mechanism of inhuman “society”, selfish and artificial, hazardous to humans, like in Thomas

10 BARANCZAK, Stanislaw. Irony comes to power in Prague. All the President’s Plays, Washington, D.C., United States: The New Republic (daily newspaper), 23rd July 1990, 27-32 p.

11 Z. A. Tichý’s interview with Václav Havel, Prague: Mladá fronta Dnes (daily newspaper). URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

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Hobbes’s Leviathan, or George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Radical social anti-humanism of our time - and not only our time, since Havel’s universality is making it beyond historical - in burlesque The Beggar's Opera Václav Havel has gained an attribute by theorists as one of best interpreters of drama.

“This period of Havel’s work, including a successful adaption of Gay’s play, The Beggar’s Opera (1972), culminates in Temptation (1985), one of the best dramatic works Havel has written.”12 If the first group comprises the plays (The Garden Party, The Memorandum and The Beggar's Opera) that illuminate the great mechanism by which society is turned into the state of absurdity, in the second group of plays, mostly one-act plays, Havel is not as interested in “rules” of the bureaucratic maze, as much as he is interested in the consequences of the leviathan state pointed in psychology, ethics and overall mentality set of his heroes in plays. These are indeed autobiographical one-act plays such as Audience, Unveiling and Protest, as well as a full-length play Largo Desolato. In these plays the focus is on - to paraphrase the title of a famous essay of Oscar Wilde the Soul of Man under Socialism or The Soul of Man under Communism. Questionable Havel’s Vaněk, that silent Socrates which spoke very little, but calls for others to discover their broken, souls in suffering by forces that are violating them; the same as pursued philosophy professor Leopold Nettles (Kopřiva) in Largo Desolato illustrate very distinctly the cracks in men‟s souls under the pressure by bureaucratic system and violence. If, in other words, in the first group plays place emphasis on uncovering, threatening and destructive mechanisms of regime (although these plays are penetrating psychological insight as well), in the second group of plays show that such inhumane, violent and anonymous authority destroys and degrades human personality, causing the worst impulses. For the first group of plays a common title might be - How to Destroy Human Community, and for the second group - How to Devastate Human Personality. Václav Havel in plays of political orientation proved to be a shrewd critic of grotesque social experiment; and in plays about fate of “dissident” and his environment Havel appears to be a highly sensitive interpreter of the human psychology and ethics. If the characterization of characters in plays such as The Garden Party, The Memorandum and The Beggar's Opera are more socially conditioned and focused, in “dissident” plays there are highly emphasized psychological lines in the best sense of that word. Havel has the ability to evoke the absurd, macabre and mechanical world of utopian ideology that turns the society into environment of torture, and in the second group of plays he illustrates

12 SRBA, Bořivoj. Václav Havel – Dramatist, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 35 p.

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helpless and desperate human being faced with such a world. All those who will be interested in the theme of “human soul in communism” will have something to learn from plays of Václav Havel, which are not only a source of sociological, psychological and ethical approach to the truth, but also a greatly written, dramatically very consistently shaped and designed artwork of one of most eloquently satiric dramas of our century. Havel is the Czech answer to those days of European tendencies in world of absurd and drama “(…) and yet they represent as well a European parallel to the creative efforts of the existential theatre of the absurd of Havel’s contemporaries, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Harold Pinter and Edward Albee. These dramatists were the first to describe and define „today‟s crises of humanity‟ with mastery, focusing on the evaporation of the identity of the modern man who has lost his belief in God and hence his hold on the fundamental metaphysical certainties to which he might have been able to relate in his desolation.”13

Reception of Václav Havel:

Reading all Havel’s plays in Czech, English and Bosnian/Croat/Serbian my first impression was that in English translations Havel is made more in the manner of the Theatre of the Absurd. The features most likely added by his translators, it would be interesting to know if this was done with Havel's blessing, or not. It is a well known fact that Havel is usually well informed and often consulted when setting his plays, as well as that he personally selects translators for his works, and with some of them he is a very close friend, for example with Paul Wilson,14 who

13 SRBA, Bořivoj. Václav Havel – Dramatist, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 38 p.

14 Paul Wilson is a freelance writer, editor, radio producer and translator. Born in Ontario and educated at the University of Toronto and King’s College, University of London, England, he spent ten years in Czechoslovakia (1967-1977) where he taught English and learned Czech. He was eventually expelled by the Communist government for his association with the dissident movement, particularly for his involvement with the underground music scene as a member of the legendary rock band, The Plastic People of the Universe. On his return to Canada, he was active in promoting the work of dissident writers and musicians during the remaining years of totalitarianism. With Ivan Hartel, he founded a record company, called Bozi Mlyn, to publish the recorded music of The Plastic People and other Czech underground musicians. He also began writing for magazines and became a regular contributor to Shades, Books in Canada and The Idler magazine and was distinguished for his translations of Czech writers such as Josef Škvorecký, Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma and Bohumil Hrabal. He has contributed essays, articles and reviews to many North American and European publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, the Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, the National Post. He was associate editor of The Idler magazine from 1988 to 1992, senior editor of Saturday Night magazine from 1998 to 2001, review editor of the National Post from 2001-2003, and he contributed to the founding of The Walrus magazine in 2003 as Deputy Editor and Editor until his resignation in 2004. He is perceived almost as an official/exclusive translator of Havel’s works in English, but rather of Havel’s books and 15 | P a g e

translated few of his plays and books in English.15 In this respect, there is an interesting course of development of a discussion between Paul Wilson and Václav Havel for selection of the title for one of his books: “I said, “Look, why don‟t you consider a title with the castle in it somewhere, because everybody knows you as President.” The castle is the most prominent landmark in Prague. It kind of relates to Kafka; there‟s Kafka-esque elements in the book. But he said, “No. Supposing somebody looks the book up on Amazon, and the word castle is in the title, and they‟re gonna get Kafka; they‟re not gonna get me.” And I said, “No, they‟re gonna get Kafka and you, and what‟s wrong with that?” In any case, we went back and forth and back and forth, and his final position was that the book would be called Please Be Brief, and then the subtitle would be To the Castle and Back. And I said, well, we‟re almost there. So I wrote him back a letter saying, “Dear Vašek, I think the subtitle is absolutely brilliant, and I have one last suggestion. Why don‟t we just, you know, call it To the Castle and Back?” And, to my surprise, he agreed, and so that‟s what it‟s called.”16 Based on this I would assume that this “making Havel more absurd” is done with his blessing. One of determinants and most common question in the Theatre of the Absurd is the question of identity. There is no doubt that identity and identity crisis is one of the very important subjects that Havel is dealing with. Regarding this Havel made the following comment: “I want it or not, I intend it or not this subject always returns in my plays, almost obsessively what I find as not accidental but as matter of those aspects of the world which I was chosen to be an interpreter for. This subject is a problem of the human being identity. (…) These plays are not – and it is very important – nihilistic. They only warn. (…) The theatre of absurd does not offer us the consolation or the hope. It only reminds us the way we live: we live with no hope. I

other works than plays. He is currently working on a translation of Mountain Hotel, an early play by Václav Havel. He is also working on a memoir of his own. (More about Paul Wilson and Havel could be read in: “Rozhovor s Paulem Wilsonem, Pavel Drábek zpovídal kanadského publicistu, člena legendární skupiny The Plastic People of the Universe a překladatele her Václava Havla Paula Wilsona pro RozRazil 13th June 2010 na brněnském Špilberku, Brno.” URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.)

15 For example: (plays) The Memorandum (2006), The Beggar’s Opera (2001), Leaving (2007), (books) The Power of the Powerless (1986), Letters to Olga (1988), Disturbing the Peace (1990), Open Letters: Selected Writing 1963-1989 (1991), Summer Meditations (1991), Toward a Civil Society: Selected Speeches and Writings (1994), The Art of the Impossible (1997), To the Castle and Back (2007), etc. According to interview of Pavel Drábek with Paul Wilson right now he is working on translation of Havel’s play Mountain Hotel. (URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.)

16 WILSON, Paul. Paul Wilson Discusses His Translation of Vaclav Havel’s Book “To the Castle and Back”, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 17th May 2007. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

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think that the theatre of absurd in a very particular way themetise the rudimentary problems of the contemporary existence of a human being.”17 Nevertheless, this might be yet one more reason why Havel in the English speaking milieu is perceived more absurd than as he actually is. Other thing might be that from the very beginning in the English milieu Havel was observed through and compared with his role models, such as Eugène Ionesco, Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard. Mechanical repetition of lines and words by some is devoid of any resemblance with Ionesco’s early plays. In England he was predominantly compared with Samuel Beckett, I find this as the roots of perception of Havel’s works that gained attribute of absurd more than they indeed are. As a matter of fact, Havel himself in one of his works said that he does not revert to Brecht in method of making things stranger, but to Wiktor Szkłowski,18 “A gag is not nonsensical. It is not illogical either. In fact it is about depriving one logic of its sense by using another logic”.19 In English theatre milieu theatre workers and thinkers are often confronted with this issue. “It is customary to fault directors and actors for superimposing their own, or derivative, abstract styles upon Mr. Havel’s material, which, ostensibly, invites it. And it would be enlightening to see a straightforward interpretation of Largo Desolato that can unearth the absurd reality and real absurdity of the drama, instead of superimposing tired avant-garde tricks upon it. Mr. Havel’s text requires a cohesive, graspable directorial stamp to make it accessible, instead of more fragmented.”20

Paul Wilson experience made me question my thesis that Havel in English tradition is more absurd that he actually is. “It might be useful for audiences to keep in mind that Havel sees himself as a playwright in the tradition of absurd drama, whose antecedents include Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett, to name just two. (…) On the surface, there is nothing formally “absurd” about

17 HAVEL, Václav. Letters to Olga, London: Knopf USA, Faber & Faber, April 1988, selected, edited and translated by Paul Wilson.

18 Wiktor Borisowicz Szkłowski (born 1893 in St. Petersburg, died 1984) was literature, film expert and a Russian writer, one of the co-founders and most prominent representatives of the Russian school of Formal, co-founder of OPOJAZU, literary theorist group Sierapionowy bratia. After the year 1930 (article Pamiatnik Nautchnoye oszybkie) he begins to publish less frequently, radically departs from the formalist approach to literature and coming up a bit (perhaps influenced by external circumstances) to Marxism. He was interested mainly in the form of analysis.

19 HAVEL, Václav. The Anatomy of the Gad, one small essay in Modern Drama XXIII.I book, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.

20 KLEIN, Alvin. Press clipping theatre review article Theater; Yale Repertory Stages Havel’s ‘Largo Desolato’, New York: The New York Times (daily newspaper), 11th November 1990, 24 p.

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how the play presents its straightforward story, but Havel disrupts the story with absurdist elements, such as sudden, dislocating quotations from Chekhov’s, The Cherry Orchard, or Shakespeare’s, King Lear, or moments of fantasmagoria when he scrambles the dialogue in scenes that seem like the sudden onset of a nightmare. He also plays fast and loose with time, for if we are to believe Rieger’s name-dropping, he must have been in power since World War Two. The most interesting “absurdist” element in Leaving is the way Havel uses the authorial “voice” to interrupt the action. In his memoirs, Havel dreamed of discovering a way of writing a play in which he could reveal to the audience his private intentions and thoughts as he wrote it. The “Voice” in Leaving is the realization of that dream.”21 We must admit existence of the so called „The Eastern Absurd‟ when after 1956 the influence of Western plays of the absurd started to stir into communist countries after long time of predominance of socialist realism in all spheres of art. This influence gave birth to first writers in absurd tone such as Sławomir Mrożek22 and István Örkény,23 or in Czechs Milan Uhde, Ivan Klíma, Ladislav Smoĉek and Václav Havel, which due to the suspension of regime had to hide behind realism, whereas due to the numerous allusions to current events or obviously interventionist features their plays have not become political.

On other hand, there are other theorists who undoubtedly support thesis that Havel is not true or thoroughbred writer in absurd ton. “All of these plays (Audience, Unveiling, Protest and Largo Desolato) - are decidedly realistic and all have an autobiographical character. If they are penetrated by some constituents of the absurd (often used by Havel in his earlier days) then the reason for this is that these elements are bare reflection of the absurd regime which was in power at the time of these plays‟ origination. Whoever experienced this period knows that Havel stylized pictures neither of the life or others nor his own life in the spirit of the absurd theatre. On the contrary, with a degree of self-denial, Havel suppressed to a minimum of all methods of the absurd which, till then, had comprised the main construction technique of his dramatic work. It seems that he feared that any hyperbole or stylistic device added by the author could destroy or, at least,

21 Official web site of the Wilma Theater, Interview with translator Paul Wilson, on the occasion of the premiere of play Leaving by Václav Havel, translated by Paul Wilson, directed by Jiri Zizka. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

22 Sławomir Mrożek (born 29th June 1930 in Borzęcin) is a Polish dramatist and writer. Mrożek’s works belong to the genre of Theatre of the Absurd, intended to shock the audience with non-realistic elements, political and historic references, distortion and parody.

23 István Örkény (born 5th April 1912, died 24th June 1979 in Budapest) was a Hungarian writer. A typical feature of his plays and novels is satiric view and creation of grotesque situations.

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weakens the effect of pictures expressing the “abnormal normality” of the period, that is, the “real absurdity” of the situation his plays presented.”24 It is on us to get to know and examine all of these different views on the Havel, and to reconcile them, and to decide how we will observe and interpret Havel and his works.

In the modern perception of Havel’s works, all his written works and political activities, we might recognize an oversight in the nonexistence of sustained discussion of the influence of Jan Patoĉka as Havel’s “philosophical mentor”. There is no systematic exploration of Havel’s works taught in the tradition of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Heidegger, Husserl. There is no comparison of Havel with adjacent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil, but nevertheless, all of the above mentioned had a great deal of influence on his thoughts and works.

“Reading Havel in Czech and reading what Havel says in his public interviews abroad seems to me to be almost like two personalities. There seems to be a Czech variant and an international variant. Do you think this is true? Would you say this is true about his theatre plays as well?”25 About reception of Havel home and abroad Paul Wilson made a quite interesting comment on different occasions: “You know, this is one of the mysteries about Havel is that he is seen very differently in the west than he is at home. And it‟s something that I discovered and wasn‟t prepared for the discovery. When I went to write an article about his last days in office, and I discovered that the further away you get from Prague, the more popular he is; that in the middle of Prague, his last days of President, there were a handful of people who showed up for his final public appearance at the castle. Just a handful of people. There were crowds, 10, 13 years ago. Whereas I was with him here in Washington when he was writing the book, and you know, he met with Senators and I had to interpret for him, and they were falling all over themselves saying, you know, „You‟re our hero,‟ and so on.”26

24 SRBA, Bořivoj. Václav Havel – Dramatist, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 34 p.

25 DRÁBEK, Pavel. Question of Pavel Drábek during Rozhovor s Paulem Wilsonem, Pavel Drábek zpovídal kanadského publicistu, člena legendární skupiny The Plastic People of the Universe a překladatele her Václava Havla Paula Wilsona, Brno: RozRazil, 13th June 2010. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

26 WILSON, Paul. Paul Wilson Discusses His Translation of Vaclav Havel’s Book “To the Castle and Back”, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 17th May 2007. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

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2. Czech Authors on South Slavic Territories

In this chapter I would like to focus more on matters of translations of Czech authors into South Slavic languages; to make an attempt to find the roots of the phenomenon of great acceptance of the Czech dissident authors in ex-Yugoslavia, especially in mid-80s of the 20th century, in the period of Brezhnev’s “normalization” period in Czechoslovakia; as well as to try to define the socio-historical and artistic connotations and influence of the works by the Czech dissident authors and social impact on the communist regime in Yugoslavia. This phenomenon reached by quality and quantity almost same reception as works of the local authors in ex- Yugoslav milieu.

In the second half of the 20th century Yugoslav cultural scene had greeted with a solid tradition of knowledge of the Czech literature. At a different historic time period reception of the Czech literature was at different levels of intensity and quality of acceptance. The quantity of the reception of the Czech authors depended on the quality of mutual cultural ties. In this sense, the most fertile and closest mutual cultural ties were in the period of national revival (in first half of the 19th century) and in the interbellum period, when ties between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia were very close. The period after the Second World War, especially after 1948 and in time of Informbiro, resulted in „cooling‟ of mutual Yugoslav-Czechoslovak relations, and therefore in the decrease of reception of the Czech literature works in Yugoslavia. However, the continuity in some sense existed, because at that time already there was a respective group of interpreters and experts on the Czech literature in Yugoslavia. Thanks to the efforts by Professor Kresimir Georgijević, Jaroslav Mali, Ljudevit Jonke and others, according to judgment of the publisher‟s then - Yugoslav readers were able to read the finest selection of the Czech literary production at that time, but this selection of works might be actually questioned on several grounds. The impression is that Yugoslav regime selected works and authors suitable to their tastes and interests.

The period of loosening of the Stalinist discipline, in the mid 60s of the 20th century, brought cultural revival of Czechoslovakia, and “defrosting” of relations with Yugoslav culture. However, events after 1968, and downfall of the Prague Spring, again closed the door on mutual cooperation and exchange of the ideas between the two Slavic nations whom have shared a similar fate in upheavals of recent history. Paradoxically, the re-closure of the official Czechoslovak culture in untouchable shackles of neo-Stalinism after 1968 brought new bloom in 20 | P a g e

the continuity of reception of the Czech author‟s works in the South Slavs milieu. Observing it from the historical point, this was the third ascent into more intensive cognition between Yugoslavian environment and the Czech literature. Actually, we cannot talk about “exchange” in this case, because it was mostly one way communication, Yugoslavia was mostly “importing” and almost did not “export” in Czechoslovakia.

The 70s and 80s of the 20th century in Czechoslovakia, the time of Brezhnev’s “normalization”, was the period when the Czech literary scene was sharply divided into official literature, dissident or samizdat literature and literature written in exile. Many Czech authors were not able to publish, or publicly promote their works, as for their names were on the black lists of ideological censorship. Some of them left the country and continued to write in exile (e.g. Milan Kundera and Josef Škvorecký), some remained in the country, but they wrote only for “drawer” or they published in samizdat releases (e.g. Václav Havel), others found a model of “double version” of theirs books (such as Bohumil Hrabal), and some others have gone forever into silence. “Havel once said in an interview he did in 1986 with a journalist who was interviewing dissidents, and he asked Havel why he didn‟t want to leave, Havel said: “I don‟t want to leave because I‟m kind of like a Czech bumpkin, really, at heart, and I really like it here. I don‟t want to leave.” That is the down to earth explanation. The other explanation is that his conscience would not allow him to leave.”27

According to the data from publishers, prose works by Milan Kundera, Josef Škvorecký and Bohumil Hrabal were extensively translated into Serbo-Croat language in the 1980s, and the popularity of theirs works in Yugoslav environment was extremely high, even it approached the quality of reception the level of local authors. At that time, plays by Václav Havel and Pavel Kohout, banned from theatres in Czechoslovakia, were put on Yugoslavian stages, e.g. on the stage of Atelje 212 in Belgrade, The Belgrade Drama Theatre, Gavella Drama Theatre in Zagreb, ITD Theatre in Zagreb, The Chamber Theatre 55 in Sarajevo and others. Testifying about all of this the intensity of publications of translations of the mentioned authors, as well as multiplied reprints or translations, or continuously performing in couple theatrical seasons of performances by these authors.

27 WILSON, Paul. Paul Wilson Discusses His Translation of Vaclav Havel’s Book “To the Castle and Back”, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 17th May 2007. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

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The first translated novel by the Czech author which stood out from the clichés of Socialist Realism was a novel by Josef Škvorecký, The Cowards (Zbabělci),28 written in 1948. This novel was published in Czechoslovakia several years later, but after one month it was withdrawn from bookshops after accusations that the author cynically and “unpatriotically” described the last days of the Second World War. Only by the second edition in 1964 was the novel rehabilitated and have became the unofficial measure of modernity of the Czech post-war literary creations. To Yugoslavian readers this novel about the life and historical upheavals of “Czech golden youth” was available already in 1967, and in those years it became a “cult” book of the Yugoslav rebellious youth. However, the first Czech author who became a symbol of dissident literature in Yugoslavian environment was Milan Kundera. His short story Nobody Will Laugh was published in the journal Knjiţevnost (1/1967), translated by Miloš I. Bandić, even before the writer published his first novel The Joke (Ţert) (1967). The author emigrated in Paris in 1974, and thus started his phase of samizdat publication of books in his home country, and also the phase of increased interest in translation of his works into other languages.

A little known fact is that the work by Milan Kundera was the first to be introduced to our theatre audience, and after that to the readers. The Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad had opened on 26th November 1970 its third or chamber stage, whose repertoire concept was conceived as a turning to the experimental theatrical expressions. It was opened by dramatization of Kundera’s short story Symposium, from collection Laughable Loves (Směšné lásky) (1969), titled Symposium or About Love (Simpozijum ili o ljubavi). Dramatization was done by Petar Marjanović, director of play was Ţelimir Orešković and translated by Petar Vujiĉić.

The popularity of works by Milan Kundera in Yugoslavian milieu reminded publishers of yet another Czech dissident. Josef Škvorecký,29 who emigrated to Canada shortly after the Prague Spring in 1968. His first novel, The Cowards (1958), had already been translated into Serbo-Croat language, and in the meantime the translation of his novel Lioness (Lvíĉe) (1969), done by Mirko Jirsak, was published in 1973.

28 ŠKVORECKI, Josef. Kukavice, Belgrade: Prosveta, translated by Jara Ribnikar and Jasna Novak, 1967.

29 ŠKVORECKI, Josef. Bas saksofon i druge priče, Belgrade: Prosveta, 1986, translated by Aleksandar Ilid (second edition, Belgrade: Narodna knjiga, 1998); Oklopni bataljon: fragmenti iz doba kulta ličnosti, Zagreb: Znanje, 1986, translated by Nikola Krpid; Sjajna sezona: tekst o najvažnijim stvarima u životu, Zagreb: Mladost, 1986, translated by Dagmar Ruljančid; Iz života češkog društva, Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine, translated by Milorad Čolid; Inžinjer ljudskih duša, Zagreb: August Cesarec, translated by Dagmar Ruljančid, 1989.

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The glory of Kundera in the South Slavic milieu in the first half of the 80s and 90s and the glory of Škvorecký in mid 1980s, continued in the late 1980s with the third Czech dissident writer Václav Havel. This time in sharp words of convictions of dogmatic and non-freedom societies will come from stage. I indeed already mentioned some of these plays, but I would like to chronologically list them here altogether. Yugoslavian audience was already aware of Havel’s plays The Garden Party (Zahradní slavnost) (1963), which had premier on stage of Belgrade theatre Atelje 212 in 1965, translated by Jasna Novak. One-act plays Unveiling (Vernisáţ) (1975) and Audience (Audience) (1975) had premier in Gavella Drama Theatre in Zagreb on 22nd February 1980; in Belgrade these two one-acts were done in Atelje 212 in 1981, translated by Renata Ulmanski; the same year play Audience (Audience) was played in National Theatre in Zenica; and then again both one-act plays in National Theatre in Split on 12th April 1982. Play The Memorandum (Vyrozumění) (1965) was first introduced at National Theatre in Belgrade in 1982, translated by Aleksandar Ilić. Protest (Protest) (1978) together with Pavel Kohout’s play Attest (Atest) (1979) was set on stage on 12th October 1981 in ITD Theatre in Zagreb and at National Theatre in Belgrade in 1984, translated by Ivan Kušan. On 24th January 1984 on Italian stage in Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc in Rijeka was played L’udienza (Protest). The following year, 1985, brought as many as two premiers of Havel’s plays: Largo Desolato (Largo desolato) (1984), in The Belgrade Drama Theatre, and The Beggar's Opera (Ţebrácká opera) (1975) in Atelje 212, both translated by Aleksandar Ilić. The same translation was used and in Largo Desolato (Largo desolato) set in The Chamber Theatre 55 in Sarajevo, premiered on 20th February 1987. The same play was set in Gavella Drama Theatre in Zagreb, but under a different title: Oĉajno smiješno30 and in different translation, on 10th June 1989. After 1990 Havel’s plays have been staged on South Slavic theatres also, but will be discussed more later. In this chapter my goal is to clarify more “dissident ages” of the Czech writers, in the period after 1990s these writers were not considered as dissidents any more, on contrary.

The collection of Havel’s plays was published in the Nolit edition in 1991,31 entitled as Šest drama Vaclava Havela,32 as well as in the book that contains two Havel’s plays entitled as Pazite.33 The translations of Havel’s letters sent to his wife from prison, entitled as Pisma Olgi (Letters to Olga),

30 Unofficial translation: Desperately Funny.

31 HAVEL, Václav. Šest drama, Belgrade: Nolit, 1991, translation Aleksandar Ilid; Pazite, Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine, 1990, translation Aleksandar Ilid; Pisma Olgi, Belgrade: Prosveta, 1989, translation Aleksandar Ilid.

32 Unofficial: Six Plays by Václav Havel.

33 Unofficial: Attention.

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were published at the end of the 1980s. In those years, in the 1980s, a series of translations of Havel’s speeches and political essays, were published especially in magazines Knjiţevnost,34 Pismo35 and Treći programme.36 The fact is that in 80s Havel and other Czech dissident authors were very welcome in Yugoslavia. The curiosity is that in that time Czechoslovakian Embassy in Yugoslavia on several occasion made official complaints because of the staging of Havel’s plays in Yugoslavia.

It is not surprising that Havel’s one-act play Protest (Protest) was set on stage as one piece with Pavel Kohout’s one-act play Attest (Atest) in couple of cases in Yugoslavia. For example, Ţelimir Orešković, director of the play in National Theatre in Belgrade in 1984, the recognized that these two playwrights are similar by literary fate and (anti)political affiliation that they are sharing. Pavel Kohout, the novelist and playwright, like Havel, was outside his country most performed Czech playwright in post-Second World War period, but he belonged to a group of the banned writers which left country after 1968.

Although Havel’s and Kohout’s plays have often been perceived and labelled as political theatre, because they have thematized much about political contents, though theatre critic Jovan Ćirilov, in his review regarding the premiere of The Memorandum (Vyrozumění) in daily newspaper Politika wrote that Havel despises politics and that theatrical expression serves to him to show politic as it actually is, by which he is releasing from its everyday violence. In the same article Ćirilov writes about Havel, that he is the living spirit of Kafka and Hašek’s wit: “the officials are living in their gray, damp rooms and real power have those who are mastering new language called Ptydepe, until recent declarations of period of latest language Chorukor. In meantime, we are witnessing scenes in which secretaries their working hours are spending by combing their blanched hair and by buying rolls... Therefore, iconography is of cheerfully clichés evenings, about bureaucrats in Kafkaesque terror from unknown new language.”37 I would like to add, that both authors in their plays try to expose the inhumane methods of enforcement and mechanisms of demagogy and power. Political orientations, social systems and ideology are ephemeral, but mechanisms of implementation are remaining the same. The problems and thesis emphasized in these plays, therefore, have been easily recognized by the audience in the Yugoslavian regime.

34 Unofficial: Literature.

35 Unofficial: Letter.

36 Unofficial: The Third Programme.

37 DIRILOV, Jovan. Muke s jezikom, Belgrade: Politika (daily newspaper), 05th October 1982, 11 p. 24 | P a g e

It can be concluded that Havel’s and Kohout’s plays in the mid of 1980s were real “treat” on repertoires of Yugoslav theatres, and all of this had even more lure knowing the fact that these premieres were also among first to be released and most of Havel’s plays were forbidden to be performed in Czechoslovakia. Even though the author was imprisoned as a political enemy of the state, his plays were available to the Yugoslavian audience. The phenomenon that Václav Havel became the leading satirist by the number of production of his plays in Yugoslavia, was commented by the theatre expert Peter Volk in Ilustrovana politika.38 Through Havel’s works, according to Volkov’s opinion, the audience had recognized topics and time that they were living in. Volk believed that that society in “pathetic politicization of our mentality we are less able to look ourselves in the distorted mirror, so help of these Czech comrades and writers comes in handy, so we are able, as well, to have a satirical theatre.”39 Was Volk right, or was easier to swallow the bitter cup of criticism of the socialist society, when it was offered to the hand of other, and not by Yugoslav authors? And Jovan Ćirilov in his review of same play, in newspaper Politika, wrote: “For one-act plays Protest and Attest is important that they are Czech only because it guarantees exceptional wit. Everything else in those plays related in a greater or lesser extent to the crisis of conscience in which ordinary man is placed by artist in conflict with bureaucracy in modern socialist society.”40

In socialist Yugoslavia in the early 1980s the ruling model was “socialism with a human face”. Although the Yugoslav literary scene in those years had its own dissidents and banned writers, the policy of not belonging to the Eastern Bloc, opened the door to more tolerant ideological treatment, primarily and especially on field of culture. It is this field most of the space for an extremely intense reception of the Czech dissident authors was opened. This “ajar door” for reception of the works which were banned in Czechoslovakia allowed for South Slavic reader to be in advantage over the Czech recipients, given the opportunity that the works of the modern Czech writers in translation were read or watched in theatre, much before those in whose language those works were written. The awareness that the South Slavs readers were in favour compared to original recipients - created a sense of the (false) advantages and freedom, a bit domineering feeling of those who were living in a free and democratic society, a “better” model of socialism. Also in the absence of, or at least narrowed i.e. censored possibilities, to

38 The magazine “Ilustrovana politika” published in Belgrade.

39 VOLIK, Petar. Protest i Atest, Belgrade: Ilustrovana politika (magazine), 31st January 1984, 10 p.

40 DIRILOV, Jovan. Satira i „satira”, Belgarde: Politika (daily newspaper), 18th January 1984, 12 p.

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read or watch local art works that were also “under the ice”,41 the availability of banned works from other socialist countries, provided a semblance or a demonstration of free choice and a possibility of different opinions. By this acceptance of the Czech dissident authors in Yugoslavian environment become a phenomenon. Instead of criticizing their own reality, the reader received “eye opening” experience from other environments. Through the image of the Czechoslovak society from the period of Stalinism and normalization, Yugoslavian reader was able to recognize the image of his own socialist society.

A good indicator of the quality of the reception of foreign authors in some other environment was a number of published critiques, reviews, essays, or studies and periodicals in the recipient environment. In this sense, in the 80s Kundera works were quite popular.42 In most of these texts the accent was placed on the analysis of the author‟s poetics, evaluation of his novels in relation to the contemporary European achievements of that time. But in the critic spheres of interest were ideas and thoughts on how much translations and editions of the Czech authors were “censored” for Yugoslavian cultural consumers. Thought it was not the question whether that was done or not, but rather to what extent and in which form. In any case, consciously or not, the authors wanted to warn the readers of Kundera’s idea about false existence of the socialist man, which could be applied to Yugoslav environment, so by presumption of authors, therefore disturb censorship.

Approach to Kundera’s works in Yugoslav milieu was generally positive, and a proof of popularity of his work among Yugoslav readers is an example of how much was written about him. It is interesting that works by Josef Škvorecký and Václav Havel were in lesser extent in polemical articles and studies and on pages of Yugoslavian periodicals.43 Except for the informative presentations about new translations, editions or drama premieres, in which the artistic value of the Czech authors was positively evaluated. In the 1990s the advantage was given to publication of translations of their short essays or passages from the books,44 and by the late 1980s and early 1990s often interviews with these authors were published.45

41 In other words: under the censorship.

42 SIMID, Jovan. Umetnost kao ispitivanje ljudske egzistencije, Beograd: Venac, 114/83, September 1983, 18-19 p.

43 TIMČENKO, Nikolaj. Riječi ljubavi za Milana Kunderu, Niš: Gradina, 1983, 13-23 p.

44 ŠKVORECKI, Josef. Šizofrena vremena, from book by VELIČKOVID, Dušan. Slike smrti, Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine, 1993, 23-32 p.; ŠKVORECKI, Josef. Priče iz Rajske doline, Belgrade: Mostovi, translated by Milan Čolid, 26 | P a g e

Yugoslav audience met Hrabal, thanks to film art, in a movie based on novel Closely Watched Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky) (1965), which was directed by Jiří Menzel and won an Oscar in 1966. Hrabal’s name was on most of the films that belonged to Czech “new wave” cinematography of the 60s, and which, without any doubt, had a large influence on Yugoslavian filmmakers.46 If we add to this great popularity and positive reviews of his translations and his books in 80s, and yet another wave of edition of Hrabal’s new books and selections of prose from the early 80s (thanks to Milan Ĉolić’s translations), it can be said with certainty that this Czech writer joined the phenomenon which I have mentioned earlier.

With authors mentioned so far, I would like to name some other Czech dissident authors from a different historical period which were less translated, but were sporadically mentioned in the context of Czech culture that vegetated in exile during 1980s in Yugoslavia. Such as Ivan Klíma, Ivan Sviták, Zdeněk Mlynář and others.47 Translations of their books, essays or articles, completed the picture of the socialist bloc countries, provided good material for comparison with picture of Yugoslav society, and were often “used” as the spokesmen of things about which local Yugoslav authors were not able to write about.

In works of the Czech dissident authors Yugoslavian literary and theatrical audiences recognized a scanned image of their own society; they recognized the mechanisms of bureaucratic and dogmatic society, the model of its conversion into inhuman and alienated absurd. Characteristically Czech, satirical and ironic approach to reality which points to the moral weakness and vices of society, as well as penetrating psychological analysis of moral failures which the man in socialist society experiences, were traits easily recognizable for Yugoslav

1996, 617-624 p.; HAVEL, Václav. Vanredno saslušanje, Belgrade: Mostovi, translated by Biserka Rajčid, 1996, 640-650 p.

45 Deset godina Povelje 77: Razgovor sa Josefom Škvoreckim i Razgovor sa Vaclavom Havelom, Belgrade: Pismo, 10/1987, 211-231 p.

46 Reception of Hrabal’s films in ex-Yugoslavia is possible to read more in KORDA-PETROVID, Aleksandar. Bohumil Hrabal među srpskim čitaocima, Novi Sad: Zbornik Matice srpske za slavistiku, 54-55/1998, pg. 189-194.

47 KLIMA, Ivan. Ljeto ljubavi, Zagreb: Naprijed, 1985, translated by Renata Kuhar; Naše tradicije i granice razvoja, Belgrade: Književnost, 46/1991, 762-766 p., translated by Nada Đorđevid; MLINARŽ, Zdenjek. Posle mraza u Kremlju, in: VELIČKOVID, Dušan. Slike sumnje, Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine, 1993, 32-38 p.; SVITAK, Ivan. Glavom kroz zid, Belgrade: Ideje, translated by Aleksandar Ilid, 1987.

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recipients, and so they accepted it as a picture of their own reality. In fact these were the roots of such thorough acceptance of this group of the Czech authors in the South Slavic milieu.

At the same time, the existence of such “critical valves” was suitable for Yugoslav official cultural policy. The critique of socialist society in the works of the Czech authors had been an alibi for claim of the lack of ideological censorship, as well as the evidence of complete democracy of system in terms of cultural policy. In addition, there had always been an excuse for negative image of socialist society in actually painting of Czechoslovakian, not the Yugoslav socialism.

Although it was a question of the phenomenon that was largely based on the socio- historical and political circumstances that were on the rule in the 70s and 80s of the 20th century, we should not ignore the fact that the analyzed works by the Czech writers have “survived” in the South Slavic milieu, even when it were not in political sense actual. The reprints of the already existing translations, as well as publishing of new translations and new works, especially by Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, Václav Havel or Ivan Klíma, show that these writers were accepted as good models and artistically worthy of contemporary Czech literature in the Yugoslavian milieu. Polemical essays and literary analysis, written in the later period by South Slavic literary analysts, are the best confirmation of the burning desire for and provocative nature of works of former Czechoslovakian dissidents. Only the angle of view and their perceptions had changed through years: in the foreground was no longer their political actuality, but rather a literary analysis of their philosophical ideas or narrative and formal dealings. Thus I might conclude that reception of Milan Kundera, Josef Škvorecký, Bohumil Hrabal, Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma and others in the South Slavic milieu was initiated by the socio-historical circumstances, but it founded itself on the basis of its real artistic value.

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3. Audience, the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, 28th December 198148

Brief History of the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica:

The Bosnian National Theatre Zenica is one of four theatre institutions which have the character of national theatre in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian National Theatre Zenica has gained some prestige awards at the important theatre festivals in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in former Yugoslavia, by which this theatre gained the reputation of a respectable theatre institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnian National Theatre Zenica was founded at the beginning of 1950 (25th February 1950) under the name Regional National Theatre in Zenica, later on it change its name several times, but mostly it will be remembered as National Theatre Zenica. Finally in the year 1994, during Bosnian war, it gained today‟s name Bosnian National Theatre Zenica. Since its foundation until today, Bosnian National Theatre has performed about 650 premieres. During its short history Bosnian National Theatre has developed its distinctive style based on the original repertoire and specific methodology of work arising from acceptance of different poetics of the modern theatrical expression. Dramatizations and premieres, as well as, the repertoire based on the plays of domestic authors are the repertoire distinction for which the Bosnian National Theatre is recognizable within the broader theatre milieu. With its artistic activities Bosnian National Theatre Zenica has become the centre and the meeting place not only of the theatres, but of the overall artistic and cultural life in the central part of Bosnia.

In the last fifty years the theatre has been managed by some very significant theatre workers for former Yugoslavia theatre milieu, such as: Hasan Hasanović (1950-1951), Miralem Cerić (1951-1952), Đoka Petrović (1952-1953), Sveta Milutinović (1953-1957), Strahinja Savić (1957-1962), Zdravko Martinović (1962-1978), Radovan Marušić (1978), etc. Important directors have been collaborating with Bosnian National Theatre Zenica too.49

48 For more technical details about plays see Annex.

49 List of some of the most respectable directors who collaborated with this theatre: Milan Barid, Rahim Burhan, Tomislav Durbešid, Radivoje Lola Đukid, Ljubiša Georgievski, Gradimir Gojer, Zlatko Hrabaček, Bogdan Hussakowski, Dušan Jovanovid, Dragan Jovovid, Joško Juvančid, Ivica Kunčevid, Sulejman Kupusovid, Miloš Lazan, Jan Maciejovski, Vladimir Miličin, Dino Mustafid, Dragomir Nikolid, Čedomir Ninkovid, Zoran Panid, Jovan Putnik, Vlastimir Radovanovid, Zoran Ristovid, Faruk Sokolovid, Slobodan Stojanovid, Zlatko Sviben, Miloš Šami, Vladan Švacov, Petar Teslid, Slobodan Unkovski, Petar Vaček, Berislav Zamberlin, Nadežda Zamfirovid, etc.

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The Bosnian National Theatre is located in one of recently built and biggest building of all theatres in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With its the urban concept, the architectural composition of volume, the exterior and interior designs, and in many other ways, it is indeed impressive and unique facility. For this architectural solution architect and academician Professor Jahiela Finci and architect and Professor Zlatko Ugljen have received many awards and prizes including for best architectural achievement in the former SFR Yugoslavia. “The building has five floors, it is long 90 m, 60 m wide and height is 45 m. The building has four entrances: entrance for public, official entrance, entrance for loading and unloading of decorative and technical equipment and entry into the power plant. Area of usable space in the building is 11 500 m². The biggest part is occupying scenic areas with the corresponding utilities. Theatre has five different stages: Main Stage, Small Stage, Lateral Stage, Cabaret Stage and Basement Stage.”50 The stage areas are also very well technically equipped, allowing it to be set up and played different kinds of performances and projects. The building was officially opened on 7th May 1978. After the war the building was renovated. Moving from the old to the new building in 1978 is the most important event in the short history of this theatre. The development of the theatre, which, by that time, had been the one of most successful theatres in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was strongly ascended by this moving to the new building with great technical possibilities, opening the new prospects to it. During the fifteen years that followed, the theatre reached its highlights and enjoyed its fame within the broader, South Slavic theatre milieu. During Bosnian war theatre experienced stagnation in artistic, repertory, staff and any other term. Even today the theatre is slowly but surely finding its place in Bosnian and broader theatre milieu.

Historical Background and the Political Situation in Yugoslavia in 1980:

At that time Yugoslavia was pictured in the international context and even more in the minds of inhabitants as strong and prosperous country in every sense. It is questionable how much of this was correct, but the fact is that at that time Yugoslavia was a prosperous country thanks to its neutrality. The country was led by Josip Broz Tito from 1937 to 1980, it was the first communist country in the history which openly opposed to the Eastern Bloc and common policy as it was directed by the Soviet Union and thus it was expelled from the Cominform in 1948 after Joseph Stalin accused Tito of nationalism and moving to the right. After internal purges, the ruling Yugoslav

50 DŽAFID, Hasan. Bosansko narodno pozorište Zenica, Zenica: Udruženje književnika Zeničko-dobojskog kantona, 2002, 15-36 p.

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communist party was renamed in the League of Communists and adopted politics of workers’ self-management and independent communism, known as Titoism. In particular, due to this Yugoslavia was opened to all western countries, as well as to the Eastern Bloc, the Non-Aligned Movement, etc. Due to this Yugoslavians felt more superior in comparing with other communist countries, allegedly Yugoslavia was open to learn from mistakes of others and thus correct its political system. After 1980, after Tito’s death, things and political environment started to change gradually, the birth of nationalism, which earlier had been suppressed, flourished, and culmination occurred in 1990s, when the division of Yugoslavia occurred, and even the war occurred in several republics of former Yugoslavia from 1991 (Croatian War), 1992 (Bosnian war) and 1998 (Kosovo War or Kosovo Conflict).

In 1980s Yugoslavian communism was still on its peak and the phenomenon of “ajar door”, which I have described earlier in chapter about the Czech authors on South Slavic territories led to evaluating and questioning the communist environment not based works of domestic writers or critics, but based on works of authors form countries like Czechoslovakia, which were banned at that time in their home courtiers, but more than welcome in Yugoslavia.

“The second example is Yugoslav „self-management socialism‟ and the fundamental paradox contained within it. Tito’s official ideology continually exhorted people to take control of their lives outside of the structures of Party and State; the authorised media criticised personal indifference and the escape into privacy. However, it was precisely an authentic, self-managed articulation and organisation of common interests which the regime feared most. Between the lines of its propaganda, the Government suggested that its official solicitations were not to be taken too literally, that a cynical attitude towards its ideology was what was actually wanted. The greatest catastrophe for the regime would have been for its own ideology to be taken seriously and acted on by its subjects.”51

51 ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, review on book: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Bloomsbury, September 1999.

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The Context behind Certain Motifs in the Text:

“In the 1970s and 1980s, Havel’s dramatic work became – in connection with his activities as a dissident – distinctly political, earning appreciation as open protest against the “Normalization” oppression to the police and the bureaucratic apparatus to which Czechoslovak society was subjected after the incursion by the armies of the “Socialist Camp” into Czechoslovakia. Oppression was imposed by the representatives of a foreign occupying power and those who co-operated at local level helped bring about a further, and at this time total, destruction of human relations within this society. This new development in the dramatic work of Václav Havel can be seen in particular in the plays Audience, Private View52 and Largo Desolato.”53

Single act play Audience is completely consisting of a dialogue between Vaněk, and his supervisor, the Brewmaster. Due to his allegedly “dissident” activities Vaněk has been forced to work in the brewery as an activity that would make him come to his senses and return to normal behaviour. Vaněk has been placed under the watchful eye of the Brewmaster who is required to inform on Vaněk’s activities. The Brewmaster’s lack of experience, qualifications and discomfort with this task is evident in the indirect manner, in way by which he intends to collect information on Vaněk. Furthermore, whenever the conversation blocks, delays, stalls, the Brewmaster breaks the uncomfortable pause; pause is one more figures of speech which Havel is skilfully using in his plays; so, after more or less comfortable pause Brewmaster is automatically returning to the subsequently more comfortable question. These uncomfortable situations will recur more frequently as the Brewmaster becomes progressively intoxicated.

“Havel’s one-act plays (the trilogy consists of The Audience, The Private View and The Protest) are acted in a homogenous and closed space. The places are neither geographically named nor historically specified. The only known facts are the concrete settings: a brewer cantor, a flat and a writer‟s room. We have a realistic description supported by the generally known autobiographical references. So we find anyway that there is Czechoslovakia governed by Husák.”54

52 Or Unveiling.

53 SRBA, Bořivoj. Václav Havel – Dramatist, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 32-33 p.

54 DĄBROWSKA, Anna Maria. The Construction of Time and Space in Václav Havel’s Plays and their Consequences for the Genre Form, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 85 p. 32 | P a g e

Particular form of circular structural repetition of lines in play is present in several of Havel’s plays: The Memorandum, Audience, Unveiling and Largo Desolato. In the single act play Audience play ends as it begins - with the slightly autobiographical character Vaněk, waking up the Brewmaster from an intoxicated snooze. This kind of repetition of the same motives at the beginning and in the end is also one more form quite common for Havel’s works. Apparently Brewmaster and Vaněk will once again talk about present happenings in the brewery, drink up the product of their labour in large quantities, and argue yet again about the values and principles in the real world. At the end of the play we have are under the impression that all this has occurred who knows how many times already. “In Audience, for example, the Brewmaster is being coerced into informing on the activities of his newest employee, the “dissident” Vaněk. Because of his relatively low social and political stature, he is in no position to resist despite his particularly nuanced understanding that it is ultimately wrong not to do so. His frustration with his lot is evident in the following monologue: “I only get my ass busted for havin‟ principles! You always got a chance, but what chance have I got? Nobody‟s gonna take care of me, nobody‟s afraid of me, nobody‟s gonna write anything about me, nobody‟s gonna give me a hand, nobody‟s interested in me, all I‟m good for is to be the manure that your damn principles gonna grow out of, and to scare up heated rooms so you can play heroes! And lookin‟ like a damn fool gonna be all I‟m gonna have to show for it! What the hell do I ever get out of life? What‟s in store for me? What? (Havel 1987, 24-5).”55

In this single act play we might notice an example of extreme drinking of beer that occurs in play. By setting the play in a brewery, it is expected that Brewmaster and Vaněk are about to participate in a social drink. However, the stage directions indicate that the characters are required to consume twenty-one glasses of beer from the opening curtain to the close of the play exactly. This is yet one more segment in Havel’s works, he is finding way to mark rather rural habits of higher ranking employees in brewery, deviance in society, but also putting interesting and unusual task in front of actors.

The play ends as it started, and we might assume it will happen again day after day. Without any prospect for an ending this both distressful and fatigue cyclic event, this depressing

55 BROOKS, D. Christopher. The Art of the Political: Havel’s Dramatic Literature as Political Theory, East European Quarterly, Winter 2005, Vol. 39 Issue 4, 491-522 p.

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atmosphere can be transferred to the general atmosphere prevailing in the communist regime, as well as an open condemnation and ridicule of it.

Assumption is that Václav Havel found inspiration for the play in his own experience working in Trutnov brewery to write one act Audience. It is political highly engaged play that reflects the time and society in the political crisis and repression, and is strongly in connection with his activities as a dissident, when his act was distinctly political, earning appreciation as open protest against the “Normalization” oppression of the police and the bureaucratic repression. As is well known, this oppression was imposed by the representatives of a foreign occupying power, which resulted in restricting all pro-western or “democratic” activities in Czechoslovakia, and thus destruction of human relations within this society. This development could be noticed in the dramatic work of Václav Havel, particular in the plays Audience, Private View and Largo Desolato. “It is worth stressing that the hero, whether his name is Ferdinand Vaněk, Bedřich or Leopold Kopřiva56, bears autobiographical features of Havel’s own experience. (…) For these plays it is quite distinctive that the hero behaves and acts towards the people around him only as a passive onlooker: he does not look for conformation with people and is dragged into it usually by people very close to him.”57

Audience in the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica:

December premier of Havel’s Audience opened theatre season 1981/1982 in the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica. On 4th July 1981 the cast started with work and rehearsals on this particular play, and the premiere was arranged on 28th December 1981, the work on play lasted almost full 5 months. The reason for this long duration of rehearsal is probably because it was done during the summer break. The play was made for and on a small or chamber stage, which meant that a small number of spectators could be present during performance, for this reason two premieres were arranged, on 28th and 29th December, apparently and due to a great interest of audience for this performance. The play was directed by Zoran Ristović, production designer was Radovan Marušić, costume designer Vesna Karaus-Suljić, actors Boško Marić and Mugdim Avdagić.

56 Or Leopold Nettles.

57 SRBA, Bořivoj. Václav Havel – Dramatist, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 33 p.

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Zoran Ristović has received many significant awards, but most significant is probably from Ministry of Culture and Art of Poland, Order „Credit for the Polish Arts and Culture‟, Order of Merit for the propagation of Polish art and culture.

Directing: Zoran Ristović has often been cooperating with Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, even in the period immediately before the Bosnian war, at the beginning of the 1990s, he was a resident director in the theatre. The early 90s was regarded as a period of artistic peak of achievement of the Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, primary thanks to the successful, creative energy and efforts of a capable and well-organized artistic, technical and administrative staff employed in the theatre. This group of enthusiasts was led by executive director Radovan Marušić, resident director Zoran Ristović, artistic director Ţarko Mijatović, dramaturgist Jelena Vlaković stage designer Mensur Begiĉević, etc.

Acting: Actors had been long time members of ensemble of Bosnian National Theatre Zenica. By their physiognomy they were logical selection of the director for these roles. Their attempt was to impersonate characters specific for particular place, of small communities, and in time of political repression of the 70s. By their physiognomy they are clearly representing characters of an intellectual on one hand, Mugdim Avdagić (Vaněk), and a not especially intelligent working class man on the other hand, Boško Marić (Brewmaster). We know that play was performed on a small stage, so it is assumed that the actors have reduced acting and adjusted it to expression and gestures. The roles required large amounts of beer to be drunk during performances, I find this aspect worth studying, but there is not enough information about this in this particular performance. But we know from the play that different amount of the consumed beer is highlighting their social position, origin and affiliation. By words of critics the repeated visits of Brewmaster to the toilet, in order to urinate, then again opening another bottle of beer, and constant offering Vaněk, were well done by Boško Marić. He managed to portray a desperate and ravenous lost man trying to find way out to carry out his task, although he has neither intellect, nor knowledge for it. The play is signifying the provincial man, the small wheel in the large mechanism of totalitarian state. Marić made a man who is radiating passion of his almost metaphysical “emerging” within gallons of beer which are courses through his body. Mugdim Avdagić was able to portray an intellectual in the extremely strange and unpleasant situation, trying to use all his knowledge, intellect, humour or sarcasm, in order to survive yet another day in the gulag. 35 | P a g e

Mugdim Avdagić has joined ensemble theatre in Zenica in season 1981/82, and he is a member of this theatre house even till this day. He received award for best episodic role Lolo in the play by Fetahagić Sead’s, Velika rasprodaja58 on I Maxi Revue of Comedy in Zenica. The play was directed by Gradimir Gojer, premiere was on 28th March 1990.

Costume: Costumes were very realistic and minimalistic, the aim of costume designer Vesna Karaus- Suljić and director was to picture that particular time period of 80s, contemporary, present time, at that time, and not to locate the play in some past of future time. It is also clear and indicating intention to use costumes to portray different class position in society which these two characters belong to. For example, the stereotype of a working class man of that time is represented, in dark blue working clothing. The opposite is a man from the intellectual milieu in shirt, woolly and trousers,59 sent by punishment to work in a remote location. The mask and makeup was minimalist with an aim to represent the working man from that time and complete the picture created by costumes, emphasizing the difference between two characters - beardless and refined young man Vaněk and Brewmaster as hard working man with big moustache in a rather rustically style.

Set Design: General remark was that Radovan Marušić made one of the simplest and effective stage setting in that season, effectively outlining the general depression of Havel’s pieces just by the selection of colours and materials. The play was set on the so called Small Stage, more precisely on the chamber stage. It was furnished with beer crates and other parts of the set design, such as bottles, shelves, different folders, desk, etc. For slight moment Marušić indeed brought viewers into the brewery, more precisely into one of the offices. The audience could clearly feel like it was in the brewery were the play was unrolling. This proves realistic orientation for this play, but also general stylistic orientation of the theatre. Only by the set design could the viewers assume that it was a brewery in some small place in province, clearly at the time of political repression and depression. The decor was very realistic, almost naturalistic and extremely minimalistic. There were two doors located on central position on the stage. One was serving as an entrance door to the toilette and the other was the main door, behind which the audience was able to notice a ray

58 Unofficial: The Great Sale.

59 In biographies about Havel this is described as his favourite and preferred clothes, especially in his youth.

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of light, representing the main entrance and the exit door from office or hell, symbolically indicating arrival or escape from investigation room, or hell.

The shelf on the bottom of the stage with a range of documents and files is reminiscence of the police criminal record shelves. The lamp above the table, and the table itself, are like the setting in the police office which adds to the experience. The atmosphere in the brewery is in accentually presented by the presence of numerous traditional product packagings of beer. Beer, beer bottles and beer boxes scattered all around the stage emphasize the atmosphere and mess in the brewery, but also in political regime. The mess and chaos on stage may correspond with chaotic situation in which working collective and all society was in that particular time. On the table, as well on other different parts of stage we could see various books, papers and record, signifying bureaucratic regime and disappearance of man as an individual.

Radovan Marušić has indeed received many awards for his work in theatre, especially for stage settings that he created, actually too many to be listed in this work, but most significant would be award from Ministry of Culture and Art of Poland, Order „Credit for the Polish Arts and Culture‟, Order of Merit for the propagation of Polish art and culture, which might help us to comprehend what kind of artist he is.

Stage Light: By carefully observing the photos we can conclude that the range of light used in this certain play is also minimalistic. It is in accordance with the desire to paint the workspace of the brewery in the remote area, conditions and regions. Also, the lamp above table is very symbolic - as a mean of interrogation.

Conclusion:

General impression was that this performance was quite well done, one of the best in that particular season, but we cannot say that this play was revolutionary or experimental, neither that it was in any way different than other plays which could be usually seen on stages at that time in former Yugoslavia. One slight exception could be made about the set design by Radovan Marušić, who later on have became the most productive and creative stage designer in the region, and received many awards for his work. One of the bad remarks on the play was that the tempo and rhythm of performance, which was very slow, which was set by the author of play himself, while 37 | P a g e

the director and actors took the liberty to prolong it even more. Due to this discussion of two different archetypes of peoples, the writer and poet against a half drunk shoddy, by Party line appointed the man on position of headmaster of brewery, who is all the time seeking, actually, even begging Vaněk to admit some or any dangerous elements, for their everyone‟s good sake, was for Zenica audience hard in some moments to follow.

In Audience “Havel not only wrestles with the extent of control post-totalitarianism exerts over ordinary individuals, but touches upon the animosity felt towards many Czechoslovak “dissidents” by people who were either afraid or unable to join in the fight against the regime. In doing so, he exhibits compassion and sympathy, not disdain, for those who cannot, for whatever reason, join the struggle for human and civil rights.”60 So we can conclude that Havel made this play about and for everyday people, disapproving any kind of repression.

60 BROOKS, D. Christopher. The Art of the Political: Havel’s Dramatic Literature as Political Theory, East European Quarterly, Winter 2005, Vol. 39 Issue 4, 491-522 p.

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4. Largo Desolato, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 20th February 1987

Brief History of the Chamber Theatre 55:

This would be an appropriate moment probably to say something more about the theatre itself. The Chamber Theatre 55 in Sarajevo was established on 7th March 1955, it was founded under the name Little Theatre, and it was the first chamber theatre in Yugoslavia. Jurislav Korenić became its first executive director and first director. Little Theatre, as it was originally named and later renamed to the Chamber Theatre 55, has quickly proved justification of their efforts, as the first theatre in former Yugoslavia which completely deviated from all traditional forms of theatrical artistic expression. It proved that repertory policy and a new artistic expression, as a definitive settlement with all empty traditions which was not just random fashionable success, but the concrete base for the revival of a fairly petrified theatrical form in traditional theatre houses paid off. At the level of programmematic goals the Chamber Theatre 55 reminds me very much of the Theatre on the Balustrade from Prague, or the Goose on a String Theatre from Brno, but I emphasize, in the sense of program goals it seemed to be similar, but the development path and history of these theatres, of course, are completely different.

On muster and allegations that the Little Theatre is actually “Korenić’s personal theatre”, he replied: “In our society there cannot be someone‟s theatre like in the Western European sense, but when you are already addressing me with such delicate question I will answer you. Theatre as well as any art is a reflection of the will of the individual or group of counterparts who are representing an artistic will. Any progress of performing arts which is closely connected with such concept, with the great minds who which are stagnating, there are always a few small hardworking minds who are throwing in variety of ideas, which are usually busted, but whose ideas and results great mind’s always take and transform to absolute quality. I hope that the Little Theatre has made its contribution to this process and progress, I hope it will still give some more, and if so one day it evanishes, however, there will remain some tracks on which some great minds will build again, and new small minds will continue to criticize. Our society requires new from us, new for our audience, a new expression for the realism of our day. I personally am not interested in

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the twilight of Parisian society, but I am lot more interested in our climb and radiant faces of viewers of our performances.”61

Although the theatre does not have an exceptionally long history, it is certainly much richer, more attractive and significant that the decade long routine and cold schematise of other theatres and their careless existence, as some renowned critic has noted. The constant critical review in the core and constant search for a different, more direct and open expression on stage, occurred, of course, and wandering, which also were not useless, after which the Chamber Theatre 55, returned to itself again, more imaginative and yet better, and not one which is betraying goal which was defined in the beginning by its founder Jurislav Korenić. Theatre in the wake of new theatrical pursuits in contemporary Europe was a novelty in the former Yugoslavia and it represented an example which was followed by numerous theatres across the former Yugoslavia. It was a time when dramatic art formed a new kind of dramaturgy, “drama of absurd” or “anti- drama” or “new drama”. By opening wide its doors for experimentations outlined in the theatre, in texts such as Samuel Beckett’s, Alfred Jarry’s, Jean Genet’s, Harold Pinter’s, Eugene Ionesco’s, Edward Albee’s, Anton Chekhov’s... and the whole pleiad of other authors whose poetry in modern theatre stemmed from “an absurd feeling of life”, the Chamber Theatre 55 had a decisive influence on an entire generation of dramatic artists who preferred being “ring stage” surrounded by the audience, instead of performing on a frontal-type stage, with the insurmountable barrier, they recognized a new opportunity for intimate, natural and sincere acting on this “ring stage”, and establishment of His Majesty the Actor as a crucial factor in theatre as it is on a small stage it could make a direct and natural effect on the audience, and resist pathos, clichés and false intonation.

During all of these years, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo remained truly dedicated to its avant-garde mission and ongoing search, even in plays set by works of foreign authors62, as well

61 Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (newspaper), 1955, transcript of this article could be seen in Annex, photo No. 14 and 15.

62 Bertolt Brecht, George Bernard Shaw, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Murray Schisgal, Jeff Weiss, Samuel Beckett , Luigi Pirandello, Roger Vitrac, Paul Zindel, Albert Camus, Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Federico García Lorca, Tadeusz Różewicz, Witold Gombrowicz, Aleksei Nikolaevich Arbuzov, Dario For, Mikhail Bulgakov, Anton Chekhov, Dumas, Alexander Dima, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, John Boynton Priestley, Pavel Kohout, William Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Peter Weiss, Roger Williams, Georges Feydeau, Georg Büchner, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alain-René Lesage, Evgeny Shvarts, Eugène Ionesco, Václav Havel, etc. (Note: authors are arranged chronologically in the order when they have been performed.)

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as the original plays written by Bosnian and Herzegovinian playwrights.63 It should be kept in mind that many of these foreign and domestic authors were less known to a wider audience when their plays were carried out on stage of this theatre, confirming searching and avant-garde component of this theatre and its repertoire.64 As part of theatre is operating and art gallery of Gabriel. “However, what we are most proud of is the fact that theatre has great response and support from the audience on our plays, at home and abroad”, is buzzword that is often used by Zlatko Topĉić, executive director and artistic director of the Chamber Theatre 55.

The Context behind Certain Motifs in the Text:

Jan Grossman65 distinguished Czech theatre director, who directed the Czech premiere of Largo Desolato in 1990 in the Theatre on the Balustrade in Prague, once said about Largo Desolato: ““It is a very brave play. One day, when someone writes a biography of Václav Havel, they should pay attention to this play, because there is something very self-critical about it. You might even say that it is a caricature of a dissident.” Havel himself had been quick to acknowledge, in Disturbing the Peace, the autobiographical content of Largo Desolato. However, he has said he would never think of rejecting a theme inspired by his own life experiences.”66 The primary focus of Václav Havel’s piece is dissident and dissidents. What does this term means - dissident? For start the dictionary claims that it is word of Latin origin. Dissider means: disagreement between the, to be away, to differentiate. Therefore dissent is a man who is by opinion or otherwise different from his group or organization, or he stepped out from it. He is an outcast, outlaw, schismatic. So this is written in the dictionary.

63 Pjer Žalica, Zlatko Topčid, Mirko Kovač, Safet Plakalo, Nedžad Ibrišimovid, Sead Fetahagid, Borislav Jovanovid, Dževad Karahasan, Ivan Fogl, Sena Mustajbašid, Irfan Horozovid, etc. (Note: authors are arranged chronologically in the order when they have been performed.)

64 From official web site of the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, article about theatre. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

65 Jan Grossman (born on 22nd May 1925, died on 10th February 1993 in Prague) was celebrated Czech theatre director, critic, and scholar. Grossman served as artistic director at the Theatre on the Balustrade from 1962 to 1968. He became Havel’s most important artistic mentor, and they formed a lifelong collegiality in the theatre. Havel dedicated play The Garden Party to him. After the Velvet Revolution, Grossman was invited back to the Balustrade, where he served as artistic director from 1990 until his death on 1993.

66 ROCAMORA, Carol. Acts of courage: Václav Havel’s life in the theater, Hanover: Smith and Kraus, 2005, 236 p.

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History is full of dissidents, unfortunately history is remembering only those such as Buddha, Giordano Bruno and Nicolaus Copernicus, Martin Luther, Calvin, and forgetting those anonymous ones whose rebellion had no such power to be established as a new religion or organization. First listed have saved themselves, the others cannot be saved by no one. The general meaning of term is roads or sideways meanderings of revolutionary movements in society, which we are witnesses even today in the 21st century, but today they are reduced to a figure known to all of us: ordinary, little, anonymous man, everyman, which by his original human impulse wants to think for himself, to stay himself despite the pressures of any kind.

“Largo Desolato is the most artistically mature play that Václav Havel produced at that time.”67 Human need for communication is imminent. A human has to communicate with other individual, others, society, state. Václav Havel story is based on this elementary human need, but he enriches it with new dimension that human addressing to other(s), except affirmation could cause and conflict, since society represses each individuality who is not like them, who does not think like they do, and its exponent - state, claims the monopoly on way of thinking. How is it then possible to preserve the authenticity of thinking?

Nettles is living in constant fear that his doorbell may ring “at any time”, announcing the arrival of thugs who will banish him to the gulag. Prof. Leopold is asked to renounce his “dissident” works Ontology of the Human Self and Phenomenology of Responsibility, so he would be given “an once- in-a-lifetime chance for a fresh start”. “Kopřiva lives in a state where official snoops shadow his every move and where all language has accordingly been dehumanized into code: “there” usually refers to the gulag, “thing” to the trumped-up charge that sends one “there”. No longer capable of writing, sleeping, love or sex, the philosopher has become an alcoholic recluse, teetering on the edge of madness.”68

Doctor Leopold, a philosopher, an autonomous entity, with solid focal points of opinion in the country of verbal delict is offensive, he is publishing under his full name and surname, his scientific belief in an essay that delights counterparts, but the state is not sympathizing it. Not

67 SRBA, Bořivoj. Václav Havel – Dramatist, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 34 p.

68 RICH, Frank. “Largo Desolato”, By Havel, at The Public, Washington, D.C., United States: The New Republic (daily newspaper), 26th March 1986, 15 p.

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verification by state means execution. But in which manner? In a conflict with doctor of philosophy even the state has its own philosophy, its answer is to not touch the doctor, not to arrest him and thus deny their hero to mass, let a doctor live and philosophizing in the fear of uncertainty. This situation is hell, a slow burning bomb that will detonate the doctor himself. Indeed, after a while, as in perfectly thought out thriller bomb explodes - and till now this prominent dissident conscience drama turns into a tragicomic farce. Absurd after absurd is born: a former fighter closes himself to house arrest, he loses courage, strengthens, he is disgusting to himself, he is depressed, loses his personality, makes compromises, allowing everyone, those more intimate and less intimate friends of his to manipulate him, he tries to commit suicide, the whole story all of sudden becomes sadly-funny, moving away from his ideals antipodal, and finally his case is closed paradoxically - it is postponed. Following is yet other culmination, an absurdity, in order to save himself he pleads, begs to be arrested. Or!? Or all of this is yet another illusion, absurd, sideway?!? Perhaps all the time the wrong man was falsely accused, however, when finally things are clarified he asks that other man‟s sins be recognized as his, in order to keep the newly acquired popularity, and to escape returning back into terrifying anonymity, as director of this particular staging is suggesting us. Or!? Is he in the end just yet another collaborationist with regime, or is “he (Leopold Nettles) no longer capable of choosing between resistance and capitulation.”69 As we can see answers to these questions and interpretation of this Havel’s piece are different in different environments. An interesting fact is that in Yugoslavia and around the world, especially at the time when this play was set, common thought of theorists were that Largo Desolato, Audience, Unveiling and Protest are plays with autobiographical character,70 but there are those theorists which are more cautious with this idea, taking into account numerous negative character qualities, which the author used in creating his characters, which are indeed not typical of the author himself.

Havel’s characters Chap I and II are reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s liquidator Josef K. from The Trial. But this time something is different: Havel’s liquidation is spiritual, liquidation of thought and not physical liquidation.

69 RICH, Frank. “Largo Desolato”, By Havel, at The Public, Washington, D.C., United States: The New Republic (daily newspaper), 26th March 1986, 15 p.

70 SRBA, Bořivoj. Václav Havel – Dramatist, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 34.

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Yugoslavian theatrologists, as well as director Egon Savin, liked to see Havel’s, Largo Desolato as end of his dissident cycle, formed by one-act plays Audience, Unveiling and Protest, but unlike the other dissident plays Leopold in Largo Desolato did not really become a dissident, he was made one. I mentioned earlier, it is very debatable to make comment considering all character traits that Havel gave his own traits to his characters and situations he described, that they are autobiographical or dissident. As far as it is known to me, the piece of work like Instigation and Punishment is about Havel based on autobiographical facts, on the recordings of trail to Václav Havel which took place on 21st February 1989 at the District Court in Prague 3. Havel’s own first- hand experience of work at the Trutnov brewery in Audience. As well as, “the life that produced this outcome has now, in turn, become the focused of Disturbing the Peace, a highly engaging autobiographical sketch in the form of a book-length interview.”71 On occasion of the premiere of his latest movie Leaving on 22nd March 2011 in Prague, Václav Havel, who stepped down from the post of the Czech president in 2003 to make room for Václav Klaus, his successor and rival in real life, insists that the movie is not autobiographical in an interview. Never mind that the villain‟s derogatory sounding name Vlastik Klein is strikingly similar to Václav Klaus. Despite all of these arguments, the autobiographical character in Havel’s plays is based on the speculation basis. It is almost impossible to solve this dilemma and dispute, but most probably the truth lies somewhere in between, every art creation is based to some degree on autobiographical facts of the author. There for we can assume that some of Havel’s situations, or character traits, were borrowed from his own life, but it is very difficult and ungrateful to ponder exactly which. Good example would be play Mistake,72 which was Havel’s first play written, hastily written in four days, after his release from prison, where he spent about four years. In this play besides all absurdity and horrifying experiences we can see the life of prisoner, and all troubles and horrors he is experiencing from other prisoners, which are undoubtedly experience from Havel’s personal life, but this is play about Hungarian or of person of some other origin, who is not exactly comprehending the world around him, and is ignoring and being indifferent to it, what we cannot say about Havel.

71 BARANCZAK, Stanislaw. Irony comes to power in Prague. All the President’s Plays, Washington, D.C., United States: The New Republic (daily newspaper), 23rd July 1990, 27-32 p.

72 The premier of play was on 28th October 1983 in Stockholm. Czech premier was at Divadlo Rokoko guided by Divadelo spolku Kašpar on 25th October 1992, directed by Petr Hruška.

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The state in which Havel was at the time, July 1984, when he wrote Largo Desolato is described the best by the facts that Communist regime just one year earlier suspended his sentence of imprisonment. It is worth mentioning that at that time Havel was fighting with serious illness. As well as that people worldwide organized protests in support of Havel and against his treatment by regime. “The rest is story of interrogations, investigations, detentions, provocations, searches, house arrests, buggings, prosecutor‟s charges, trials, jail sentences, labour camps, prison hospitals, and, amid all this turmoil, more writing. (…) Largo Desolato was written in four days in July 1984, precisely at the low point of a bout of acute “post-prison despair”. Yet in Disturbing the Peace Havel plays down the autobiographical import of his play: “It is not about me, or only about me as such. The play has ambitions to be a human parable, and in that sense it is about man in general.”73

While in Audience, Unveiling and Protest one-acts Havel satirically illuminates those ruling superior forces, and with sympathies looks on intellectuals and shapes their characters in distress, a significant shift occurs in Largo Desolato – the main character of pieces, professor Nettles, is subjected to ruthless indisposed to crisis, concerns, wandering. About the similar attitude to character of intellectual Havel is dealing also in play Temptation, this play was written almost the same year as Largo Desolato. Of course, here as well the first critical reference is the one to Orwellian mechanisms of modern totalitarianism, which are annulling human figure in search for informal truth. However, Havel, as a consistent satirist in this play is destroying the “myth of dissident”, shows him as a human, therefore imperfect being, who may succumb to his own passions, to powers of the world who wants to conquer him, to functionalize and submit him. Attractive forces of Largo Desolato hence aspire precisely to the absence of any idealization - in this play all funds have been used, after everyone and everything is put questioned mark and the piece does not offer any clear answers, but it obliges us to make conclusions for ourselves - about the piece, but also about ourselves.

73 BARANCZAK, Stanislaw. Irony comes to power in Prague. All the President’s Plays, Washington, D.C., United States: The New Republic (daily newspaper), 23rd July 1990, 27-32 p.

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“Finally, the playwright has led us to a dead end, in a denouement that some might find self-important, and others might see as self-effacing. It is not easy to fall for Leopold’s lament: “It was wonderful when no one was interested in me.”“74

Largo Desolato in the Chamber Theatre 55:

Václav Havel’s play Largo Desolato, on the stage of the Chamber Theatre 55 was directed by Egon Savin, guest director from Belgrade. Savin actually, was born in Sarajevo in artistic family – his mother was an opera singers, he graduated 1979 in class of Professor Dejan Mijaĉ on Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, where he later worked first as a teaching assistant and later as a professor. He has been a highly respected director in Yugoslavia: “Egon Savin has not directed much. He is carefully selecting plays, as well as associates. The list of production he directed is not a long one, but still there is a substantial number of performances which received awards at different festivals and by audience. Egon Savin is director with whom it is difficult to contract production, the reason is that he is constantly occupied. He has a reputation of “director excellent to work with actors”, this means that he is expecting a lot form actors, that he is capable of “destroying the manners that by time, naturally, actors adopted”, that in analysis of drama (primarily in the analysis of characters) he deals with to details and nuances that are sometimes seemingly beyond reach, therefore, he is always seeking for highly skilled actors. Egon Savin is very a welcome guest in most of Yugoslav theatres.”75 Indeed personality such as Egon Savin is not best suitable for this profession, probably with his creativity and talent someone else could achieve much more, but his personality is limiting Egon Savin of doing so.

Intriguing information is that this play was produced at the Sarajevo Youth Theatre, due to the fire that broke the previous year at stage of the Chamber Theatre 55 which was at that time it under ongoing reconstruction. However, the theatre continued to work in building of the Youth Theatre, where it worked for two seasons.

74 KLEIN, Alvin. Theater; Yale Repertory Stages Havel’s ‘Largo Desolato’, New York: The New York Times (daily newspaper), 11th November 1990, 24.

75 Promoting materials released on the occasion of staging and premiere of this particular play by Chamber Theatre 55. In Annex photo No. 18.

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Largo Desolato is in fact yet another more piece from the cycle of one-act plays, theme- related to problems and aspects of dissidence. Director Egon Savin, actually grasped this text as a well-made civic drama, and he believed that this play is primarily about the man of disturbed integrity, and the main idea appears to be a misunderstanding caused by birth of thought that Leopold Nettles is intellectual whose self-consciousness might be possible dangers to all society. This piece, about quest for identity of main character, in new imposed role to Leopold, Savin saw as play of a the trial coloured in mood of Gustav Mahler’s music, whose pace clearly underlines the title of this piece, otherwise, Largo is phrase which stands for tempo in music and Desolato in Latin stands for desperate.

By analysing archival materials concerning this play, I have noticed that most critics of the play began with following thought: “In Largo Desolato Havel decides to picture one very modern issue, the topic about which we every day might read in newspapers.”76 This might give us more insight into the political constellations at the time of the regime in post-Tito Yugoslavia. In this staging the emphasis was on the questioning of identity. Professor Leopold Nettles (Kopřiva) is lead into a situation that for him is the least expected. He becomes dissident by some chance unknown to him, it causes for him a new order, his different position in family, among friends and acquaintances and eventually he will becomes a professor Leopold Nettles, the figure important even to himself, man of social significance. At one point, things are clarified: Havel's hero has become a dissident by mistake, or to be accurate authorities will declare the case against Leopold a mistake, and authorities by this are seeking way to forget the whole case. Professor Nettles is then petrified by fact that he will return to complete anonymity. So, nothing is left for him but to pray that his sins are not forgiven and that the police take him into the custody.

Directing: The theatre reviews and magazines presented the fact that theatre audience in Yugoslavia had opportunity to get to know earlier works of Havel, who expressed himself, according to their opinion, as a writer with great sense for humour.77 It was pointed out that Havel’s plays are functioning even when they are placed in simplest requirements and in interpretation by not so talented actors. Egon Savin revealed that Havel’s work is much deeper than usual interpretations seen on stages around Yugoslavia at that time. Many performances directed by Egon Savin, not all

76 RAKID, Nada. Povratak u anonimnost, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 26th February 1987, 9 p.

77 B., P. Premijera predstave >>Largo desolato<<, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 20th February 1987.

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of course, caused controversy and conflicts in intellectual circles, particularly in theatrical circles, and caused a variety of debate and analysis.78 The director recognized the philosophical dimension of this play, so the viewer is opposed, Savin left for viewer signs which are pointing to the ideas related to Havel (e.g. Franz Kafka’s), but in his observed world of professor Nettles with great deal of understanding for lack of heroism and courage in Leopold. Play Largo Desolato may affect the emotions of audience, although it was strictly guided, without a hint of lessening to challenging of light humour, character superficiality and ionization.

Mise en scene of play was guided in the imaginary geometric shape lines, so in this reduced visuality of play Nettles fate was necessarily adopting form of tragic fate.

Stage design: Emphasizing universality of displayed event, it‟s contemporary topic, Savin together with production designer Miroslav Bilać and costume designer Ozrenka Mujezinović, tried to relocate Havel’s characters from current in a some past tense, although is not necessary to locate it, but by style we can assume it was time from beginning of the 20th century. By visual parts of play they tried to invoke in minds of observers surrealism inspired by René Magritte, which contributed to the impression that all shown is happening always and everywhere, primarily in human consciousness, even though by this political topicality of the play was not suppressed.

Costumes: Costumes were made by Ozrenka Mujezinović which truly evoked the epoch that the director and stage designer were trying to represent, and followed preset line of surrealism. In photos from play it is possible to see successful attempt to reconstruct costumes from time of the early 20th century, imitating Magritte, with elements and details in surreal milieu. Typically for that time period, in wish to create atmosphere drama of absurd manner, the actors were wearing traditional bowler79 hats, cutaway, walking sticks, trench coats, etc. Dominant colours of costumes

78 For example Egon Savin directed in Atelje 212 in Belgrade play Duck Hunting by Alexander Vampilov which has caused much controversy and conflicts of opinions, premiere was 18th March 1980, there was 15 reruns, last performance was on 28th April 1981.

79 The bowler hat, also known as a coke hat, derby (US), billycock or bombin, is a hard felt hat with a rounded crown originally created in 1849 for the British soldier and politician Edward Coke, the younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Leicester. The bowler hat was popular with the working class during the Victorian Era.

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where black and white, but on each and every costume there were some “displaced” detail in surreal milieu, for example strange glasses, tie, brooch or beard and moustaches.

Acting: Zijah Sokolović, seen in the eyes of critics, as the person who “who knows how many times proved us that he is great actor, probably even equal to the writer and director, and therefore is steadfast interpret of their ideas.”80 The conclusion is that this play would be almost impossible to imagine without his exceptional acting personality. Although, professors Nettles is mostly in passive position, waiting for things to happen to him, Zijah Sokolović found many different ways to display professor Nettles inner fear and trembling, leading him in the final scene to an undisputed scream. Simplicity of acting funds that Sokolović reduced on only basic and necessary, gave him possibility to concentrate on gradation of internal state, rarely in such intensity could be seen on stage.

Other actors have managed to follow the minimalist approach to acting, set by director. Not everyone had enough space for complete realization, but now and then they found a way to, at least at some point, express all mesh of inner psychological states and characteristics of characters, as did Dara Stojiljković (Suzana) in her scene when external coldness of her character are replaced with affect in which she suppressed during the play and then revealed in this split of a second, in the scene when she physically attacks Nettles because of the compromise with the police. Faruk Sofić (Edward) achieved a very skilfully guided role, “but maybe a comment could be made, considering his whole contribution to the success of play, on his occasionally seen outbreak of certain acting self-control, some kind of fear in the consistent implementation of found acting solutions.”81 Irina Dobnik (Marguerite) achieved, together with Zijah Sokolović, the most noticeable role, if we talk about the creation of character and its playfulness. She managed to break through the harsh frame of order of things in the director‟s assumption and event to her character to give some “surplus” of liveliness, which, however, did not make play seemingly superficial. Less successful was Emina Muftić (Lucy), she did fit into a common manner of play, but her conduct of role at the moment seemed as disciplined execution of tasks set by the director, which did not contribute to the impression of spontaneity in acting. Hranislav Rašić and Aleksandar Vojtov (two Sidneys and two Chaps) meet expectations of delegated tasks and did all correctly, particularly in situations where their presence created uneasiness at Nettles home, during

80 RAKID, Nada. Povratak u anonimnost, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 26th February 1987, 9 p.

81 RAKID, Nada. Povratak u anonimnost, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 26th February 1987, 9 p.

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breaks and at moments of absence of action, in sense when as two Sidneys – or workers from the mill (meant to represent the opinions of the common man), or as two Chaps – or men sent by the government to have Leopold rescind his writing, by visiting Nettles they bring to his home certain unease, it could almost be said that with their acting they have been irreplaceable.

Conclusion:

Certain actuality of Havel’s play for that particular time frame recognized the artistic director of the Chamber Theatre 55, Slavko Milanović, on the press conference regarding the premiere of this performance82 he stressed out as primary reason which influenced their commitment that this particular play should be included on repertoire of this theatre house. “When I am signing contract with some theatre I feel responsible to achieve a performance which above all belongs to higher standard of cultural climate. I would not say that by this I am making theatre more commercial. There is a better term for this step forwards towards the audience - “popularity”. Popularity is not degradation, but rather raising the level of the theatrical art. Empty theatres are remnant “geniuses” which have been on these our territories very often a deeply, deeply provincial.”83 Avant-garde of the 50s and 60s of the previous century were seeking for the idea of theatre, for its ritual basis, for the theatre of existence. At the time of staging this play theatre much more took into account the tastes of audience, rather than dealt with anthropological, historic or philosophical matters of theatrical origins. Apparently, at act was the commercialization of theatre, but Savin had a different view on this. “First of all: the commercialization of the theatre is not happening. What is happening is that theatre has become more honest, on out lands first of all, thanks to fact that it came out of the phase of experiment. Now in progress is stepping towards audience. In the experiment, no one enjoyed. The theatre is sensuous, spiritual, mental pleasure. The pleasure does not mean only the hedonism. In theatrical experience is involved and intellect. So when I say that theatre is pleasure I am not excluding cognitive process which is included.”84 On comment that theatre had, too much greater extent than previously, adapted to the desires of audience expressed in the so-called trends Egon Savin

82 B., P. Premijera predstave >>Largo desolato<<, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 20th February 1987.

83 Egon Savin interview in promoting materials released on the occasion of staging and premiere of this particular play by Chamber Theatre 55. In Annex photo No. 18.

84 Egon Savin interview in promoting materials released on the occasion of staging and premiere of this particular play by Chamber Theatre 55. In Annex photo No. 18.

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said: “That is the question of tendency in the theatre. Which is actual casting in the shadow let‟s say - proven values, particularly in our country, we did not have the institutional classical culture in the sense such as it existed in rest of the world, we did not have a municipal theatre, not mentioning court theatre, or institutions of marginal culture. We immediately infringed for the off-programmes and affirmed it at the expense of classical cultures. So now we have marginal persons who are represented on national television in six-hour programme, and even ballet and opera in this sense have become marginal. All that should be institutional culture has been suppressed in the plan of subculture. In this sense I am marginal and I am belonging to subculture.”85 On remark that such a genus artist wants to express himself through marginal Savin said. “Pretension on ingenuity is part of bourgeois mentality through which we all are becoming insufficient, uncultured, or even a bit stupid.”86 By these Savin’s thoughts we can guess about what kind of artistic individuality and person he is. He was perceived as rebellion in theatrical circles, and plays that he directed usually were bringing new ideas and expressions in theatres, but lot of discussions and noise, as well. We can assume that staging of Largo Desolato was indeed, at least, different than what was usually seen on Yugoslavian stages.

85 Egon Savin interview in promoting materials released on the occasion of staging and premiere of this particular play by Chamber Theatre 55. In Annex photo No. 18.

86 Egon Savin interview in promoting materials released on the occasion of staging and premiere of this particular play by Chamber Theatre 55. In Annex photo No. 18.

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5. Unveiling, the National Theatre Tuzla, 5th March 1991

Brief History of the National Theatre Tuzla:

National Theatre Tuzla, as a successor to the century-old theatrical tradition in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was built on the tradition of many amateur theatrical performances and travelling theatre groups visiting Tuzla. Even much before than the National Theatre was founded theatre arts in Tuzla was not unknown, brothers Mihajlo and Ţivko Crnogorĉević founded the first Bosnian National Theatre in 1898, which shut down after only eight months. These are the roots of the National Theatre in Tuzla. The National Theatre in Tuzla has been working in continuity since 1944, after the Second World War, when the National Theatre was officially established.

The period before the Second World War and after, when theatre in Tuzla was founded, is not just important to show that Tuzla had an active theatrical life even prior to the establishment of the National Theatre Tuzla, but also since it gives a possibility to establish a connection between this fertile cultural milieu and the initiative to establish the institution of the National Theatre in Tuzla. The fact that the first professional ensemble comprised a number of prominent amateur theatre workers, and that repertoire in its early years was largely made up of created by works already featured on the amateur stages. This also shows that the National Theatre in Tuzla is founded on amateur theatre experience, and its creative potentials.

Since the Second World War, and in the next six decades, the theatrical life of Tuzla has run continuously, and it was based on its origins, on cultural and political influences and efforts which were contemporary and narrowed to involve broader cultural environment. It could be said that the ambience was fruitful for cultural and particularly theatre achievements.

The National Theatre Tuzla was fortunate enough to be run by ambition of its founders, Radoslav Zoranović87 and Ahmed Muradbegović, and also Kalman Mesarić – these prominent theatrical

87 Radoslav Zoranovid (born 1923 in Bosanski Šamac, died 1988 in Sarajevo) was executive director, director and actor. Completed elementary and vocational schools, and as a boy he participated in the work of drama activity classis at school. Year 1944 he joined the XIV Serbian offensive brigade in which he was assigned as in a cultural and artistic unit. After demobilization in 1946 he came in Tuzla and assumed leadership of dramatic RKUD (unofficial translation: Workers’ Cultural and Artistic Association) Mitar Trifunovid Učo and also became a member of the leadership of the Regional Association of Cultural and Artistic Associations of the District Union 52 | P a g e

personas have not been satisfied merely with formal preservation of the theatre life in the city. Zoranović, as the first executive director of the National Theatre (1949-1970), confirmed his position of an undisputable theatrical organizer, who had a skills, even in times when the theatre was used as means for agitprop purposes, to realise the possibilities of modern views of the theatre. Muradbegović was theatrical person with a rich pre-war experience, who found himself in Tuzla for political reasons, and acted as a motivating spirit, and largely a creator of repertory and its artistic conception. Also Kalman Mesarić,88 a playwright and director, one of the founders of theatre journal Pozorište,89 and its first editor, undoubtedly gave a huge contribution to grow of the National Theatre Tuzla.

Council. Thanks to his organizational and artistic skills and extraordinary agility Mitar Trifunovid Učo drama group very quickly turned into a real little amateur theatre, in which gradually was been creating an artistic (and technical and organizational) core for future professional theatre ensemble. Huge audience interest in the city and in the wider region and popularity that amateurs soon gained have contributed that amateur dramatic group 1949 received its first theatre building (the former Coliseum cinema premises, in Annex photo No. 19), in which were secured certain necessary conditions for the establishment of the National Theatre in Tuzla (the opening was on 30th March 1949). Over two decades, for the time that Zoranovid has been on the head of the Tuzla Theatre, he has developed excellent organizational and artistic activity in this institution: construction of a new theatre building (1953), the launch of the magazine Pozorište (unofficial translation: Theatre) (at some period he was editor in chief), the commitment of the theatre orchestra, organizing the theatre archives, Pioneers theatre for youth, numerous travelling of ensemble around Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond (Belgrade, Osijek, Subotica, Valjevo, etc.), bringing prominent Yugoslav theatre artists (actors, directors, set designers and costume designers) who have contributed as guests to artistic refining of the National Theatre Tuzla. In the early seasons Zoranovid acts as a director as well. After 26 years of very fruitful career he was appointed as president of the newly formed Association of Professional Theatres in Bosnia and Herzegovina and again he showed a remarkable organization skills: the establishment of the Yugoslav Biennial of Puppetry in Bugojno, festival Theatre Plays in Jajce, a Gathering of Bosnian and Herzegovinian Professional Theatres in Brčko, organization of MESS - Sarajevo festival of small and experimental stages of Yugoslavia, establishing of libraries First Performance, etc. His name and his work are directly and creatively linked to the artistic development not only of the National Theatre Tuzla, but also for the artistic (and organizational) development of theatre art in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has received numerous awards and recognitions.

88 Kalman Mesarid (born in Prelog 1900, died in Zagreb 1983) was playwright and director. An entire decade he was working in and about theatre (writing theatre publications, dramas, etc.) 1924 he was engaged at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, as assistant director (to directors such as Branko Gavella, Tito Strozzi, Ivo Raid, etc.). After completing Theatre Studies in Berlin 1932 he was set as the director at the Croatian National Theatre Zagreb, and he remained on this position until 1945 (except for season 1941/44. when he was assigned to the Sarajevo National Theatre as a playwright and director of the drama). After the Second World War, he organized the work in Croatian drama Theatre in Rijeka (1946), he was director of drama and director in Split (1947-1952), director of drama and director in Sarajevo (1952-1953), director in Tuzla and one of founders of the first theatre magazine Pozorište, in addition his credits are for the artistic organization of the National Theatre Tuzla (1953-1957), director and artistic director of Theatre of Comedy in Zagreb (1957-1959). At the National Theatre Tuzla he directed many his plays and plays by other authors.

89 Unofficial translation: Theatre.

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This exceptionally creative and marketing-oriented trio managing the National Theatre in Tuzla succeeded very early to earn recognition for being a serious, demanding and high-quality theatre house, which, according to many indicators (tours, critiques, or the permanent engagement of prominent actors and directors, etc.) was greatly appreciated in the theatrical circles in the former Yugoslavia.

The latter theatre administration starting from Zoran Jovanović and Zvonko Petrović, over to Mustafa Hadţialić (1975-1988), and recently Eldin Tabuĉić, Nijaz Alispahić, Vlado Kerošević, had the unenviable duty to preserve the high dignity of theatre life, organizationally and operationally, which were established at beginning by Radoslav Zoranović, Ahmed Muradbegović90 and Kalman Mesarić.

Sixty two years of continuous existence of the National Theatre Tuzla demand from this institution to take a more significant and serious role in creating and criticizing social and political phenomena in a politically unstable social system, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina today, but unfortunately the management of theatre today has no power or intellectual capacity to meet these demands, and is merely satisfied with the role of entertaining the population and audience. Unfortunately, there is not enough seriousness in planning and creating theatre repertoire, so the overall impression is that this and other theatre houses in country are stagnating and degrading the previously acquired reputation.

90 Ahmed Muradbegovid (born 1898 in Gradačac, died 1972 in Dubrovnik) was playwright, director and executive director of many theatres in ex-Yugoslavia. After graduating high school in Sarajevo (1919), later parallel he studied in Zagreb (the Law, and the Faculty of Arts). He attended and graduated drama school, in the class of Russian director Yuri Ozarevski (1920-1922). He was hired as an assistant director at Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, and then as a teacher of acting in Acting School and professor in first Real High School in Zagreb, where he worked until the beginning of the Second World War, when he was appointed as quartermaster of National Theatre in Sarajevo (1941-1945). After the war he was prosecuted and trailed for cooperation with the Nazis, but soon after he received amnesty, and was appointed as correspondent in the District Cooperative Associations in Gradačac from where in 1947 he was moved to the National Municipality Company in Tuzla, where he led an amateur drama section in RKUD Mitar Trifunovid Učo, and he actively participated in the founding of the National Theatre Tuzla, as executive director and artistic adviser from 1949 until 1954. Because of asthma he moved to Dubrovnik 1954, where he became executive director of the National Theatre. He later went to Banja Luka 1956, as director of drama, from where on his own request he was retired in 1960. His great theatre and drama experience played a crucial role in creation of artistic concept at National Theatre Tuzla, both in terms of repertoire, and in relation and organization of the theatre activities, while a director and educator he contributed to the consolidation of acting ensemble, consisted of amateur and professional actors. He was one of founders and editor of theatre magazine Pozorište, in which he published a series of texts, ranging from occasional related to the current repertoire situation, to those more theoretical and those literary-historical texts. He was directing his own plays, but as well and plays of other authors at National Theatre Tuzla. Even after he left Tuzla, on several occasions as a gusting director, he set in National Theatre Tuzla many plays of Yugoslavian authors.

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Historical Background and the Political Situation in Yugoslavia in 1991:

SFR Yugoslavia started falling apart in 1990 with deconstructing forces on rise and the birth of nationalist ideas and tensions. The breakup of Yugoslavia started with the Slovenian separation on 25th June 1991, continued with Croatian decision on independence on 25th June 1991, followed by independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 1st March 1992, etc. Statements calling for independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina and tendencies for its sovereignty took place in October 1991, and were shortly followed by a referendum for independence from SFR Yugoslavia on 29th February and 1st March 1992. These efforts were largely rejected by the great majority of Serbs, whose tendency was to remain primarily in any kind and form of “Yugoslavia”, or rather, creating a “Greater Serbia”. The turnout at the independence referendum was 63.4 per cent of the population. 99.7 per cent of voters voted in favour of independence and separation from SFR Yugoslavia. This decision was greatly influenced by decisions for independence, and similar results on referendums, previously carried out in Slovenia and Croatia. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence shortly after the referendum. What followed next was a tense period of escalating tensions and sporadic military incidents, which finally broke out in a war which began on 5/6th of April 1992 in Sarajevo.

A word about the Director:

Director, actor and playwright Mirhad Hadi Kurić had directed over 20 plays before 1992 in Niš, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zenica, Tuzla, Rijeka, etc. Because of the war in 1993 he had to leave Sarajevo and went to Spain with his family, where he still resides with his wife Ana (actress) and where they founded a theatre named Teatro de la resistencia91 which in twelve years of its existence has carried out more than 15 plays; he worked with other troops and directing plays in other theatres as well. His version of “great king of theatre” from romantic period, unrestrained, vice, charismatic actor Edmund Kean, which he wrote inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s Kean – a play which he directed 1991 in the Chamber Theatre 55 in Sarajevo. Kurić’s play on Edmund Kean won the annual award for the best play in Valencia. “Acting is, like all arts, the pressing human need, and as such has emerged from our desire to express ourselves. And the technique of our expression can be based on “imitation” of reality or on desire to express a reality through abstract symbols. In both cases we are willing to communicate with the environment that surrounds us. I think that

91 Unofficial translation: Resistance Theatre.

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technique based on “imitation” has not substantially changed over centuries, and probably will not for as long as there is mankind; and second kind – in which encrypting the reality to whether the recipient of art would decode it in his mind, will always be changing, for it is essentially to create new codes”, said Kurić on occasion of premiere of his play Edmund Kean at the National Theatre Niš, his birth place. It is an intriguing fact that one of the first plays that he directed was Pavel Kohout’s, Marie Struggles with the Angels (Marie zapasí s andûly), with which his mother, actress, Mima Vuković Kurić has marked her 30 years of work in the National Theatre Niš.

The Context behind Certain Motifs in the Text:

Unveiling is a story about a married couple, the friends who invited Vaněk for the “unveiling” of their recently decorated apartment, “re-humanized” lifestyle as they like to present it. This is an exposure where it is possible to clearly observe all differences among characters in the drama. The play will finally resort to an argument which would extensively reflect their differences in philosophical approach to life. In this play, as well as in other Havel’s plays, it is possible to underline one significant phrase: “you can, but we cannot, because we need to live our lives to the full, you have nothing to lose, while the pleasures of life apparently do not matter much to you, and we have plenty to sacrifice”. In my opinion, this is the voice of human normalcy, maybe the “voice of reality”. Havel in the self-ironist way acknowledges all of this, and he brings support of the inherent irony of the dissident position into his dramatic play. Vaněk may well be the only normal human being in his environment, but since he constitutes a ridiculously powerless minority, no matter the cause, or how noble his thought and ideas may be, he will always be doomed to fail. But from the couple‟s point of view, they find Vaněk’s lifestyle worrying and their task is to help him any way they can. “In Unveiling, Věra and Michael lose their individuality to become one, they share a common mouth. When Vaněk enters the apartment he is entering in this big mouth, that will speak him out until exhaustion.”92

In a number of Havel’s plays Vaněk serves as the central point around which other lines, characters, and arguments are interlocking, forming a sort of trap with no way out. Vaněk has no choice but to admit that other people have their basic rights to food on their tables, to a favourite TV show after dinner, a right to their own view on life no matter how trivial it may be. Vaněk

92 FARRUGIA, Aleks. The Political Dynamics of Space in Václav Havel’s Theatre, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 75 p.

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finally realises that his actions make people uneasy, or put them at a risk. But at same time he has no choice, but to stick to his own basic right, his internal motivational force, to follow the voice of his sense of right and wrong. That is not because of Vaněk’s moral arrogance, but for the simple reason that he is unable to force himself to do things or utter words that he considers wrong or false strictly because of the convention. “In a sense, he lives among his compatriots like a foreigner in Paris. He is aware that all French eat escargots, and he is even able to abstractly to grasp abstractly their reasons for doing so, but he is physically incapable of forcing the slimy invertebrates down his throat.”93 Finally Vaněk has no choice but in the end to realise his own comical awkwardness in a society like this, in which he will always be the odd one, a laughable exception to the prevailing rule in majority around him.

“The combination of these necessities makes Vaněk a highly complex dramatic character. This is clear even in the Vaněk trilogy, in which Havel’s protagonist is, in terms of sheer stage presence, the least exposed among all the characters. He might seem like little more than a taciturn straight man opposite his rambling and dramatically more developed counterparts. Yet his psychological profile would fill volumes. He is, oddly yet convincingly, heroic and anti-heroic, a centrepiece of tragedy as well as farce. He is never so blindly self-righteous as to forget that, after all, he shares with people their trivial needs, that therefore he is one of them. If his moral backbone is a little more erect than most people‟s it is also a backbone that aches.”94 Vaněk, all in all, is not comfortable with his irritating principles, never will be, nor is he terribly proud of it, either. He realises how little separates him from the less heroic human majority.

Unveiling in the National Theatre Tuzla:

Another detail pointing to a conclusion that this particular performance in the National Theatre Tuzla was not meant to have a deeper significance or role in social or theatrical framework – is the fact that this play was set primarily as graduating play or final exam at the Academy of Performing Arts Sarajevo. For this reason it was set in co-production by the National Theatre Tuzla and the Sarajevo Academy, and as such later it was included in the repertoire of the theatre. Such

93 BARANCZAK, Stanislaw. Irony comes to power in Prague. All the President’s Plays, Washington, D.C., United States: The New Republic (daily newspaper), 23rd July 1990, 27-32 p.

94 BARANCZAK, Stanislaw. Irony comes to power in Prague. All the President’s Plays, Washington, D.C., United States: The New Republic (daily newspaper), 23rd July 1990, 27-32 p.

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plays usually are selected by a student who is graduating, specifically Zoran Tešić in this case, and these selections for the purposes of graduation are free from “high artistic” demands. Usually plays are selected for the reasons of being easy to put and inexpensive from the production point of view, most commonly with only two or three actors involved.

“(…) Unveiling by Václav Havel was made manly by Zoran Tešić (Michael) as his final exam. He graduated acting from the Academy of Performing Arts Sarajevo in the class of Professor Borislav Stjepanović.95 (...) Zoran Tešić starts his new life on stage with this play.. His talent was undoubtedly proven in this play. Selma Alispahić was Zoran’s partner in this performance (playing Věra). She passed the same exam earlier and in the meantime joined the National Theatre in Tuzla ensemble together with her colleague Dragan Dţankić (Ferdinand) as a long-time permanent ensemble member. (...).”96

Acting: The only fact that is not in favour of the argument that this play had no “high artistic” achievements in plan, is the fact that actress Selma Alispahić was awarded as the best young actress that year for the role of Vera in this performance on the Pozorišne igre Bosne i Hercegovine97 festival. She joined the Academy in Sarajevo when she was only sixteen and was considered one of the youngest and most talented actresses at the time. As the time went by she did not accomplish her dream career as predicted at the time. But it is undisputed that she had and still possesses a certain talent and scenic charm, which she used in this particular play. Even before enrolment and during her education at the Academy, Selma Alispahić has played in the National Theatre Tuzla. Selma’s father Nijaz Alispahić98 was a prominent member of the National Theatre Tuzla, at the time a dramaturgist, later

95 Borislav Boro Stjepanovid (born in village Planinica, Vareš, Bosnia and Herzegovina) 5th August 1946. He is Bosnian actor, director and pedagogue. He studied the Yugoslav and world literature at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade 1969. The acting and graduated on the Academy of Theatre, Film, Radio and Television in Belgrade 1971. He played in more than fifty theatrical and movie roles. He is prominent professor of acting at many Academies in region (Belgrade, Sarajevo, Podgorica, etc.). He has directed in many theatres across former Yugoslavia.

96 Press clipping magazine theatre review article, Tuzla: Front Slobode (daily newspaper), 12th March 1991.

97 Unofficial translation: Theatre Plays in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Is one of oldest theatre festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina of professional theatres, held in Jajce.

98 Nijaz Alispahid (born 1940 in Kozluk, Zvornik) primary and secondary education finished in Tuzla. The study of language and literature he finished in Belgrade, a postgraduate studies in Sarajevo. In the National Theatre Tuzla he started working in 1978, as a dramaturgist, artistic director, and since 1989 as chief editor of magazine Pozorište. Creative engagements of Nijaz Alispahid are wide indeed: poetry, prose, drama, dramaturgy, theatre, criticism, essay, journalism, film scripts, cultural chronicles, etc. 58 | P a g e

also and director of drama in the National Theatre Tuzla. The critics of that time were also very much in favour of the young actress. “The whole show is comprised of impressively realized roles. Selma Alispahić in the creation of a young, passionate German woman in love brings a lot of melodrama- poetic notes in the realistic drama. Director Gradimir Gojer, on the other hand, found remarkable ways to emphasize these poetic moments”99 said one critic about Selma’s acting in the play titled Hamdibeg by Haris Silajdţić staged in the National Theatre Tuzla 1998.

In season 1984/85 Dragan Dţankić won the same prize, as the best young actor on Pozorišne igre Bosne i Hercegovine festival, for his role of the Waiter in the play Mamurni golubovi100 by Miodrag Ţalica.101 In this division of roles he was the most experienced actor, working as an actor from early 1980s in the National Theatre Tuzla. By the end of 1980s he achieved peak in his career, mostly playing leading roles, and receiving positive reviews by critics and audiences for his acting achievements. Critics used to say that in his acting, he is “extensively using his creative self awareness and potentials, and the overall impression is that in his acting he has the ability to hold the attention of the audience”.102 As well as, “A very tinted role made Dragan Dţankić as Zhevakin, a former naval officer in Marriage by Nikolai Gogol. (...) In any case, he is an actor with undisputable qualities of a comedian, necessary for the modern theatre”.103

As mentioned earlier, Zoran Tešić graduated with this performance, hence it can be assumed that he was a young actor lacking experience, but in the next few years, he gained quite an important role in the National Theatre Tuzla personnel structure. In the Tuzla Theatre, he performed also in season 1991/92 in a children‟s play The Dancing Donkey by Erik Vos and season 1992/93, at the beginning of the war, in play Ali Bej’s Hamzine ujdurme too, and received very

99 HANDŽID, Izet. Press clipping magazine theatre review article, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 20th November 1998.

100 Unofficial translation: Drowsy Pigeons.

101 Miodrag Žalica (born 1926, died 1992 in Sarajevo) was prominent Bosnian playwright and poet. He was avant-garde playwright, the winner of many awards for his works.

102 PLAKALO, Safet. Press clipping magazine theatre review article, Sarajevo: Večernje novine (daily newspaper), May 1987. Večernje novine (unofficial translation: Evening Gazette) was daily newspaper published by Oslobođenje in Sarajevo, it started in 1962.

103 PAVLOVID. V., Press clipping magazine theatre review article, Tuzla: Front Slobode (daily newspaper), 8th October 1991.

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positive critiques for these plays. In the same season in Ahmed Muradbegović’s Majka104 in which he performed a leading role, he was also an assistant director. At that time he wrote a play titled Vrati mi moj kofer.105 In a very short period from a minor actor he became the leading manager of the activities and reportorial policy of the theatre. He was one of the leading actors, assistant director, and a playwright, directed amateur plays, started Children’s Theatre Neboder,106 Draft- Theatre, Teatar Soli,107 etc. It would be reasonable to ask if he was able to achieve all of this thanks to his acting, writing, directing skills and intellect, or simply because of the critical situation of war when all other theatre workers and intellectuals fled the country. The same fate was experienced by Zoran Tešić, who left Bosnia and Herzegovina almost at the very end of the war, and irreversibly disappeared from the stage and theatrical life of this house and country.

All three actors were educated on Stanislavsky’s Method, realistic techniques into a coherent and usable system of acting. It is therefore possible to assume the frameworks of their acting performance. Moreover, Selma Alispahić and Zoran Tešić were colleagues in their acting classes on the Academy, taught by Professor Borislav Stjepanović, one of the leading professors of acting in the former Yugoslavia.

Stage setting: The play was performed on the premises of International Portrait Gallery Tuzla, where one of its showrooms was equipped with furniture needed for the play, and together with paintings from exhibition it created a setting for Havel’s piece. The play was performed in a stage setting and costumes were designed by Ervin Pleše, characterised by distinct visual art realization. It is interesting that Pleše, together with the director, decided to locate and present the time of the play as the early 20th century, and not to place it in a more contemporary setting, as suggested by the author. Also, Vaněk was dressed in rather modest and conservative clothes, primarily in black. In contrast, the young couple was dressed in something more extravagant, fashion-conscious, clothes, most probably in an attempt to highlight these class differences, as well as the relation to the life itself and life philosophy. The audience was seated in the lobby next to the showroom,

104 Unofficial translation: Mother.

105 Unofficial translation: Give me Back my Suitcase.

106 Unofficial translation: Skyscraper.

107 Unofficial translation: Theatre Salts.

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although this created a pleasant and immediate atmosphere, only fifty to eighty spectators were able to attend the performance.

Conclusion:

All this well-edged theatrical sense and experience mentioned earlier about the director could not be seen or recognized in Havel’s Unveiling, which Kurić directed in the National Theatre Tuzla. The same goes for actors, who individually were actors with great potentials, but inexperienced at that time, or who simply did not sufficiently dedicate themselves to this project. Although still at the level of a speculation, based on my personal experience, this is in most cases true when it comes to such student‟s projects. It can be assumed that it is due to director and actors‟ inexperience at the very beginning of their careers, right after or immediately before completion of their studies at the Academy. My impression is that the director did not go into deeper meanings of Havel’s play, or that this play was not set with the intention or in line with some greater desire to influence the society. The society in fact was only a step away from a war, but at the time everyone were closing their eyes to such thought and finding it impossible, but at a turning point in history such as this one in Bosnia, it would be very interesting to see how a Havelian story would influence or intrigue a Bosnian viewer. In promotional materials for the play, the director wrote: “(...) In the play that you are about to see, the team of three actors and me as their director attempted to investigate the consequences and influence of a totalitarian state on an individual. The system of repression did not interest or fear us, nor the author himself, but manly the impacts that the play could have on a man who finds himself in a middle of repression, injured and in fear. I sincerely hope that not many spectators will recognize themselves in this play. (...) Mirhad Hadi Kurić.”108 From these words of the director it is possible to recognize superficial intentions of the director for staging Havel’s play; which might confirm my previous thought that this was rather a simple student project.

Then again, in the overall interpretation of this particular piece, it is possible to notice that Havel through Vaněk is trying to advocate certain ideas: a condemnation of the modern lifestyle and fighting for even more comfortable life, even at the expense of others, fellow- citizens. Obsession with desire to present ourselves in the best possible light, even though this might be far from truth, is our constant preoccupation. “In fact, Havel essentially equates the

108 Published in promoting materials as word of director for premiere of this play in the National Theatre Tuzla.

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vacuous nature of consumptive behaviour with living the lie. In Unveiling, Michael and Vera have surrounded themselves with a host of eclectic items such as an art nouveau marquee, a Chinese vase, a limestone Baroque angel, an inlaid chest, a folkloristic painting on a glass pane, a Russian icon, old hand mortars and grinders, a wooden Gothic Madonna, a Rococo musical clock, a Turkish scimitar, a wooden farm-cart wheel, Persian mats, a bear hide, a wooden confessional, a hi-fi stereo, and a bar cart. They, therefore, fancy themselves connoisseurs of antiques and other odd objects. Moreover, given the illegality with which many of the items were procured, they think of themselves as some sort of “dissident” figures for having outwitted the post-totalitarian regime. At the play‟s climax, it becomes starkly evident that the private viewing was designed not so much as to show off their objects, but was intended to impress Vaněk that they, too, could live in truth. (...) While Vera and Michael’s efforts to create a life of which Vaněk would approve are obviously well-intentioned, not to mention humorous, they sadly miss the entire point: consuming is not living within the truth, hut is merely another lie.”109 The play begins and ends with Vaněk standing in the doorway of an apartment holding the flowers that he brought as a gift for his hosts. Among other things, we can learn from this quote that Havel is commenting on a consumer society, which at that time was not so frequent, but will culminate in the 21st century with a great momentum of globalization.

109 BROOKS, D. Christopher. The Art of the Political: Havel’s Dramatic Literature as Political Theory, East European Quarterly, Winter 2005, Vol. 39 Issue 4, 491-522 p.

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6. Audience and Unveiling, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 25th September 1995

Historical Background and the Political Situation in Post War Bosnia and Herzegovina:

At the time when this particular play was produced in Sarajevo, the country was still in war. The signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on 14th December 1995 marked an end of the conflict. Peace talks were held in Dayton, Ohio, USA, and finalized on 21st December 1995. The accord reached is commonly known as the Dayton Agreement, which at the same time serves as the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The situation was most difficult in different enclaves, such as Sarajevo, or Srebrenica where genocide was committed and which were under siege during almost the entire war. The Siege of Sarajevo is the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. Serb forces comprising the Army of Republika Srpska military and the Yugoslav People’s Army besieged Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 5th April 1992 to 29th February 1996, or virtually the during the entire war in Bosnia. During the siege, Sarajevans were in lack of the very basics for a normal life, not to mention investing in a theatre play, which was a superhuman effort.

“The siege of Sarajevo, as it came to be popularly known, was an episode of such notoriety in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia that one must go back to Second World War to find a parallel in European history. Not since then had a professional army conducted a campaign of unrelenting violence against the inhabitants of a European city so as to reduce them to a state of medieval deprivation in which they were in constant fear of death. In the period covered in this Indictment, there was nowhere safe for a Sarajevan, not at home, at school, in a hospital, from deliberate attack.”110

Audience and Unveiling in the Chamber Theatre 55:

Appropriately to its name, the Chamber Theatre 55, but in limited wartime and the immediate post-war theatre production in Sarajevo, decided at a crucial moment to produce two Havel’s single-act plays Audience and Unveiling, combining them into one theatre production.

110 “ICTY: Stanislav Galid judgement and opinion”. ICTY. 5th December 2003. Retrieved 3rd March 2010.

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Actually, although these two one-acts, in addition to Protest are usually preformed separately in the Czech Republic, in foreign theatres, as well in Yugoslav, these one-acts are usually interconnected into one story about the sad, quixotic destiny of the inflexible intellectual and prohibited writer Ferdinand Vaněk, who is the main character of all three single-act plays, thus it is not short of logic to combine the three pieces into one.111 These Havel’s texts were written for rather small or chamber stages and low budgets, yet these pieces are strongly politically and socially engaged, which was probably the main driving force behind the idea of staging Audience and Unveiling one-acts in Sarajevo. It is an interesting observation by many theatrologists and sociologists112 that plays set during wartime, although limited in financial aspect, are nevertheless abundant in artistic achievements, probably due to texts selection, specific social situation, as well as the role of theatre in such specific situations and desire to raise morale. Vaněk (played by Izudin Bajrović), a writer an intellectual, faced with the repressive system, resorts to an internal exile, and his moral position is to reject reality. The main idea emphasised in this particular performance is seemingly a clear position that an intellectual in a totalitarian regime has to plead by his vocation, even if in response, Vaněk will be forcibly taken to perform labour in a brewery, pushing barrels around.

Vaněk on other hand is not the only link in Audience, Unveiling and Protest, as mentioned by many theoreticians, which ties these three pieces together. It is a unique phenomenon, with other stories by other authors deploying the same character. The phenomenon goes as far as interpreting Largo Desolato as a continuation of Vaněk’s destiny in Leopold Nettles. “The Audience gave rise to a one-of-a-kind literary phenomenon: a constellation of plays employing the same protagonist but written by different authors. (The Vaněk plays in their broader sense include pieces written by Pavel Kohout, Pavel Landovský and Jiří Dienstbier, and are all reprinted in UBC Press‟s handy collection.) But Leopold Nettles of Largo Desolato is also, to a larger extent, another personification of Vaněk, and Vaněk-like characters spur the dramatic action in Havel’s “parabolic” plays as well.”113 As a matter a fact, all Havel’s main protagonists share a similar fate, all being dissidents in a totalitarian state, or another similar kind of oppressive society.

111 On the Theatre World festival in Brno (June, 2010) I have seen these three single-acts preformed together under the title Three Troubles of Citizen Vaněk.

112 OMERBEGOVID, N. Havel u Sarajevu, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 25th September 1995. 113 BARANCZAK, Stanislaw. Irony comes to power in Prague. All the President’s Plays, Washington, D.C., United States: The New Republic (daily newspaper), 23rd July 1990, 27-32 p.

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The Context behind Certain Motifs in the Text:

Vaněk in Audience and Unveiling is almost nothing more than a passive observer of things around him. We can see the main character played by Izudin Bajrović in Audience, his supervisor, Sládek (Admir Glamoĉak), trying to persuade him to betray himself for the benefit of others, and in the second play, Vaněk is (Izudin Bajrović) with his friends, Vera (Emina Muftić) and Michael (Dragan Marinković), attempting to present him the luxury and comforts of life to be won in return for a rejection of his moral and political principles. A Bosnian viewer could easily identify with this typical Hayekian tangle, and the typical Czech humour of this absurd satire. In these two Havel’s one-act plays, what is not only interesting, but also uplifting, humorous and ironic for the Bosnian audience, are the opportunities that the offers to actors to cope with. In an interview about this performance, an actor and director Glamoĉak said: “I like Havel’s plays for their small form and I think these one-act plays are offering actors an opportunity to scrutinize their own acting resources. To me this is the most interesting aspect of theatre, actor and acting. That is why I agreed to work on this play. I think that at any time, not just today, it is interesting to work on this kind of plays, because there is always something questioning power and authority.”114 Theatre houses in Bosnia and Herzegovina are not as numerous as in the Czech Republic, hence the repertoire and play selection are vital. Admir Glamoĉak is a long-time professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo, which could be yet another reason behind his decision to work on plays where acting comes to fore. Also, the Chamber Theatre 55 is small size which is why its repertoire is based on plays for small stages. It is important to stress that Unveiling was written just shortly before Audience, but in directing the play, Glamoĉak decided to present these texts in a reversed order.

Some important details about the Chamber Theatre 55 have been mentioned earlier. It is also noteworthy that it enjoys a status of an important institution on the Bosnian cultural scene, which was further reaffirmed during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the besieged Sarajevo, this theatre was a leader and a torchbearer of what, at home and abroad, was described with great admiration as “cultural resistance to aggression”. Its efforts were recognized as a civilized and superior response to barbarism to which it had been exposed. In inconceivably difficult circumstances, literally under shelling and with candlelight, day by day, in front of many and loyal viewers, and perhaps never in history, did the theatre meet with such grateful response or had a fuller and

114 OMERBEGOVID, N. Havel u Sarajevu, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 25th September 1995.

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deeper meaning and justification for its existence than in those wartime days. It will be remembered in history that during war Chamber Theatre 55 had 28 premiers on the repertoire, free from compromising with ideological, ethnic, religious or political influences.

Stage design: Furthermore, Admir Glamoĉak directed a play that a spectator could follow with great interest, combining two pieces into a single one, whilst placing them in two separate ambiances. The two acting areas are next to each other, but the viewers could not see both from the same spot due to a partition wall between the two areas. It remains unclear as to whether the audience was escorted to the second playing area during the interval, or if it was somehow done during the performance itself. With the assistance of art director Osman Arslanagić, Glamoĉak knew how to utilise the stage setting, a theatre foyer and exhibition space Gabrijel115 next to foyer, as a perfect interior for Unveiling. The assumption is that minimal modifications were made. For example, a bar for visitors of theatre is located in the foyer and it was slightly modified and used as stage setting for Audience. Although it reduced the number of spectators, some of whom were put in uncomfortable position to stand during the performance, but in times after the war, for audience this was a cultural treat, rather than a physical effort. Glamoĉak stressed: “As actors we wanted to test our acting skills, and to make yet another play that audiences will enjoy watching. Unfortunately, it is different and because of the place where it is preformed, that is, in areas where it was never played before, it is limited to 30 to 40 visitors. But the stage is there; the actor is on the stage, as it the audience. We tried to avoid being extravagant by all means, and simply found these two places as appropriate for the performance. In the times of scarcity, when we cannot afford to spend a single penny on play equipment, we decided to use what was already there. There is a gallery, and Vernisáţ (Unveiling) stands for exhibition, which is a principle we decided to follow.”116 Or in other words, it is evident that the lacking finances dictated that minimum changes be made to the space, as well as for equipping the whole play. Not much has changed since. It is a worrisome fact that the financial situation in theatres in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or financial allocations in culture and theatres, is still not much better. Opera and ballet are affected in particular.

115 Unofficial translation: Gabriel. Gabriel is art gallery part of the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo.

116 OMERBEGOVID, N. Havel u Sarajevu, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 25th September 1995.

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Directing: The most evident in directing was the essence of small thematic settings. In working with artists and actors, these forms have provided opportunities for dramaturgical upgrading. This was the fundamental value of directorial work. The main criticism of theatre critics at the time, for example, was: “seemingly the director did not allow silence and pauses in respective passages at the expense of the pace of the play, yet allowed the actors a greater shade in their acting.”117 Other critics noted: “There are some inserts and improvisation in the play which were probably not in the spirit of Havel, but were nevertheless done with the intention for the play to be more up-to-date.”118

Director‟s main idea in setting the play was partly built around superficial and light humour, making fun of the protagonist, as well as superficial ionization, unlike the play Largo Desolato which was staged in 1987 in this same theatre. This points us to the issue of quality and experience of the director of this play, who is primarily an actor, and not a director, and who afterwards, probably owing to the lack of educated and professional staff, has directed quite frequently in different theatres.

It would perhaps be useful to stress that this was not first time that Glamoĉak was dealing with Havel’s Audience. A decade before, he graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo playing the role of Vaněk in the same play, and as a student at the Academy, he also played the role of Ferdinand in Unveiling. Or as Glamoĉak puts it: “Back then I was only 23; now I‟m ten years older, with the experience from the war in me. Such experience is something completely different and crucial. And from that side it was interesting to try to examine all means, to see just where I am, comparing to where I was ten years ago.”119

Acting: The focus of these two one-act plays was on actors. Every available source about actors, and especially the director himself, emphasize that their desire to experiment with their acting and to test their acting skills was their primary concern. Whether they reached this goal or not could be debated, and although personally I would like to focus more on this issue, not all

117 FETAHAGID, Sead. Mala forma, veliki ugođaj, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 27th September 1995.

118 FETAHAGID, Sead. Mala forma, veliki ugođaj, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 27th September 1995.

119 OMERBEGOVID, N. Havel u Sarajevu, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 25th September 1995.

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archives and materials are available. While Admir Glamoĉak, the director himself, showed sheer and restrained humour in his role of Sládek, on the other hand, Izudin Bajrović as Vaněk in both one-act plays knew very well to stay silent, and thus serve as a medium through which the dialogues of his partners were going and were delivered to the audience in their true meaning and content. Since his school days Admir Glamoĉak grew to become an actor with rather limited abilities, known to the wider audience only through his comic roles, in which he is indisputably very skilful. This theatrical fate marked him through much of his career, and probably it helped him in creating the character that Havel painted with specific sarcasm, two characters in this play have been presented by author with quite different characteristics. Sládek is just a simple, provincial man, not very intelligent, or educated, but driven through life by his simple, yet “effective” logic. Vaněk on the other hand is an intellectual from the city, sent to province as a punishment, so we have two quite opposite and different characters, finding their common way through Havel’s plot. By their habitus and acting predispositions of the two actors who have performed in Audience in the Chamber Theatre, I would assume a reverse division of roles. By his habitus Glamoĉak is much more closer to role of Vaněk, and Bajrović is a man of rough features, with rustic characteristics, much more closer to Sládek, but this is possible the charm of this performance. Glamoĉak at this time was a professor and the dean at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo. Theatre critics wrote: “It is ungrateful to predict, but Bajrović is undoubtedly an actor who will be one of our leading actors in the years to come.”120 In those times, only few lines were dedicated to other actors involved in the performance. All together it could be characterized as follows, Dragan Marinković and Emina Muftić in Unveiling knew how to create an atmosphere of an alienated married couple, with certain pretty meticulous tones, however, it was expected from Glamoĉak to deliver a higher and multilayered sense and meaning behind these seemingly simple statements and dialogues. Perhaps it was a matter of experience, stage fright on opening night.

It is also important to point out that all these actors were taught on Stanislavsky’s Method approach to acting, which fact could perhaps offer a better explanation about the range in which an actor was creating his/her roles. Glamoĉak pointed out in an interview that there was one more fact which goes in favour of actors and acting, namely, that they have survived the war, and this experience certainly enriched them in terms of acting, and gave them another connotations and new dimensions to their acting.121 But I would contest if a life experience such as war could

120 FETAHAGID, Sead. Mala forma, veliki ugođaj, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 27th September 1995.

121 OMERBEGOVID, N. Havel u Sarajevu, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 25th September 1995.

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enrich someone‟s acting, except of the acting in Stanislavsky’s realism manner, when this kind of experience could indeed help an actor to remember the emotions he experienced during the war and use it in “reliving the role of character” on the stage.

Actors and the whole theatre staff have performed without any payments; their main task and satisfaction was to preserve a cultural life in the city under the siege, and thus raise the morale of the citizens of Sarajevo.

Costume: According to available sources, not much was invested in this performance, due to obvious reasons. Available photos from this performance show that Amela Vilić mostly used old costumes from theatre holdings for Czech 70ies style. Actors mostly wore tweed suits in a typical soc-realistic fashion. Critics made most of the comments in relation to the dinner scene in Unveiling, arguing that it was made hastily and clumsy because of actors could not properly deal with cutlery and food consumption, and that this could have been done better. Further, it seemed that the costume designer Amela Vilić was mistaken with her choice of costume for Emina Muftić, as some of critics have emphasized.

Conclusion:

The whole performance, although small in dimensions, was nothing but a great joy for the theatre audience, in a number of ways. For the theatre itself and the audience, it was certainly an enjoyable experience. Previous sections summarize the reflections of theatre critique at the time about this performance. In my opinion, this performance was not primarily aimed at high artistic achievements, but simply to bring a modern and an engaged play to audience craving for such events. Václav Havel himself attended one of the reprise performances, but I am not familiar with his comments about this play. It is a well-known fact that Václav Havel as the president and a humanitarian activist was strongly involved in providing aid to Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war. He was, for example, sponsor of a cultural event named Mouth of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Czech Republic, in September 1995, which primary aim was to bring the cultural contents and knowledge of the people in these two countries closer. According to the official documents of the Theatre 55, the management stated that they primarily set Havel’s pieces because of their quality, but also with a desire to thank him for his humanitarian work. In an interview regarding the cultural event Mouth of Bosnia and 69 | P a g e

Herzegovina in the Czech Republic, Havel said the following about setting his plays in Sarajevo: “I admire the fact that it is even possible in such circumstances to publish books, play performances, etc. Of course I am very much honoured that my plays have been included on the repertoire there. I hope that they bring some message to the audience. Pageant in such circumstances, understandably, brings more joy to me than if performed elsewhere.”122 Bosnian people admire Václav Havel since in the most difficult and crucial times during war he did not hesitate to clearly distinguish between the victim and the occupier in Bosnian war. Coming to Sarajevo while under the siege was a very brave act by Havel, to go as far as to put his own life at risk. He was one of a few politicians who came in wartime Sarajevo.

122 ŠARAC, Ariana., OLJAČA, Goranka. Istina i ljubav pobjeđuju laž, interview with Václav Havel, Sarajevo: Oslobođenje (daily newspaper), 14th September 1995, 7 p.

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7. Translations

Reading Günter Grass, the German Nobel Prize winning author, the latest novel Grimms Wörter: Eine Liebeserklärung (Grimms‟ Words: A Declaration of Love), which is a paean to the Grimm brothers and the dictionary of German language they began to write in the early 19th century. Günter’s book is also written in the form of dictionary, and the first impression was that this book is impossible to translate, it is only later that I learned that the author and his translators were having the same dilemma. Translators of Havel’s works had similar task to face, Havel’s humour, wit, ambiguity in the structure of sentence in Czech language, his playing with the logic of situations, relationships, social forces, crises of identity, etc. are almost impossible to translate entirely, without some intervention of a translator, or some intervention by the director or dramatist during pageant of text. General remark of Havel’s translator is that it is not easy to work for or on his works: “It‟s not easy to translate Havel. I used to work as his advisor on The Castle for one and a half year, (…) I realized how hard it is to work with his language because it is really something quite special. And he doesn‟t trust to everybody, you know, to translate or to work with his text. So it means that he has to be really very much relying on your skills and your personal friendship when he decided that you should be the translator.”123

In UNESCO database Index Translationum124 registers 6847 translation into Serbo-Croatian in the 1980s. According to this data base 140 titles have been translated in Bosnia in 2005, 17508 in Croatia in 2008 and in Serbia 3766 in 2008. Of course, situation in translation profession is a part of a wider social context mostly conditioned by situation in politics and media, influenced as well by the quality of everyday life. Publisher‟s strategy is depending on assessment of audience and their taste, which is mostly formed by media. It happened to everyone that in favourite author‟s book we found the construction of sentence that we do not like and lightly we would

123 Comment of Ambassador Petr Kolář on Václav Havel in introductory speech during Paul Wilson Discusses His Translation of Vaclav Havel’s Book “To the Castle and Back”, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 17th May 2007. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

124 The database contains cumulative bibliographical information on books translated and published in about one hundred of the UNESCO Member States since 1979 and totals more than 2.000.000 entries in all disciplines: literature, social and human sciences, natural and exact sciences, art, history and so forth. It is planned to update the work every four months. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

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blame the translator for this. Few people consider that translation is not a mathematical problem to solve an equation, but a product of someone who has his own professional and artistic criteria, his poetics of translation. Simply, different people are chasing different things. Translators on this issue are taking two general positions. According to one, the personality of an interpreter should remain completely in shadow of the text. According to them, the translation is successful when it is seen from text characteristics, not of interpreter, but translating a writer and his work, especially his virtues, but - why not - and weaknesses. Suspicious are translators in which works each and every writer sounds opulent and virtuosic. If you recognize an interpreter, that is not commendable. Unfortunately, there are such translators which are even well known in society. In the case when such translators are also poets, translations of other poets are like their poetry. On the other side, there are those defending the active role of an interpreter, who believe that the interpreter should be expressed by their feeling, would express the author himself if he was writing in that particular language. Serious mistakes in translation are the most commonly result of misunderstanding of the context. Dragoslav Andrić125 in one interview gave one example that he came across in his career, in the play Look Back in Anger by John Osborne there is line: “Your friends – there’s shower for you” which meaninglessly have been translated in Serbo-Croatian as “shower” or “bath”. But true meaning of the word in this context is the “indicator” (from the verb “to show”). Translated in Serbo-Croatian the phrase should be something like: “Your friends - they are showing what you are.” Yugoslav literature in Eastern Europe has been translated most in period of the 60s and 80s, when for socialist countries, Yugoslavia was the “model of freedom”. In the post- communism days this have changed radically, translates are poor, or nothing at all.

Great majority of Havel’s plays and other works into Serbo-Croatian has been translated in the period before 90s, done by the renowned names and experts for Czech and Slavic languages, for example like Aleksandar Ilić, Dušan Karpatský, Jasna Novak, Renata Ulmanski, Ivan Kušan, etc. More details about which plays they have translated I mentioned in chapter about Czech Authors on South Slavic Territories, but my general impression is that due to a fact that these countries are sharing same history and origin as Slavic nations, due to resemblances in languages, due to the fact that even in times of communist era they have shared similar fate, etc. translations of Havel’s works from Czech into Serbo-Croatian were more successful and more resembling to the original

125 Dragoslav Andrid is renowned translator, but there is long list of his literary works – besides collections of his poetry, his essays, his humorous prose, his voluminous Dictionary of Serbo-Croat Slang, and including his translations of about 130 books of poetry, fiction and plays from English, French, German and Russian.

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work, than translations in some other languages.126 In works of Czech dissident authors Yugoslavian literary and theatrical audiences have recognized a scanned image of their own society; they have recognized mechanisms of bureaucratic and dogmatic society, model of its conversion into inhuman and alienated absurd. Characteristically Czech, satirical and ironic approach to reality which are pointing to the moral weakness and vices of society, as well as penetrating psychological analysis of moral failures which are experiencing man in socialist society, these have been easily recognizable for Yugoslav recipient and they have accepted it as a picture of his own reality. In fact these are roots of so thoroughly acceptance of this group of Czech authors in South Slavic milieu. At least there was smaller obstacle to get across than in other languages, but never the less obstacles are existing. Havel’s kind of humour and wit is much more responsive to audience on South Slavic territories rather than England, or Germany for example. “Obviously assimilation and popularity of Czech writers in Yugoslav literature and culture are probably the result of several causes, for example due wide range of traditional knowledge about and in the „similarity‟ of our cultures, as well due similar experiences in resistance to Stalinism, and in the writers style and the receptivity of storytelling.”127 Also, the ambiguities of Havel’s replicas are more suitable for translation into another Slavic language, rather than let‟s say into the Anglo Saxon.

Intriguing is that Havel’s character Leopol Kopřiva in English translation by Tom Stoppard, although naming of the characters followed the Anglicization, but he kept the meaning of Czech word kopřiva or in English nettle, so in English character name is Leopold Nettles. Such adaptation into South Slavic languages would be quite small, but quite significant, kopřiva for instance is kopriva, but his name in Aleksandar Ilić translation is kept as in Czech, only audibly rewritten into South Slavic, so character name in Ilić’s translation is Leopold Koprţiva. This surname is hard or impossible to understand for South Slavic speaker, even to pronounce it is problematic, and above all Havel’s true meaning is kept hidden for those viewers, but such small adaptation in Havel’s work would mean great deal in significance and understanding of his work.

All Havel’s translators do agree that it is not easy to translate his works, one of the reasons is that most of his works have been created at a time of censorship, so he was not able to express

126 VOLIK, Petar. Protest i Atest, Belgrade: Ilustrovana politika (magazine), 31th January 1984, 10 p.

127 SIMID, Jovan. Umetnost kao ispitivanje ljudske egzistencije, Beograd: Venac, 114/83, September 1983, 18-19 p.

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clearly his opinions and positions, on the contrary, he had to hide it. This is what Paul Wilson experienced during translation Havel’s Letters to Olga: “He was not allowed to write about what he was thinking, what he was experiencing in prison. He was only allowed to write about himself and he developed a technique for writing, which is the bain of any translator because he tried very hard to be incomprehensible so that the censors wouldn‟t understand what he writing about. And he was so successful that I didn‟t understand what he was writing about, a lot of the time. And I had a list of about 300 questions that I then, through the underground channels that we had, sent back to Havel for answers. And I got a reply about two months later saying, “I‟m awfully sorry, but I don‟t really understand what I meant either.” He was so successful at fooling the censors that he in a sense fooled himself.”128 Second reason is that Havel is using quite refined, unusual language and way to express himself. This is a question from Joanne Cooper to Paul Wilson on same discussion about Havel’s book: “I‟ve translated Havel just once - our Ambassador asked me to translate an article by him and the sentences were so complex that one of my colleagues actually diagramed a sentence, and it had about five independent clauses in just one sentence, and in the book -- I‟m going to give a small example; you translate his work “hemţení” as “kafuffle”. It‟s a two-part question. Do you often find with Havel that he uses vocabulary that you have to reach deep into the barrel of English vocabulary, number one, and number two, how do you keep your language and your translation skills fresh and timely for the modern audience, even if they use a style of writing that‟s not quite contemporary? (…) It‟s brilliant. It‟s a word I wouldn‟t have used. And I think it‟s brilliant.”129 And finally as already emphasized in previous quote, Havel is often having ambiguous meanings in his sentences. And there is of course question of repetitions in dialogue, which Havel is very often using in all forms of his writings, and which is giving hard time to translators, directors and editors: “And the only explanation that I could come up with when I was talking to my editors was that the principle of repetition is something that‟s very, very basic to his writing as a playwright, that he uses the principle of he repeats dialogue. And sometimes dialogue gets passed around from character to character. So repetition is just part of his work, and it‟s very clear when you read this book that he has conceived of his memoir as partly a dramatic piece of work. (…) If you had been in New

128 WILSON, Paul. Paul Wilson Discusses His Translation of Vaclav Havel’s Book “To the Castle and Back”, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 17th May 2007. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

129 Joanne Cooper’s question to Paul Wilson during Paul Wilson Discusses His Translation of Vaclav Havel’s Book “To the Castle and Back”, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 17th May 2007. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

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York last night or in Toronto on Monday when we launched the book, in each city, we had actors read bits from the book. And part of the little sort of presentation that was made was these repetitions. And when they‟re actually read out loud, in the context of the rest of the book, they‟re very funny. And they get funnier the more often they come up. It‟s just that when you‟re reading them on the page it doesn‟t strike you as being a dramatic element.”130

On this observation on Havel and thoughts about him greatly have influenced and thoughts of Paul Wilson, and his impressions on Havel and his work. “Havel’s plays and the essays and speeches come from the same mind and imagination, and were created in the same set of historical circumstances, so in that sense, you can hear the same “voice” at work. Having worked hard to establish the tone of that voice in English in his essays I found it easier to translate the plays in a way that I hope shows the continuity between his prose and his drama. The challenges of each, however, are slightly different. In translating his books, my main concern was to be faithful to his ideas. In translating the plays, my concern shifted to making sure that the dialogue actually works on stage, that it sounds natural as the actors speak, and that the play communicates with the audience as immediately and directly as possible. So the process of translating his plays was quite different than translating his books. My translation of Leaving, for instance, was workshopped twice, once with a group of English actors at the Orange Tree Theatre in London, and once here at the Wilma, with mostly American actors. In each case, I was able to make adjustments to the dialogue that I hope made it more comprehensible to the specific audiences. It‟s a wonderful process, and has the added bonus of making translation a less lonely profession.”131 From this we can learn that working on Havel’s plays in the forefront for Wilson was to make plays livelier on stage, to communicate with audience, to make it comprehensible, and Havel’s ideas were placed in the background.

Havel on many occasions emphasized that his primary desire was to entertain his audience, friends and himself with his plays, and we might conclude that he succeeded much more than that.

130 WILSON, Paul. Paul Wilson Discusses His Translation of Vaclav Havel’s Book “To the Castle and Back”, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 17th May 2007. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

131 Official web site of the Wilma Theater, Interview with translator Paul Wilson, on the occasion of the premiere of play Leaving by Václav Havel, translated by Paul Wilson, directed by Jiri Zizka. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

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My intension, as well, was to contact major translators of Havel’s works in former Yugoslavia territories, but unfortunately some of them are no longer alive, and others were not interested to reply to my letters.

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8. Conclusion

In Havel’s Letters to Olga he made one notable comment: “Actually all my plays are only the different variants of the same topic, which is a break-up (a disintegration) of the feeling of an individual‟s identity and the losing everything what gives the man‟s life a sense and an order, a continuum and the unique shape.”132 The phenomenon of Václav Havel, per aspera ad astra,133 almost like fairy tale story, is very rare in recent history, especially in Czech environment. The story of the rise from rejected dissident to the president of Republic, and on top of it all, there is one more remarkable segment about Havel’s life, recognized by many theorists, and that is Goethe’s maxim “a life should resemble a work of art” could be truly applied on Havel, without any superficiality or kitsch. In other hand, I would not argue that there is no other honest way in approaching this subject, but in conclusion I find this one as most appropriate. But I would agree with the others that later gained and widespread image of a “reluctant president” is an unacceptable diversion.

“Václav Havel’s life would seem to be an unrivalled success story: the Philosopher-King, a man who combines political power with a global moral authority comparable only to that of the Pope, the Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela. And just as in the end of a fairy tale when the hero is rewarded for all his suffering by marrying the princess, he is married to a beautiful movie actress. Why, then, has John Keane chosen as the subtitle of his biography A Political Tragedy in Six Acts?!”134

Few remarks on John Keane’s book A Political Tragedy in Six Acts:

A Political Tragedy in Six Acts is authorized biography of Václav Havel, the author John Keane had unrestricted access to Václav Havel, to his supporters, but even to his enemies. This book is considered to be the first definitive explanation of one of the “great moral and political leaders of our time”, a vivid portrait of the tumultuous events of this century. “Begun as European colonialism was dying and fascism gripped the continent, Havel’s life has been shaped and determined by the

132 HAVEL, Václav. Letters to Olga, London: Knopf USA, Faber & Faber, April 1988, 41 p., selected, edited and translated by Paul Wilson.

133 Translation (Latin): Through hardships to the stars.

134 ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, review on book: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Bloomsbury, September 1999.

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large political shifts of the century: Second World War, the drawing of the Iron Curtain, the Prague Spring, the fall of Communism, and the emerging democracies of the Eastern bloc. Readers will be surprised to discover many things hitherto unknown about Havel. They will taste the moments of joy, irony, farce, and misfortune through which he has lived. Above all, they will discover something that both his critics and supporters should never forget: Havel taught the world more about the powerful and the powerless, power-grabbing and power-sharing, than virtually any of his twentieth-century rivals.”135

This book is not primarily about Havel’s plays and work in a theatre, but it has some reflection on Václav Havel’s life and his social and political work. “In the Seventies, when Havel was still a relatively unknown Czech dissident writer, Keane played a crucial role in making him known in the West: he organised the publication of Havel’s political texts and became a friend with Havel. He also did much to resuscitate Havel’s notion of „civil society‟ as the site of resistance to Late Socialist regimes. Despite this personal connection, Keane’s book is far from hagiography – he gives us the „real Havel’ with all his weaknesses and idiosyncrasies.”136 As always the angel of view and partiality of these reflections might be questionable. We must admit that author in this book is providing us with extensive summaries of Havel’s plays, but starting with Letters to Olga and The Power of the Powerless author is not considering Havel as a philosopher, nor he is making some systematically analyses of the development of Havel’s thought. I find it pointless, that at some parts of the book, the author is talking more about Havel’s health problems, physical appearance and relationships with women than about his philosophical aspects.

Reading this book I have been able to perceive some quite intriguing details about Havel’s life, for example Havel in his early life was affected by the ambitions and the military and diplomatic machinations of Hitler and others, which is in contradiction with his later pacifist and humanitarian activities. Young Václav was supposed to have easy life and bright future, his parents were wealthy and upper class citizens and part of cultural elite, the owners of the famous Barrandov cinema studios, so basically he was “bourgeois origins”.137 But under the Nazi rule during

135 KEANE, John. Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, Basic Books, New York 2000.

136 ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, review on book: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Bloomsbury, September 1999.

137 ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, review on book: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Bloomsbury, September 1999.

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the Second World War, Czechoslovakia has become a killing field, where moral, culture and ethical restrictions were not in any interest to the rulers. Young Havel and his family suffered much in a variety of ways. Finally when end of war came it did not bring any relief; on the contrary. Actually, just before Václav Havel reached the age of eleven, the Communists assumed the power in Czechoslovakia, the power against more or less he will oppose over the next 40 years.

In his early youth Havel showed interest in social science, he became particularly interested in literature, philosophy, and a bit later in theatre. As mentioned before there were some family friends whose conversations with Václav kept him in touch and lively interested in doctrine, but basically his mother took responsibility for his education. Important to stress might be, special interest in a remarkable circle of literary friends and acquaintances, which have drawn together in 1952 by Havel and his mother called the Thirty-Sixers, reason for this name was because great majority of them were born in the year 1936, the group on their meetings usually discussed a wide range of literary, art and other subjects. Grain sown in those years has culminated in the relationship between Havel and art, as a playwright and his role as a dissident, in later years to come. His plays often deal with themes of depersonalization and the failure of language, most probably frustration and the experience which Havel encountered and accumulated during his upbringing as rejected from society.

Later years of imprisonment, letters from prison that he wrote to his first wife Olga, and all other wounds will leave scars on his body, soul and health. Death of Olga and his controversial second marriage, his serious health problems, and his personal flaws and misjudgements, are events in Havel’s life story, which have influence and shape him as writer, as well. It is an indisputable fact that during those years when he felt the worst in life, those were his most productive years in creating works of drama, from 1960 until 1988, and then followed a huge break until 2007 when he wrote his last play. In that period of almost ten years break he did write several books indeed, he was preoccupied with the philosophical and political activities. Evil tongues even say, and it is offering us some less academic basis for discussion, that “when he was released from jail in 1977, he spent his first weeks of freedom with a mistress”,138 but I would say that this is dangerous obliquities and wrong way to observe Havel’s life and his work.

138 ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, review on book: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Bloomsbury, September 1999.

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To clarify things, Václav Havel is one of the indisputable political and moral phenomenon and heroes of the 20th century. A respectable, highly regarded and influential playwright in Czechoslovakia, he was the most prominent dissident leader in his country, one of most active and known around the world, from the late 1960s until the Velvet Revolution he continuously opposed to Communist government. Form 1989 since he started to serve as the elected president of Czechoslovakia, it will turn out to be that he was last president, and later, the Czech Republic, as first president. During the years of his resistance, harassment and imprisonment by the Communist regime, but later in his role of political figure and humanitarian activist, Havel has written several of the most expressive and perceptive essays about character of totalitarianism, indispensable role of citizens in a democracy and civil society.

Václav Havel’s Contributions:

There are several essential moments in his life, which are world recognized about Havel, just to mention some chronologically, one of the most enlightening most probably is his close identification with the Charter 77, a petition signed by Czech intellectuals concerning with the importance of civic and human rights. Initiated in early 1977 by group of unsatisfied intellectuals, it pointed out to the inconsistency between law and reality in socialist Czechoslovakia at that time. Havel himself wrote the first draft, was leading spokesman, and later on was deeply involved in all activities and in the final product. The second event might be Havel’s famous essay, The Power of the Powerless. In its core “it proposes that under any circumstances the downtrodden always contain within themselves the power to remedy their own continuing subordination.”139 Than Velvet Revolution and finally most recently his activity as President, is in eyes of ordinary world population overshadowed all his previous activities, and to whom unfortunately he is only known by.

In addition to his political career Havel will surely be remembered in theatrical history as well. Judging by certain theorists his dramatic works are much greater importance than his political achievements. “Havel the dramatist, like Havel the politician, - as we are finding out –does not see the main task as consisting in holding merely the mirror up to nature, not even a convex one. The aim is to enter the world creatively through theatre.”140 Nevertheless, concerning Havel

139 KEANE, John. Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, Basic Books, New York 2000.

140 SRBA, Bořivoj. Václav Havel – Dramatist, book edited by FUKAČ, Jiří., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, Zdenka., MIZEROVÁ, Alena. Václav Havel as a dramatist, Brno: Compostela Group of Universities, 2001, 38 p.

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clearly we might assume that without metaphorical occurrences and distended characters in Havel’s plays, he might be at the risk to be perceived as banal. This is a possibility common for too many of his plays - how else to picture story of individual heroism, under the embrace of the totalitarian state, without falling into self-glorification or melodramatic postures. Havel plays are usually characterized as the mixture of scary perceptions, jolting lines, flashes of wit and a glut of absurdist borrowings, especially from Beckett, and references to Orwell and Kafka. But because the playwright is Václav Havel, the former President, associations take on resonance weightier than his plays can bear, or maybe not earned good reviews, in the other hand.

―Havel also discerned the fraudulence of what I would call the „interpassive socialism‟ of the Western academic Left. These leftists aren‟t interested in activity – merely in „authentic‟ experience. They allow themselves to pursue their well-paid academic careers in the West, while using the idealised Other (Cuba, Nicaragua, Tito’s Yugoslavia) as the stuff of their ideological dreams: they dream through the Other, but turn their backs on it if it disturbs their complacency by abandoning socialism and opting for liberal capitalism. What is of special interest here is the lack of understanding between the Western Left and dissidents such as Havel. In the eyes of the Western Left, Eastern dissidents were too naive in their belief in liberal democracy – in rejecting socialism, they threw out the baby with the bath water. In the eyes of the dissidents, the Western Left played patronising games with them, disavowing the true harshness of totalitarianism. The idea that the dissidents were somehow guilty for not seizing the unique opportunity provided by the disintegration of socialism to invent an authentic alternative to capitalism was pure hypocrisy.”141

As the victim of previous political regime it was to be expected when once Havel comes to power, he would be a perfect candidate and the person with knowledge of how to bring country out from the “hell of communism” into the new social and political order - capitalism. In the beginning of his active political involvement we could recognize such motivation. For example at the 1989 during round-table talks, we could see Havel manoeuvring (sometimes skilfully, sometimes not) with the authorities when he was at within an inch to reach power. In cases than Havel had promised to step down from the presidency after the first free elections and allow Alexander Dubcek to seek the office if he loses. This gives himself an escape route to “carefully

141 ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, review on book: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Bloomsbury, September 1999.

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planned a nebulously worded declaration of sympathy for the idea that, sometime in the future, a Slovak might become president”.142

The potential defeat and not acceptance of the president‟s proposals exposed all possible limitations of his power as president, in the very start of a political career – political atmosphere dominated by different parties and the lack of ability of the parliament to agree concerning any significant constitutional change in degraded political system, led to inevitable separation. Matter a fact Havel reminded the federal assembly that “we all look forwards to a new Czechoslovak constitution and to the constitutions of our two national republics”.143 Václav Havel as President and political figure attracted much attention by his acts, from important state decisions, to the details from everyday life: “As President he uses a child‟s scooter to zoom along the corridors of the huge Presidential palace. (…) Havel himself has been shocked by the swiftness of the transformation – a TV camera famously caught his look of disbelief as he sat down to his first official dinner as President.”144 Analysts and Czech citizens have opposing views and impressions of how well Havel has managed in role of President. “Keane highlights the limitations of Havel’s political project, and the Havel he describes is sometimes remarkably naive, as when, in January 1990, he greeted Chancellor Kohl with the words: „Why don‟t we work together to dissolve all political parties? Why don‟t we set up just one big party, the Party of Europe?‟ There is a nice symmetry in the two Václavs who have dominated Czech politics in the past decade: the charismatic Philosopher-King, the head of a democratic monarchy, finding an appropriate double in Václav Klaus, his Prime Minister, the cold technocratic advocate of full market liberalism who dismisses any talk of solidarity and community.”145 The relationship between two Václavs is yet one more never inexhaustible and always intriguing topic, but and never resolved one.

In political context the intriguing is the twist in history that followed – in the 60s and 70s former Yugoslavia was role model for all other communist countries in the Eastern Bloc, for example for countries like Czechoslovakia, but in twist of history Czech Republic and Slovakia

142 KEANE, John. Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, Basic Books, New York 2000.

143 KEANE, John. Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, Basic Books, New York 2000.

144 ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, review on book: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Bloomsbury, September 1999.

145 ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, review on book: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Bloomsbury, September 1999.

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have become in the end of 20th century a role model, or an example to follow in democratization for all Balkan countries, particular an example of peaceful separation, unlike the bloody conflict that Balkan countries have went through in the process of separation.

Discussing about all spheres of Havel’s activities we cannot ignore philosophical as well, his work The Power of the Powerless is one his most influential works in sphere that he is dealing with in that particular book. “I know that certain universities in the United States have included it in anthologies of western philosophy, so you have Plato on one end and you have Havel on the other. It‟s a very important work because it‟s actually a manual of revolution or revolt against the Communist system”146 by some even described as actually a manual of revolution or revolt against the Communist system. We might, of course argue that Havel is not professional or qualified philosopher, that life made him such, he is rather an intellectual in that sense of the word, “You know, he depended very much on the advice he got from professional philosophers like Jan Patoĉka and some of his more intellectual friends. But he‟s not a philosopher per se, and he‟d be the first person to admit it.”147

Václav Havel in Bosnia and Herzegovina:

Regarding Bosnian theatres and their intention to set Havel’s plays, my impression was that they did it just for trendy reasons, there were not any deeper socio-political motivations and intentions for staging Havel’s works. Theatres in the Bosnia and Herzegovina even then, especially today in particularly very difficult social and political reality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have not found their identity and appropriate corrective role in disturbed society, but they are also wandering in their creating of repertoire policies.

Earlier I have mentioned the fact that all of actors involved in staging Havel’s plays in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been educated in the field of acting on the Stanislavsky’s Method, in terms of genre, these two styles are not exactly compatible, Stanislavsky and Havel, so with that

146 WILSON, Paul. Paul Wilson Discusses His Translation of Vaclav Havel’s Book “To the Castle and Back”, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 17th May 2007. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

147 WILSON, Paul. Paul Wilson Discusses His Translation of Vaclav Havel’s Book “To the Castle and Back”, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 17th May 2007. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

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acting style it is interesting how much they were able to bring Havel’s ideas on stage and the ability to build specific Havelian characters. Of course, Stanislavsky’s Method is primary, but not the only style of acting that is taught and practiced, some actors have abilities to make a step away from Stanislavsky and use other means of acting, in my knowledge such actors would primary be Zijah Sokolović, Admir Glamoĉak and Izudin Bajrović. All of them have possibility of using different means and techniques of acting; they are managing well primarily in the comic, sarcastic, grotesque plays. I guess that was the motive for directors of these performances for choosing these actors for the leading roles in their productions.

Four plays that are primarily in sphere of my interests are staged in quite different time periods, cultural and social contexts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Zenica staging from 1981 and the Chamber Theatre 55 from 1987 are done during regime of Socialists and Communists and it was primarily done following the example of theatrical repertoires of the theatres from Belgrade and Zagreb, and the goal was to show “liberality of those days Yugoslav regime”; Tuzla staging was done just before the Bosnian war in 1991, but I would not assume that it had any deeper social context; and finally 1995 the Chamber Theatre 55 staging was done nearly before the end of the war, done due fact that Havel during Bosnian war was on side on pro Bosnian activist, actively defending Bosnians right for independence and defence and condemning aggression of Serbia and Montenegro, so it was logical to produce one of his plays as song of appreciation, and it was from production point of view, also a cheap project.

These plays have little ground for comparison, first two are done as serious repertoire project, third was rather just a student project, and the last was done in times when there was not elementary conditions for setting performance, rather as a song of resistance, defiance and patriotism.

“This, then, is Havel’s tragedy: his authentic ethical stance has become a moralising idiom cynically appropriated by the knaves of capitalism. His heroic insistence on doing the impossible (opposing the seemingly invincible Communist regime) has ended up serving those who „realistically‟ argue that any real change in today‟s world is impossible. This reversal is not a betrayal of his original ethical stance, but is inherent in it. The ultimate lesson of Havel’s tragedy is thus a cruel,

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but inexorable one: the direct ethical foundation of politics sooner or later turns into its own comic caricature, adopting the very cynicism it originally opposed.”148

One of comments on my work was that I based it on secondary sources, but matter a fact my intention was beside primary sources and founded, or canonised, perception of Havel to find new view and approach, to bring some fresh ideas and thoughts about Havel and his work.

After reviewing and analyzing most available facts about someone‟s life, and therefore we immediately suspect that in that sudden epiphany of intoxication lies the basic mystery and simple answer about someone‟s life, his artworks, and all of sudden that mystery will be unfold in front of our eyes. But, unfortunately, we are mistaken, in many other books, or even in these lines, we will not find simple answers about one meaningful, fulfilling and complicated life and works such as Václav Havel’s.

148 ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism, review on book: Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane, Bloomsbury, September 1999.

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9. Biography of Václav Havel149

*5. 10. 1936 Prague Writer and Dramatist; One of the first Spokesmen for Charter 77; Leading Figure of the Velvet Revolution of 1989; Last President of Czechoslovakia; and First President of the Czech Republic.

Václav Havel was born on 5th October 1936 in Prague. He was raised in a well-known entrepreneurial and intellectual family, with close ties to cultural and political events in Czechoslovakia from the 1920s to the 1940s. Because of these links the communists did not allow Havel to study formally after having completed required schooling in 1951. In the first part of the 1950s, at a young age, Václav Havel entered into a four-year apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant and simultaneously took evening classes to complete his secondary education (which he did in 1954). For political reasons he was not accepted into any post-secondary school with a humanities programme; therefore, he opted to study at the Faculty of Economics of the Czech Technical University. He dropped out of this programme after two years.

The intellectual tradition of his family compelled Václav Havel to pursue the humanitarian values of the Czech culture, which were harshly suppressed in the 1950s. Following his return from two years of military service, he worked as a stage technician - first at Divadlo ABC, and then, in 1960, at Divadlo Na zabradli. From 1962 to 1966, he studied Drama by correspondence at the Faculty of Theatre of the Academy of Musical Arts, and completed his studies with a commentary on the play Eduard, which became the basis of his own The Increased Difficulty of Concentration.

From the age of twenty, Václav Havel published a number of studies and articles in various literary and theatrical periodicals. His first works were presented at the Divadlo Na zabradli; amongst these was the play The Garden Party (1963). It soon became a component of the revivalist tendencies of Czechoslovak society in the 1960s. This civic self-awareness culminated in the historic Prague Spring of 1968. During this time Havel not only produced other plays, such as The Memorandum (1965) and The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968), but was also the chair of

149 Quoted from the official Václav Havel’s web site, and registered as his official biography. URL: , viewed: 25/04/2011.

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the Club of Independent Writers and a member of the Club of [Politically] Engaged Non-Partisans. From 1965, he worked at the non-Marxist monthly Tvař.

Václav Havel was a leading figure of the Velvet Revolution of 1989. He was the last President of Czechoslovakia and the First President of the Czech Republic. Certainly he was one of the leaders and creators of the political atmosphere in Czechoslovakia, and later on in the world as well.

This can be said about dramas authored by Havel. A convincing illustration is the development of the way in which The Garden Party (1963), the first of Havel’s important dramatic works, has been perceived. Those who witnessed the first performances of the work will undoubtedly agree that at the time of its early staging‟s the play was understood as a work of contemporary ―political theatre‖, a work created in the context of a nascent political satire directed against the Czechoslovak establishment. The ―garden party‖ of the play was a metaphor for life in the country under the totalitarian oppression, and in the representatives of so-called ―Inaugural Service‖ and ―Liquidation Office‖ we saw the caricatures of the political scene, while in the organizational mechanisms of such “parties” the audience identified many features typical for the running of a bureaucratic political regime.

But something strange happened. Unlike a variety of similarly conceived works of other authors, The Garden Party has lost over time much of that which characterized it as a topically satirical work. The way it is perceived has been subject to gradual change, and it is now viewed as a quite different kind of drama.

The staging of the second of Havel’s important works of the time – The Memorandum – contributed to a new understanding of The Garden Party as a work which should not simply be ranked by its contemporary context among works of political theatre: the reality began to emerge that it was indeed a work of a totally different type. In The Memorandum, Havel pays close attention to the way people speak and the actions that this manner of speaking provokes in them, but – though he places countless clichés in utterances of his characters – he is not content merely to discredit the cliché as a means of communication which completely losses its utterance potential in a totalitarian society. He moreover identifies the widespread inability of his contemporaries to communicate with each other, the causes of which are profound ones. Havel expresses in metaphor the conviction that the language of a contemporary society, namely a totalitarian one, which bereaves the community of natural human values, loses its communicative ability as a 87 | P a g e

consequence of all the mechanized processes of life. The play depicts the efforts of a centralized and non-democratic state apparatus to replace a living human language with an artificial language called Ptydepe, thereby eliminating the possibility of real human communication.

In The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, Havel develops the mentioned inner subject to the full. At first sight, this play seems also to possess certain features of a political play. The entire play seems a parody on stories depicting the rise and fall of regime intellectuals. Dr. Eduard Huml is at the centre of the story, an academic in a state-funded institute for the construction of human happiness, i.e. of a “happy” and “better” future for humankind. This co-organizer of the regime‟s future games‟, who is supposed to be familiar with all aspects of a “happy” life, appears to us as a person totally parched of humanity and lacking in substance, a man stripped of human individuality who is not able to be happy himself and who is even less able to provide other people with the illusion of happiness. The result is that the protagonist himself takes on the character of a human cliché.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Havel’s dramatic work became – in connection with his activities as a dissident – distinctly political, earning appreciation as an open protest against the “Normalization” oppression of the police and the bureaucratic apparatus to which Czechoslovak society was subjected after the incursion by the armies of the “Socialist Camp” into Czechoslovakia. Oppression was imposed by representatives of a foreign occupying power and those who co-operated at local level helped bring about a further, and at this time a full-scale destruction of human relations within this society. This new development in the dramatic work of Václav Havel can be seen in particular in the plays Audience (1975), Private View (1975) and Largo Desolato (1984).

A special, independent part of Havel’s dramatic work – the third period in his development – comprises plays which use certain motifs from classical dramatic literature. These plays set against these classical dramas and related to then by parodic confrontation, give expression to some of the outlining themes of Havel’s work once more; this time even more suggestively than the plays he based on original themes. In particular these are the themes of getting by furthering one‟s career through reaching compromises with the establishment, on snitching, on servility, buying one‟s own security with various libations, etc.

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This period of Havel’s work, including a successful adaptation of Gay’s play, The Beggar’s Opera (1972), culminates in Temptation (1985), one of the best dramatic works Havel has written.

Václav Havel is an excellent example of the Czech effort to create works of drama that could be considered specifically Czech, but which also represent a European parallel to the creative efforts of the existential theatre of the absurd of Havel’s contemporaries, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter and Edward Albee.

In 1956, he became acquainted with Olga Splichalova, and their diverse family backgrounds attracted them to each other. After an eight-year acquaintance, they married. From that point on, Olga would accompany Václav through the most difficult experiences of their lives. The future President would later refer to her as his indispensable source of support.

Since he left the Office of the President of the Czech Republic on 2nd February 2003, he has focused his activities on the respect of human rights worldwide, particularly in Cuba, Belarus and Burma, as well as on his literary work. As a co-founder of the Dagmar and Václav Havel Foundation Vize 97, he has supported humanitarian, health and educational projects.

For his literary and dramatic works, for his lifelong efforts and opinions, and for his position on the upholding of human rights, Václav Havel is the recipient of a number of state decorations, international awards and honorary doctorates. Recently he directed a film based on his play Leaving, which premiered on 22nd March 2011 in Prague.

Works: Collections of poetry Ĉtyři rané básně Záchvěvy I & II, 1954 První úpisy, 1955 Prostory a ĉasy (poesie), 1956 Na okraji jara (cyklus básní), 1956 Anticodes, (Antikódy)

Plays: Motormorphosis 1960 89 | P a g e

An Evening with the Family, 1960, (Rodinný veĉer) The Garden Party (Zahradní slavnost), 1963 The Memorandum, 1965, (Vyrozumění) The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, 1968, (Ztíţená moţnost soustředění) Butterfly on the Antenna, 1968, (Motýl na anténě) Guardian Angel, 1968, (Stráţný anděl) Conspirators, 1971, (Spiklenci) The Beggar‟s Opera, 1975, (Ţebrácká opera) Unveiling, 1975, (Vernisáţ) Audience, 1975, (Audience) - a Vaněk play Mountain Hotel 1976, (Horský hotel) Protest, 1978, (Protest) - a Vaněk play Mistake, 1983, (Chyba) - a Vaněk play Largo Desolato 1984, (Largo desolato) Temptation, 1985, (Pokoušení) Redevelopment, 1987, (Asanace) Tomorrow, 1988, (Zítra to spustíme) Leaving (Odcházení), 2007

Non-fiction: The Power of the Powerless (1985) [Includes 1978 titular essay.] Living in Truth (1986) Letters to Olga (Dopisy Olze) (1988) Disturbing the Peace (1991) Open Letters (1991) Summer Meditations (1992/93) Towards a Civil Society (Letní přemítání) (1994) The Art of the Impossible (1998) To the Castle and Back (2007)

Movie: Leaving (Odcházení), 2010/2011 Václav Havel directed movie based on his play Leaving.

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10. Annex

(Photo No. 1: Václav Havel by Vint Lawrence.)

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Title of Play English Bosnian/ Czech Theatre Date of Serbian/Croat Premiere

Audience Audijencija Audience The Bosn. Nat. 28th Theatre Zenica December 1981. Largo Desolato Largo desolato Largo desolato The Chamber 20th February Theatre 55 1987.

Unveiling or Private Vernisaţ Vernisáţ The National 5th March View Theatre Tuzla 1991.

Audience and Audijencija i Audience a The Chamber 25th Unveiling or Private Vernisaţ Vernisáţ Theatre 55 September View 1995.

(Table of Václav Havel’s plays set in Bosnia and Herzegovina)

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Audience, the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, 28th December 1981:

Cast: Sládek - Boško Marić, Vaněk - Mugdim Avdagić, Translation: Renata Ulmanski, Directed by: Zoran Ristović, Lector: Milorad Telebak, Stage Designer: Radovan Marušić, Costume: Vesna Karaus-Suljić, Music: Emil Jekauc, Stage Manager: Zoran Glogovac, Semir Hadţimujagić, Light: Mirnes Kamenĉić, Hazim Palkić, Tone: Javorko Bogiĉević, Ismail Jašar, Vojislav Manojlović, Make-up and hair style: Emila Malkić, Jovanka Nikolić, Making costumes: Ajša Buro, Mehmedalija Ejubović, Wardrobes: Sead Arnautović, Making decorations: Ahmed Vojvodić, Season 1981/82. Production: the Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, premiere was on 28th and 29th December 1981.

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(Photo No. 2: Sketch of stage setting for play Audience by Václav Havel in Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, season 1981/82.)

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(Photo No. 3: Boško Marić as Sládek and Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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(Photo No. 4: Boško Marić as Sládek, Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk, director Zoran Ristović and some technical personnel, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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(Photo No. 5: (left) Boško Marić as Sládek and (right) Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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(Photo No. 6: (left) Boško Marić as Sládek and (right) Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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(Photo No. 7: (left) Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk and (right) Boško Marić as Sládek, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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(Photo No. 8: (right) Boško Marić as Sládek and (left) Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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(Photo No. 9: (right) Boško Marić as (left) Sládek and Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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(Photo No. 10: (in front) Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk and (in back) Boško Marić as Sládek, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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(Photo No. 11: (left) Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk and (right) Boško Marić as Sládek, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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(Photo No. 12: (left, standing) Mugdim Avdagić as Vaněk and (right, sitting) Boško Marić as Sládek, Audience by Václav Havel, Bosnian National Theatre in Zenica, premiered on 28th and 29th December 1981.)

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Largo Desolato, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 20th February 1987:

Cast: Leopold Nettles (Kopřiva) - Zijah Sokolović, Suzana - Dara Stojiljković, Lucy - Emina Muftić, Edward - Faruk Sofić, I. Sidney I. Chap - Hranislav Hrašić, II. Sidney II. Chap - Aleksandar Vojtov, Marguerite - Irina Dobnik, Translation: Aleksandar Ilić, Directed by: Egon Savin, Stage Designer: Miroslav Bilać, Costume: Ozrenka Mujezinović, Music: Gustav Mahler, Adagietto, Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor, Stage Manager: Rada Jagliĉić, Production Designer: Branko Guzina, Light: Edin Hajdarević, Rešad Arifhodţić, Tone: Rešad Arifhodţić, Make-up and hair style: Tomislav Markunović, Making costumes: Zulfo Dţinalija (Youth Theatre workshop), Wardrobes: Ramiza Sarić, Making decorations: Boţidar Jagliĉić, Production: The Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 20th February 1987.

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(Photo No. 13: Jurislav Korenić.)

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(Photo No. 14 and 15: press-clipping, newspaper Oslobođenje from 1955.)

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(Photo No. 16: Egon Savin, approximately year 1987.)

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(Photo No. 17: Egon Savin, today.)

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(Photo No. 18: Promoting materials for the play in the Chamber Theatre 55, and interview with Egon Savin.)

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Unveiling, the National Theatre Tuzla, 5th March 1991:

Cast: Michael - Zoran Tešić, Vera - Selma Alispahić, Ferdinand - Dragan Dţankić, Translation: Aleksandar Ilić, Directed by: Mirhad Hadi Kurić, Production Designer: Ervin Pleše, Costume: Ervin Pleše, Music: Zlatan Mujkić, Stage Manager: Vesna Kolak, Light: Semir Ramić, Tone: Nermina Agić, Prompter: Izeta Deveţić, Make-up: Finka Zoranović, Making costumes: Mirsada Devoli, Props: Mevlija Kasumović, Wardrobes: Halima Sadiković and Mirsada Devoli, Making decorations: Ćazim Mandţić and Todor Cvijanović, Stage technique: Almir Salihović, Huso Terzić and Senaid Subašić, Season 1990/91. Coproduction with the Academy of Performing Arts Sarajevo and National Theatre Tuzla. Premiere was on 5th March 1991.

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(Photo No. 19: The building in which was founded National Theatre Tuzla, previously premises of Coliseum cinema.)

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(Photo No. 20: Illustration of the building of the National Theatre Tuzla.)

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(Photo No. 21: Radoslav Zoranović.)

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(Photo No. 22: Selma Alispahić (Vera), Zoran Tešić (Michael), Dragan Dţankić (Ferdinand) sitting.)

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Audience and Unveiling, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 25th September 1995:

Cast: Audience Sládek - Admir Glamoĉak, Vaněk - Izudin Bajrović, Unveiling Vera - Emina Muftić, Michael - Dragan Marinković, Vaněk - Izudin Bajrović, Translation: Aleksandar Ilić, Directed by: Admir Glamoĉak, Production Designer: Osman Arslanagić, Costume: Amela Vilić, Stage Manager: Petar Kenjić, Light: Ermin Mujezinovć, Tone: Edo Hajdarević, Make-up: Tomica Markunović, Making costumes: Zulfo Dţinalija, Wardrobes: Ramiza Sarić, Making decorations: Boţo Jagliĉić and Husein Mazrak, Stage technique: Dino Bartus, Sreto Mihaljĉić, Namik Muzaferović, Silvester Bajkuša and Velimir Vojinović, Executive Producer: Gradimir Gojer, Production: The Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, September, 1995.

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(Photo No. 23: Admir Glamoĉak as Sládek in Audience and Unveiling, the Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo, 25th September 1995.)

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(Photo No. 24 and 25: Affirmation materials for the premiere of play)

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11. References

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DŢAFIĆ, Hasan. Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, Zenica: Writers‟ Association of Zenica- Doboj Canton, 2002, 494 pp.: Photo, fax., 25 cm; Bosnian National Theatre Zenica - 1950-2000 - Anniversaries; Theatre - Zenica; monographic publications, textual materials, prints.

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Other Sources: The Chamber Theatre 55 1955-1995, exhibition on the occasion of 40 years of activity, MAK Gallery, 11.12. - 25.12. 1995. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Museum of Literature, 1995; 1 poster in colour, 32 x 68 cm; Bosnia and Herzegovina - Theatre - 1955-1995 - Posters; monographic publications, two-dimensional graphics (photos, sketches).

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Naša Rijeĉ - theatre magazine for stage arts, Zenica: Bosnian Theatre Zenica. Date: 4th and 28th July 1981.

Avaz150 - is a daily newspaper in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is published in Sarajevo.

Oslobođenje151 - is a daily newspaper in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is published in Sarajevo.

Front Slobode152 – is a daily newspaper in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is published in Tuzla.

The New Republic - (TNR) is an American magazine of politics and the arts published continuously since 1914, Washington, D.C., United States.

Electronic Sources:153 URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: URL:

150 Unofficial: Daily Voice.

151 Unofficial: Liberation.

152 Unofficial: Freedom Front.

153 All sources last time viewed on 25th April 2011.

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URL: URL: URL: URL: URL: .

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