Theatre and Performance as a means of survival and resistance during the Siege of Sarajevo

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Theatre and Performance as a means of survival and resistance during the

Siege of Sarajevo

If a society is ruled by violence and decay, the artist must defend with ferocity, with teeth, the preservation of our more compassionate nature. Kindness, generosity,

tenderness and beauty must be held up as reminders to an audience more than ready to let nihilism and its attendant seductive gestures hold sway. The responsible artist seeks to

illuminate and remind the witness through a presentation of kindness stripped to its core.1

The Siege of Sarajevo 1992- 1995 was the longest recorded in modern history,

one in which Robert Donia explains ‘nearly every Sarajevan became part of an epic

struggle to preserve a treasured way of life’.2 This treasured way of life was threatened by

Bosnian Serb nationalists who surrounded the city, cut off all electricity, water and food

supplies and ‘resurrected the medieval siege in the service of modern nationalism’.3 The

violent and unforgiving attack on Sarajevo’s once multi-ethnic and religiously plural

culture was all in the name of an imagined plight; that of the aggressor’s concept of a

greater Serbian nation which originally inhabited the land. The irony of the attack on not

only Muslim and Croat, but also Serbian people was in its utilisation of religion. The

conflict in Yugoslavia marked a turning point in attitudes to that which was important in

normal life, and that which was a basic human instinct. Prior to the war, Sarajevo had

been famous for being a multi-ethnic and cultural hub, a rare place in the former

Yugoslav Republic where all three of the major religious/ ethnic groups lived in

harmony. Theatre and performance proved themselves to be highly withstanding in the

battle for normality. When nothing else was left, no water, food or electricity and a test

on humanity was failing, art remained.

CHAPTER ONE- THEATRE WITHIN THE SIEGE OF SARAJEVO

The Siege of Sarajevo began in April 1992, as Serbian criminals surrounded the

1 Caridad Svich Theatre in crisis? Living memory in an unstable time in Theatre in Crisis? Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 16 2 Robert J. Donia Sarajevo- A Biography (London: Hurst and Company, 2006) p. 287 3 Ibid., p 289

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city with heavy artillery and trapped its citizens within its confines. James Thompson

stated that ‘The people and places of war demand responses that are specific, multiple

and interconnected. Cultural practices that rise to the challenges spreading web-like from

these moments are different and interdependent’.4 Indeed, the siege of Sarajevo prompted

an immediate cultural reaction from its citizens, many of whom jumped at a chance to

work in such a torrid time. During the siege, the most important functioning theatre

companies were the Kamerni Teatar and SARTR, both located in the centre of the city in

theatres which were once artistic hubs. As Thompson’s quote outlines, there was

inevitably a dividing line between those involved in theatrical and performative

endeavours in this time; namely, in the form of their work. There were those who wanted

an out right physical protest against the horrors inflicted upon them, and those who

wanted to take a more personal and analytical approach to what they were experiencing.

However, despite differences in form, the aims of resistance, escapism and urgency to

continue life with a certain normality were prevalent in all. Thompson’s statement that

‘In a period of chaotic and frequently appalling violence, there is a desperate search for

structure’5 is very relevant; art was one of the remaining forms in which people could

occupy themselves in a structured manner, and feel as if they were healing their traumatic

burden of the situation. A focus on the most predominant productions, Hair: Sarajevo AD

19926, Bomb Shelter7 and Greatest Hits of the Surrealists8 will highlight these differences

and the various ways in which the artists grasped the challenge they faced.

The Kamerni Teatar, located in the centre of the city was also in the centre of an

artistic uprising; in November 1992 the 1960’s protest musical Hair was revived with a

Sarajevan twist. Whereas the original was in retaliation to conscription during the

Vietnam War, Hair Sarajevo was current and specific to a conflict which was directly on

the Sarajevan’s doorsteps; even taking part was a terrible risk on their lives. Slavko

Pervan, the director, wanted to take this intense approach, ‘I had to protest, I was

4 James Thompson Digging up Stories- Applied Theatre, Performance and War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 239-40 5 Ibid., 38 6 From now on referred to as Hair Sarajevo 7 Author’s translation from original Bosnian Skloniste 8 Author’s translation from original Bosnian Top Lista Nadrealista

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besieged, I didn’t know how to fight, but what did I know? How to make theatre. Theatre

of resistance’.9 His choice of Hair was made carefully as he elaborates,

I thought it was ridiculous at first. Even during Peace [Hair] would be a difficult feat to tackle… I thought about it for a long time and realised that Hair was the real deal. Anti- war. We adapted the musical, so that it belonged to what was happening in Sarajevo…we were all really doing it out of the need to do something. That is the ultimate message of the piece. Protest. Staunch resistance to the people killing the city, for a reason I cannot to this day take seriously at all.10

Due to the impossible requirements of the production in a city without electricity, it was

adapted and shortened to fit its own cause. The love story was kept but rewritten, with

‘make love not war once again’11 as the ultimate message of the show.

The siege was a surprise to many, and Pervan goes further, ‘In that context, we

didn’t believe that war was actually going to happen, so that when it did, we had

nothing’.12 However, Hair was a spectacle, the set made from scraps and anything people

could lay their hands on, recycling parts of their previous lives to make do for the show,

using electricity generators to power a small band of musicians and performing in the day

for natural light.13 The limitations imposed on Pervan were huge in terms of casting the

show, ‘I began gathering those of us who stayed in Sarajevo. It is interesting that the best

artists, in all realms, are the ones who stayed’.14 To what extent this is the case is

questionable; perhaps the power of their decision to stay in the city heightened their

feeling of belonging to such a cause. It is indeed true that those who stayed threw

themselves into the spirit of the production, in order to make it as enjoyable and as alive

as possible. Perhaps Pervan means that the better artists were better people in the sense

that the loyalty they had towards their threatened city was resolute.

News of the show was certainly received, as The Kamerni Teater was bombed 9 Author’s interview conducted with Slavko Pervan 18/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 10 Author’s interview conducted with Slavko Pervan 18/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 11 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x86ljm_kosa-hair-sarajevo-part-1_creation 12 Interview conducted with Slavko Pervan 18/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 13 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x86ljm_kosa-hair-sarajevo-part-1_creation

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twice. Was this success in Pervan’s eyes? Yes, because it obviously provoked a reaction

from those it was aimed at, and such a reaction that the show was condemning. A

performer described ‘It is simply an example of what we can do, with those animals

shooting at us’.15 Indeed, as critic Gradimir Gojer postulates, ‘at the premier we all

dressed up, our best suits, some wore ties… everyone was dancing and the room fell into

a collective trance, one against evil. To beat that evil through art’.16 The notion that this

art was a spiritual force against the Serbian army may have been in itself an imagined

one, but its power to give people hope was more than real. Gojer’s comment defines the

urgent need people had for structure and normality; even in the siege they made an effort

to dress up and go to the theatre. People dressing up were doing so in order to pretend

that this was still an important thing to do. This pretence could be seen as a performance

in itself, thus raising the thought that performance was the crux to resistance and survival

in the City; performing rituals of normal life made people feel as if perhaps, for those

moments, the siege was not taking place.

Pervan seems reluctant in revealing what inspired his choice to put on a musical,

‘This might not bode well with everyone, but my inspiration was Partisan Theatre. They

would make theatre in the worst conditions…Partisan Theatre, we’re hungry, barefoot,

naked, but that’s what we have left; Soul’.17 The subject of the Partisans is somewhat of a

taboo in Bosnia today, and fear of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time is ever

present in a still reeling society, ‘You are recording me. You could send it off to the

police and I would be in trouble for telling the truth’.18 Looking back for inspiration to

such a group of people and also to the situation they had utilised theatre in - World War

Two - must have urged Pervan on even more. WWII was undoubtedly horrific, but to

have a modern day comparison and to be reminded at once of such an event would have

been a morale boost if nothing else; the Partisans prevailed in their fight against fascism.

Indeed, the ‘Soul’ which remained in Pervan’s inspiration certainly had nothing but a 14 Author’s interview conducted with Slavko Pervan, 18/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 15 Kosa (Hair) Sarajevo Part 1- http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x86ljm_kosa-hair-sarajevo-part-1_creation, author’s translation from Bosnian 16 Gradimir Gojer ‘Kamerni Teatar’ 55 1992-1995- Theatar pod Opsadom’ (Sarajevo, 1997), author’s translation from Bosnian 17 Author’s interview conducted with Slavko Pervan 18/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian

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positive effect on those involved, as Dusan Vranic described, ‘There aren’t that many

things in the war that take us back to normality, maybe when we drink coffee… Hair for

me is therapy, for the performers and for the spectators, everyone should come. As you

can see I am bald… so Hair for me is my hair’.19

The power of the production and it’s ability to act as an outlet for any emotions

the citizens of the besieged city were feeling was where its real power lay; during a

frustrating time, singing and dancing was a way to release, ‘Hair is a chance for me to

have a good sweat, I’ll lose about 2kg a day but it’s a chance to be with my friends and

have fun, that’s that’.20 Again, Pervan’s protest did not fall on deaf ears. Not only did the

Serbian criminals react, but the world media and any foreign visitors to the city would

attend the show, ‘because it was really an exciting event. We even had a world tour

organised, but of course we couldn’t get out’.21 The feeling of entrapment places another

angle when analysing the situation concerning Hair Sarajevo. The ultimate need for

people to psychologically escape a world where physical escape was not possible once

again deems theatre as a triumphant realm, one that remains when nothing else is

possible, as Pervan said finally, ‘Theatre then showed something that is very important to

me… a huge vitality’.22 It provided a sense of metaphysical freedom for those involved.

Because the public were experiencing the same horrors as the performers and

practitioners, theatre became an equal escape for both. However, actors felt that they had

a duty to the public, to ensure that their hunger, fear and the cold were forgotten during

performances. Admir Glamocak, an actor, expands, ‘You just performed… It would be

shameful to lie, to be false on stage, to lie to the public… we would all see the dead

bodies outside and we would enter the theatre together’.23 References to theatre as another

world are constant in accounts of the siege. To lie on stage was to not be as expressive 18 Author’s interview conducted with Slavko Pervan 18/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 19 Kosa (Hair) Sarajevo Part 1- http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x86ljm_kosa-hair-sarajevo-part-1_creation, author’s translation from Bosnian 20 Kosa (Hair) Sarajevo Part 1- http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x86ljm_kosa-hair-sarajevo-part-1_creation, author’s translation from Bosnian 21 Author’s interview conducted with Slavko Pervan 18/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 22 Author’s interview conducted with Slavko Pervan 18/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 23 Admir Glamocak in Teatar u Ratnom Sarajevu 1992-1995, Memories ed. Davor Diklic (Sarajevo; Zemun

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and honest with people’s emotions as was physically possible; the realms of acting would

cross into being. There was an ever present fear of what was outside the space in which

laughter and tears would be promoted, ‘We… nurtured a sort of acting without distance,

without barriers… I would call it authentic acting, almost like a documentary because of

its strength and expression’.24 Rather than a Brechtian breaking of the fourth wall, a

spiritual and highly emotive one would take place. Thompson asks, ‘When does the

theatre practise become implicated in the horrors of the situation it displays?’25 In this

case, theatre was a part of the horrors- it came out of helplessness and an artistic attempt

to define the suffering being caused.

2004) p. 96, author’s translation from Bosnian 24 Ibid., 97 25 James Thompson Digging up Stories- Applied Theatre, Performance and War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 25

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Hair Sarajevo was indeed a raucous and triumphant affair, but at the same time a

more analytical and surreal form of theatre was taking place, with the formation of

SARTR, a theatre company which still exists today. It is evident that their reaction to

events was intellectual and wanted to question human behaviour under such

circumstances; the very name of the theatre group, although an abbreviation for Sarajevo

War Theatre was inspired by the name of Jean Paul Sartre26, himself a political and

existentialist activist.27 SARTR produced numerous plays in this time but the first and

most important was The Shelter. In such a setting ‘two of the characters would be a

director and a dramaturg discussing the ethical questions surrounding theatre in war

time’28 as well as various archetypal characters found in bomb shelters of the time, such

as an elderly couple and a petty crook. Another more important character was Mina

Hausen, a compulsive liar and tale spinner, with a name play on Baron von

Münchhausen29. Thus the play, as well as being intellectually charged, had a good-

humoured nature to it, its aim being to bring out the ironic side of the situation and

therefore reveal truths about it.

The situation, the heavy bombing, snipers and risk of even attending rehearsals or

performances meant that the play was staged, just as its name, in a shelter; a basement

under the city’s youth theatre. The reality of the setting was compounded with the

grotesque style of performance as Safet Plakalo, the director explained, ‘from experience

we knew that in tragic circumstances there is no point in fermenting this tragedy, not in

terms of genre or style… grotesque for us meant a comic take on sadness’.30 With no film

documentation it is difficult to imagine the aesthetics of the play, but the rare symbiotic

relationship between the actors and audience would have no doubt had therapeutic

impact. Jasna Diklic who played Mina Hausen describes,

It may sound like a paradox, but that was my most creative and most important 26 Safet Plakalo SARTR 20 Godisnica (not yet published, draft upon request), author’s translation from Bosnian 27 Andrew Dobson Jean-Paul Sartre and the Politics of Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press 1993) p. 2 28 Author’s interview conducted with Safet Plakalo 17/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 29 Baron von M¸nchhausen was famous for his outrageous tall tales. 30 Author’s interview conducted with Safet Plakalo 17/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian

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period. We had everything we needed, true partnerships, love, imagination, bodies, fantasies, a heightened sense of being and artistic freedom. The public was with us and could not do without us. Our performance was for them an illusion of normality, because when an actor is performing these illusions are always present in reality; a public cannot always tell the difference between the two.31

The illusion of normality for an audience would not have concerned the subject matter;

rather the event of attending a play would have taken them back to pre-war life. Whether

or not the public could tell the difference between illusions and reality is perhaps

questionable, the plays they attended were a form of escapism. The question to ask is

whether they wanted to confront the trauma that was their reality within this escapism in

order to emotionally detach from it, or simply to escape, cry and laugh at the ridiculous

nature of The Shelter.

Carolyn Nordstrom gives light to the use of grotesque performance, ‘In telling the

story, civilian to civilian, the technique of terror is undermined. The grotesque becomes a

place of mourning and resistance’.32 In Sarajevo, some of the actors performing were also

soldiers, who would take time off from defending the city in order to perform in the

theatres. For them, theatre must have been more of a duty to themselves than an audience.

Their experiences from the front line would have fed into their performances, perhaps as

an escape, but they certainly would have been, as Thompson wondered, fully absorbed in

the horrors of the conflict. Nordstrom spent time in Mozambique where she gained

experience of this grotesque form of performance, ‘an act of oppression and the means of

resisting it… a way that ridiculed, and thus stigmatised, those who relied on such

barbarisms to effect political power’.33 In The Shelter, the characters of the play are

grotesque portrayals of civilians caught up in this barbaric world. Before every

performance, Diklic was given a list of anyone of significant status in the audience, be

they a foreign journalist, politician or artist, and would then improvise a monologue

directly to them, in their language- more often than not English. This was usually towards 31 Jasna Diklic in Teatar u Ratnom Sarajevu 1992-1995, Memories ed. Davor Diklic (Sarajevo; Zemun 2004) p 59, author’s translation from Bosnian 32 Carolyn Nordstrom A different kind of War Story (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1997) p.6

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the end of the play in order to make a specific plea for help. So, although most of the

action was for the citizens of Sarajevo and to ease their suffering, a direct cry for help

was imbedded within this.

Thus, the almost intellectual nature of the play, alongside the grotesque humour,

subsumed the irony of the plight of Sarajevo’s citizens in the need to survive. Black

humour is a famous characteristic of Sarajevo’s citizens, and they demonstrated this by

using it to resist depression and intimidation. The Greatest Hits of the Surrealists34 was

culmination of a group comedy sketches performed just before and during the war. They

used black comedy as a way of ridiculing the situation they were in. In one sketch they

hold races across the infamous ‘sniper alleys’. In another they mocked religious tensions

by staging an argument between Muslim and Serbian bin men, over a wall resembling the

Berlin Wall, built to divide the city according to religion. Comic news reports served to

undermine those who were bombing the city in a witty and powerful way. Their most

predominant theme of ridicule was religion, as it was under the guise of religion that the

siege was being held. The sketches are different to any live performances because they

have a lasting legacy; Sarajevans still watch them today. However, unlike theatrical

work, they were unable to touch audiences’ emotions so strongly, and have such a

therapeutic effect during the conflict. As Arthur Schopenhauer described, ‘the life of

every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant

features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the

characters of a comedy’.35 These comic elements of life were what The Surrealists were

able to pick up on so successfully, in order to shed light on the tragedy of their

circumstances.

The themes of ethnicity and religion are most powerful in the sketches, because of

the façade of religion over the Yugoslav conflict. However, these issues were not a main

focal point in theatre performances. Caridad Svich gives light to this, ‘Faith is an elusive

33 Ibid., p.156 34 From now on referred to as The Surrealists 35 Arthur Schopenhauer quotation alerted to author by David Toole in Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo (London: SCM Press, 2001) p. 19

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concept, but we cling to it, because it gives our lives meaning… even when we witness

acts of ‘ethnic cleansing’, industrial warfare, the proliferation of hate crimes and mass

suicide’.36 With these issues in mind, The Surrealists attempted to address the tension in a

controversial way, one that has proved problematic for outsiders to understand. Their

outlook was more analytical and demonstrated a desire to shed light on the ridiculous

nature of the war, not just in Sarajevo but the whole of Former Yugoslavia. It is

somewhat difficult to describe their humour, but a comparison to a very British comedy

troupe is perhaps the best way. As director Emir Kusturica recognises, ‘they were young

punks… but they were also surrealist comedians, with a show that owed a great deal to

Monty Python…In Sarajevo, in particular, irony and humour were seen as positive,

international attributes’.37 The intricacy in translating the complexities of the conflict, and

the deep running feud between the three ethnic groups, as well as the certain sense of

ironic Sarajevan black humour is one translation barrier that language cannot cross.

Although the legacy of the films has lasted longer than any theatrical events, they have

never been released to a wider audience. On the other hand, The Shelter, although no

longer performed, had a successful world tour in 1995, indicating the ability of Sarajevan

theatre to break boundaries of communication; something to be inspected in Chapter

Three.

Safet Plakalo, with his work on The Shelter, was also employing this ironic sense

of comedy. Alternatively, he was only looking at the ironic side of the play itself; the

discussion of whether it is ethically correct to make a play about a war whilst in the midst

of it was the basis of The Shelter; namely, whether theatre has a healing nature or

whether it would aggravate people further. Plakalo admitted, that through his experience,

his mind was changed completely, ‘In my final pre-war play I wrote a very sceptical line,

which was ‘Whoever heard of theatre ever curing anything?!’ and I think I then answered

my own question, I learnt the answer the hard way. I, now, have heard of theatre’s

36 Caridad Svich Theatre in crisis? Living memory in an unstable time in Theatre in Crisis? Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 15-16 37 Event Program, Barbican, 09/05/09- http://www.barbican.org.uk/media/events/84223588emirproglowres.pdf

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healing power’.38 Thus, not only was the public uplifted and given an inkling of hope,

strong opinions were changed, along with Plakalo dismissing his own earlier work. The

citizens of Sarajevo involved in any theatrical work did not seek to become heroes with

their actions; rather, they sought to escape from the every day brutality imposed on them,

in order to feel normal. The sense of ‘having’ to do something, the need to escape in

order to avoid insanity and depression proved theatre’s ultimate strength and importance

during this time of struggle. As a form of resistance, it did not halt the incessant attacks,

but it did resist their aim; to wipe out the city, reducing its people to ghosts without the

mental strength to stand up and defend their culture.

The citizens of Sarajevo were to some extent successful with their theatrical work,

as it provided an escape and distraction for performers and spectators alike. However,

their aim of resistance did not have the intended effect on the rest of the world. As a cry

for help, their voices were not heard; that is, media attention seemed focused on, as

expected, the atrocities of the war. Even these did not alert the world enough, as the siege

went on for much longer than is imaginable at the near dawn of the twenty-first century.

Crucially, there was a lack of need and/or choice of consumerist gain from these projects,

which ‘has infected the decision-making in both profit and non-profit sectors’39 in much

of Western theatre. This theatre was conceivably at its purest and palpable, perhaps

ironically it had the freedom to breathe in a trapped city; people sought theatre as a means

of healing as well as a means of escape with no want of monetary gain overshadowing it.

Svich asks ‘The citizen who is an artist during an unstable time has the weight of

responsibility on their shoulders… If the artist does not defend and advance sensibility in

an age of violence and concern, then what is the role of the artist?’.40 The role of the artist

here was that of any other; people continued to practise their professions, to continue life

as normal, and theatre artists certainly stepped up to the mark.

38 Author’s interview conducted with Safet Plakalo 17/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 39 Caridad Svich Theatre in crisis? Living memory in an unstable time in Theatre in Crisis? Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 19 40 Caridad Svich Theatre in crisis? Living memory in an unstable time in Theatre in Crisis? Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester

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CHAPTER TWO- FROM OUTSIDE, IN

Chapter One has highlighted the ultimate importance of not only theatre and

performance but also art during the siege of Sarajevo as a form of resistance against the

slow, demoralising destruction its people were facing. Thompson postulates, ‘Tough

questions should be asked about the ethics of practise… we have no way of knowing how

projects might create something worse than the tension I speak of here’.41 Perhaps the

something worse he refers to is a form of propaganda or brainwashing by one side against

the other. Plakalo asked these questions in his play, and found that the ethics of practise

did not apply to Sarajevo, at a time where something metaphysical was needed in order to

keep its citizens alive. In a siege, where there is an obvious aggressor, intent on

destroying more than one culture and its people, this culture must fight back, in the form

of art as well as shooting; namely, nothing worse could be created than what was already

happening, and art could only better the situation for those made to suffer. This was not a

conflict with two aggressors, thus there was no hint at propaganda against the Bosnian

Serb army attacking the city; their own violent actions were propaganda enough.

It is best to observe the besieged Sarajevo as a world or realm of its own. Chapter

One has focused on the work of the citizens of Sarajevo, those forced to remain there, be

it by their own will or the nature of the situation. It is time to ask whether their theatrical

work during the siege had a very different intent and meaning than that of those who

came into the city from the outside world. Using Foucault’s theory, Sarajevo could be

seen as a ‘synaptic regime of power’, as he furthers,

In thinking of power, I am thinking of its capillary existence, the point where power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourse, their learning processes and everyday lives… a regime of its exercise from within the social body, rather from above it. 42

University Press, 2002) p. 16 41 James Thompson Digging up Stories- Applied Theatre, Performance and War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 38 42 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Colin

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Sarajevo was cut off from the rest of the world, from basic living needs and from the

luxury of freedom, forcing its citizens to confront themselves. However, it is the question

of this freedom which is an interesting one. Although the freedom of the citizens to move

in and out, and indeed around the city, due to shelling and sniper fire was severely

limited, their artistic freedom was not. Due to the lack of jurisdiction and law in the city,

a far cry from the previous regime, artists themselves were in charge of what they could

and could not present. The citizens of Sarajevo did not have much, but in the four years

of the siege they did have time, and reason more than ever to perform. Was this the

reason that people travelled from outside of Sarajevo into the city, in order to stage

performances, concerts or exhibitions? What was it that provoked them to do so, and was

their art in vain?

Susan Sontag’s staging of Waiting for Godot is a very relevant and controversial

case study, one that has drawn more critical attention than any of the work mentioned in

Chapter One. Of course, Susan Sontag had the Western media at her service, and was

already a well regarded intellectual; her trips to Sarajevo caused attention before she even

thought of staging a play. Her comment on the situation in Bosnia highlights one of the

reasons she felt compelled to do it, If it [the war] seems unreal, it is because it’s both so appalling and apparently so unstoppable... Even people in Sarajevo sometimes say it seems to them unreal. They are in a state of shock... People ask me if Sarajevo ever seemed to me unreal while I was there. The truth is, since I’ve started going to Sarajevo... it seems the most real place in the world. 43

In Sontag’s view, Waiting for Godot was the perfect reflection of this reality, so much so

that she believed that the play was written about the siege.44 Surely her courage, in

returning to the city in order to help in the only way she believed she could, is something

to be admired? At first glance, this seems to be the only plausible reaction to such a

plight, however, when compared to the actions of those who were truly trapped inside the

siege, one begins to wonder whether the ethics of practise do indeed apply to Susan

Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980) p.39 43 Under Fire: Sontag http://www.tau.ac.il/arts/publications/ASSAPHTH11/AKSTENS.html 44 Susan Sontag ‘Godot Comes to Sarajevo’, New York Review of Books, October 1993, p.52

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Sontag’s work, and whether it was a case, as Thompson quotes from a journalist, of

‘fiddling while Rome burns?’.45

Her production aims were very different to those discussed in Chapter One, and

this is perhaps were the controversy surrounding them stems from. David Bradby

describes, ‘Avoiding the tendency to perform the play in muted style, she chose to

encourage performances that were ‘full of anguish, of immense sadness, and towards the

end, violence’.46 As has previously been discussed, the citizens of Sarajevo did not want

to portray immense sadness of anguish in theatres; they were already experiencing such

emotions, and theatre was a form of escapism. Thomas Akstens attempts to define

Sontag’s intentions,

I do not believe that Sontag means ‘realistic’ in a technical sense here - she is not talking about ‘realism’ as it refers to a style of performance characterized by verisimilitude of setting and prosaic dialogue. Rather than style, her repeated use of ‘realistic’, ‘real’ and ‘reality’ in her discussions of Godot and Sarajevo make reference to the empirical reality of the city beyond the bombed-out theatre lobby… In this context, Godot is ‘realistic’ to the extent that it is somehow like Sarajevo. 47

Thus, Sontag wanted to portray reality on stage, and felt Waiting for Godot was, in its

form, a reflection of it. It is difficult to specify exactly what Sontag meant by this ‘reality’

and how she believed a focus on it would help those citizens participating in the project.

Indeed, she attempted to involve as many as possible, by having three parallel and mixed

gender couples of Vladimir and Estragon on stage, in order for the couples to be

representative of humanity. Whether she was successful or not is difficult to gauge.

Perhaps it would be more useful to concentrate on the doing of it, as Bradby furthers, ‘the

significance of the production lay simply in the doing of it, not so much in the artistic

solutions chosen’.48 Indeed, her artistic decisions are the ones that have angered many,

but interestingly so, those angered were also from the outside world.

45 James Thompson Digging up Stories- Applied Theatre, Performance and War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p.5 46 David Bradby Waiting for Godot: Plays in Production (Cambridge University Press, 2001) p. 167 47 Under Fire: Sontag http://www.tau.ac.il/arts/publications/ASSAPHTH11/AKSTENS.html 48 David Bradby Waiting for Godot: Plays in Production (Cambridge University Press, 2001) p. 167

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Sontag’s most prolific contender was Jean Baudrillard, and in writing his article

No Reprieve for Sarajevo highlights some of the problems with Sontag’s intended

actions, ones that, he claims, she later admitted herself.

Susan Sontag herself confesses in her diaries that the Bosnians do not really believe in the suffering which surrounds them…It is hell, but hell of what may be termed a hyper-real kind, made even more hyper-real by the harassment of the media and the humanitarian agencies, because it renders the attitude of the world towards them even less unfathomable. These are not my words, by the way: they say it so. But then Susan Sontag, hailing herself from New York, must know better than them what reality is, since she has chosen them to incarnate it. Or maybe it is simply because reality is what she, and with her all the Western world, is lacking the most. 49

The lack of concrete action from the Western World in ending the siege remains one of

its greatest tragedies; the world seemingly looked on as it was allowed to take place. So,

Baudrillard poses a good question; who was Susan Sontag to tell the citizens of the city

what their ‘reality’ or ‘hyper-reality’ was? Could it be true that her venture was for

herself more than it was for the city? To risk ones’ life to spend time in a war zone and

stage a play cannot be an entirely selfish act, at least, not in the eyes of the media.

Baudrillard brings up the Sarajevan’s attitudes towards the rest of Europe, when faced

with pity during the Strasbourg-Sarajevo Art television broadcast, Le Couloir pour la

parole, in 1993

What was remarkable…was the absolute status, the extraordinary superiority conferred by misery, distress, and total delusion. The very features which enabled the inhabitants of Sarajevo to treat the "Europeans" with contempt, or at least with a sarcastic feeling of freedom that contrasted sharply with the remorse and the hypocritical regrets of their counterparts. They were not in need of compassion, they were in fact the ones to take pity on our dejected condition. "I spit on Europe", one of them was heard saying. No one indeed can be more free, more sovereign in a rightful contempt, directed not so much at the enemy than at those whose good conscience balks in the sun of so-called solidarity. 50

49 Jean Baudrillard, No reprieve for Sarajevo- http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-no-reprieve-for-sarajevo.html 50 Jean Baudrillard, No reprieve for Sarajevo- http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-no-reprieve-for-sarajevo.html

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The citizens of Sarajevo will, of course, have had varying opinions on the outside world.

Yet, from this one striking example, Baudrillard believes that they should have held

contempt towards the people attempting to lend them some help. It was the prerogative of

Western politicians to call a ceasefire, and much as there were discussions and attempts

at negotiations, these took a very long time. Some were more active and quick in their

condemnation of the conflict; Adrian Hastings compiled a journal titled SOS Bosnia, with

the support of such political figures as Margaret Thatcher, in which he proposed ‘the use

of allied power against the artillery and tanks of the Serbian Army and to raise the sieges

of Sarajevo and other cities’.51 However, this journal was compiled in 1993, and was thus

unsuccessful in halting the siege. In the meantime, aid workers, the U.N and of course

famous figures such as Sontag, Vanessa Redgrave and Václav Havel did what they could

in order to ease the situation and bring attention to it. One wonders then whys Baudrillard

had such personal qualms against Sontag’s actions, when all he could do was complain at

his desk, in fear of patronising an already patronised city. He states that, ‘I still feel

responsibility at an individual level. ...I don’t think an intellectual can speak for anything

or anyone’ and ‘to do something for the sole reason that one cannot do nothing never has

been a valid principle for action, nor for liberty’.52 Yet, his behaviour could been seen as

far more self-righteous than Sontag’s; he is using Sarajevo to make a critique on Western

society. He is doing something only because he can, and this something is writing as an

intellectual and attempting to speak for the people of Sarajevo.

Baudrillard perhaps could not stand the further fame and attention Sontag was

bringing to herself, but in turn also to the city. Thus, even if her aim was as self-centered

as Baudrillard claims, and as she has also hinted at somewhat despairingly, it had

ultimate positive effect on the people she was attempting to aid. So, do we concentrate on

vilifying Sontag for self-glorifying actions, making many of us hypocrites, or do we

concern ourselves with what is more important; the very appropriate nature of her work

and the devotion of those partaking in it? This devotion must overshadow any of Sontag’s

51 Adrian Hastings SOS BOSNIA, Third Edition (Leeds: Margaret Fenton Ltd, January 1994) p. 54 52 Dr Gerry Coulter http://www.ubishops.ca/BaudrillardStudies/vol2_2/coulter.htm

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grievances; her production was for the city, in which she spent considerable time, risking

her own life in order to help in the only way she could. Even if this way had to include

her self righteousness, her performers obviously did not care for it, or perhaps not even

for her, throwing every last ounce of strength in order to immerse themselves into it, as

David Toole notes ‘when the actors did arrive for rehearsal after what for some of them

had been a two-hour walk, they were tired and weak’.53 Surely, they would not have

bothered taking part, if they had seen it as patronising and, as Kevin Myers stated, ‘by

my personal reckoning, the performance lasted as long as the siege itself. It was

mesmerisingly precious and hideously self-indulgent…pretentious twaddle’.54 More

likely, they did notice, but were experiencing much worse than to be bothered much by

such a comparably petty crime on Susan Sontag’s part.

This confirms, to some extent, Thompson’s belief that, ‘stories can unburden…

the triumphant mode for denouncing violence and having oppression heard, challenge

and resisted. However, woven within them are tropes, forms… that are also capable or re-

marking violence or constructing new relationships of division, anger or bitterness’.55

Susan Sontag’s supposed meddling clearly did arouse some anger and bitterness from

outside media, critics and philosophers in the Western world, but it did not re-mark any

violence in Sarajevo or divide anyone in the city any further, which was most important.

Moreover, the producer of the show, Haris Pasovic, was himself a Sarajevan who had left

the city at the start siege, and then returned to it on purpose, in order to continue working

as a director. He is still highly respected today, and the work he did throughout the siege

is well remembered and documented.

The case of Pasovic is an interesting one, as people who left the city rarely

returned to its horrors during the siege. On leaving and then returning to the city, his co-

worker Dragan Klaic remembers,

53 David Toole Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo (London: SCM Press, 2001) p.1 54 Kevin Myers- I wish I had kicked Susan Sontag-http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/01/02/do0206.xml 55 James Thompson Digging up Stories- Applied Theatre, Performance and War (Manchester: Manchester

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Instead of rehearsing with an international cast and performing to the audiences across Europe in a production about the war… he had an urge to create theatre in Sarajevo, with his colleagues and students, for Sarajevans, as a form of spiritual resistance and moral encouragement. 56

Everything discussed in Chapter One becomes evident in Pasovic’s actions; his

realisation that where he was really needed, or perhaps more precisely where theatre was

needed, was in the city; not outside the city but in its aid, as he previously intended. An

immediate, theatrical reaction to the siege would only work within it, but would,

undoubtedly, be unsuccessful outside it. Before his return to Sarajevo, Klaic and Pasovic

had been working on a show, later named Sarajevo, Tales from a City, which they felt

would be appropriate to tour around Europe and bring awareness to the plight of the city

‘with the city as hero and martyr’.57 Pasovic was not there to work on the final production

in Antwerp, but Klaic expands,

It went further than just squeezing empathy from the audience; it reinforced the sense of responsibility and met aphorized the urban texture, and lifestyle and values being destroyed in Sarajevo. It did not attempt to compete with the gruesome television images that had by then become commonplace, but individualized the peril, reinforced and transmitted the anguish. 58

Indeed, the script of the play reveals a heartfelt, yet very honest, journey through the

history of the city, in an attempt to describe its values and unique characteristics of its

people. For someone not familiar with Sarajevo’s spirit, or the ‘soul’ of the city which the

lead character Sara is searching for, the play seems like a lengthy explanation of exactly

that.

Damjana Cerne, who acted in the production, brings up an interesting issue in her

reasons for taking part in the project,

University Press, 2002) p.6 56 Dragan Klaic The crisis of Theatre? The theatre of crisis! in Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 156 57 Dragan Klaic The crisis of Theatre? The theatre of crisis! in Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 148 58 Ibid., 150

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I had an urge to do something for the city… which was being destroyed in front of our very eyes, we were all watching it on T.V, it all hurt and irritated me very much… I knew I had to talk about it, fight against it… as an actress, and artist I had to set up a discourse in that sleeping Europe, people needed to have an opinion on it, the killing and destruction… it had to be stopped.59

As an artist, Cerne had to do something, take part in the resistance, in a similar way the

artists in Sarajevo felt. However, she was frustratingly not able to go to Sarajevo with the

show, simply due to the dangers within the city. Such frustration, with the war, but also

with Europe’s apparent inability to halt the siege, would surely have fed well into Tales

from a City, and provided a great motivation for her to perform. It did, and as the script

reveals, much of the production was based on a plea for help in rescuing the city from

being reduced to rubble,

SULJO/CHORUS OF ROOFS: We the roofs of Sarajevo Sing We the mosques, the spires and the domes, We the red tiles We the flat tarmac of the apartment buildings We the chimneys Of the poor people's homes And the rich, We the thunder rods The crosses on the churches And the antennas Sing. We the roofs of Sarajevo sing And pray For gentle rain For new wool snow For pigeons and sparrows For cats and moon And moon walkers We sing and pray That they should come back That they should come back To us Again. 60

A poetic ode to the city, filled with the humour and love of live that had previously ruled

it. In it’s essence it should have been a success, but, as Cerne points out, ‘in short, no, I

was not happy with the play. From a critical point of view… it was too difficult to speak

about such a reality, brutal and bloody… with which the play was concerned’.61 Again,

reality could not be reflected as easily as was hoped, and most especially outside of the

siege whilst it was continuing to destroy so many lives. To set up discourse whilst the

siege was taking place was not an urgent enough action to stop it.

The purpose of the play was perhaps its ultimate downfall, and in no way the fault

of the artists involved, but simply due to the difficult circumstances it was in and the 59 Author’s interview with Damjana Cerne 22/04/09, written account, translation from Bosnian 60 Sarajevo (01-MAY-94) Performing Arts Journal http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/[email protected]&library=

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almost desperate nature of its form. From his experience, Klaic came to the conclusion

that, ‘there is in theatre an inherent difficulty to shape immediate, adequate response to a

social crisis’.62 Perhaps yes, from the point of view from someone outside a crisis, but as

Chapter One has shown, this statement is, to an extent, false. Tales from a City did not

succeed because it attempted to form discourse around the siege too early, whilst it was

still in full swing. This process was an attempt similar to dressing an open wound 63, the

people suffering in the city needed immediate, physical help from those outside it. Those

artists involved in the project were doing as much as they could, but apart from

attempting to raise media awareness, were perhaps achieving less that Sontag, who was

physically present in the city. Although her actions were frowned upon by some, they did

provide mental, metaphysical and immediate relief. Tales from a City, on the other hand,

was perhaps a more honest and less self-righteous attempt at theatre, discussing the city

and its history directly, instead of using an already famous work and linking it somewhat

contentiously to Sarajevo’s plight. This is perhaps the reason that Tales from a City did

not face critical backlash, aside from that of those taking part in it; stemming from

personal disappointment.

This inherent self critique leads us smoothly into Chapter Three. Klaic concluded

from his experience of working on Sarajevo, Tales from a City that,

Theatre needs time to distance itself from the event in the reality it wants to address. Making a theatre production on the destruction of Sarajevo while the assault was still going on turned out to be an endeavour taxing both the human and artistic strengths of those involved. After the war, with some breathing space recovered, some time-distance built in, theatre would have more of a chance to dramatize wartime experience.64

After inspecting theatre as a form of resistance and/or survival during the siege of

Sarajevo, it is apparent that it played an enormous role, both as immediate relief to its

61 Author’s interview with Damjana Cerne 22/04/09, written account, translation from Bosnian 62 Dragan Klaic The crisis of Theatre? The theatre of crisis! in Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 145 63 Dragan Klaic The crisis of Theatre? The theatre of crisis! in Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 150 64 Ibid., 150

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citizens and as a tool in raising awareness of its plight. Indeed, in Sarajevo, now an

almost lawless zone, run by violence and crime, the theatres were ‘the only functioning

institutions of civil society, based on the courage, imagination and determination’.65 .

CHAPTER THREE: AFTER THE SIEGE

What differentiated Sarajevo from the rest of the conflict was the destructive

power and longevity of the siege. It was one army attacking a civilian population and

therefore forcing that population to arms themselves and fight back, to defend their city.

It was a barbaric assault, comparable to a medieval siege. 66 As Toole has questioned,

how could this be allowed in a time after the supposed 20th century Enlightenment, in

Sarajevo, the place where the twentieth century arguably began; Franz Ferdinand was

assassinated there which sparked the First World War. The full horror of how the century

would end once again returned to the city, ‘through some strange twist in history, the

century that began in Sarajevo returned there, bringing with the cumulative horror of a

century’s worth of war and genocide’.67 He asks ‘what does that suggest about the

Enlightenment dreams?’68, and the answer is almost obvious; they were indeed merely

dreams, impossible in a world where people will always want more power, more money

and will believe in other dreams, such as nationalist and religious superiority. All of these

factors contributed to the siege, yet it was seen as one without true motive and reckless

destruction. Although the contributing factors may seem unreal to us, they were very real

to the aggressors, thus their motivation was also very real. Susan Sontag has said that she

felt the most real when in Sarajevo and it must have been because of the heightened

visceral horror and threat of death surrounding her. Then of course, the meaning of these

people’s suffering must be explored, in a modern world where suffering to such a great

scale should not be taking place, yet where it does.

The metaphysical nature of musings on the question are inevitable. When physical

65 Ibid., 156 66 Robert J. Donia Sarajevo- A Biography (London: Hurst and Company, 2006) p. 289 67 David Toole Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo (London: SCM Press, 2001) p. xiii 68 Ibid., xiii

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horrors are taking place, they must be questioned, and answers are generally ones that

concern the concepts of being, cause, identity, theoretical philosophy. It seems that this

cannot be avoided, as Toole continues to ponder the ‘increasingly conflicted and violent

world in which either truth is relative and we carry guns to settle inevitable disputes, or

truth has left the world altogether, which just leaves the guns- and our inability to offer

any reasons at all for using them, though use them we will’.69 As this dissertation has

demonstrated, truth has not left the world, truth is indeed relative, but works most

effectively as what Toole has described as ‘collective practise‘70, those bombing the city

were doing so for their own sense of truth, and those resisting with theatre and art for the

opposite. However, in this case, one truth was allowed to dominate and therefore cause

the other; citizens of the city would have had no reason to resist such horrors had they

have not been imposed upon them. The artists resisted with art, the doctors with first aid

and medicine, those able to fight defended the city with weapons and those too weak, or

perhaps not possessing a strong enough belief in ‘truth’ gave up in to the madness they

perceived they were living. The avoidance of this madness was at the crux of resistance

for the citizens of Sarajevo, and a cry for help and an end to the madness was the main

aim for those coming into the city from outside; Susan Sontag, or those reporting on the

events taking place in order to alert the rest of the world.

During the siege, the city was ruled by anarchy and chaos. With this in mind, was

it inevitable that with the slow return to normal life, the one that people had so

desperately remembered and hoped for, theatre too would return to its normal function

within society; to entertain, educate and inform? A loss of Toole’s ‘collective practise’

was perhaps what was most detrimental to culture and art after the siege. Antonin Artaud

stated that theatre ‘must make a break with topicality. It is not aimed at solving social of

phsycological conflicts, to serve as a battlefield for moral passions, but to express

objectively secret truths’.71 After the siege, collective truths were no longer as strong as

they had once been. A slow return to a world where materialist gain was once more

important, where education and employment were available and where people no longer

69 David Toole Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo (London: SCM Press, 2001) p. 19 70 David Toole Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo (London: SCM Press, 2001) p. 194 71 Antonin Artuad The Theatre and its Double (London: Calder Publications Ltd, 1993) p. 51

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suffered enough to need to physically and metaphysically escape. Many people left the

city, and many refugees took their places. Sadly, Sarajevo would never quite be able to

return to the multi-cultural, religiously plural hub it had once been, but it was perhaps this

legacy of nostalgia which also directly affected the arts in the city.

Whether theatre improved artistically is yet another issue to be explored. As many

stated, during the siege it was the nature of doing something which was more important

than what was being done; theatre and film was of a bad quality technically, but the heart

and soul which was put into them was what was more important. Klaic explained that

‘under these extreme circumstances a performance matters less artistically and more as a

form of communion’.72 After the siege, the notion of communion became less important;

people were free to move in and out of the city, families and friendship groups which had

thrived for years before were torn apart, and a focus on rebuilding homes and lives had

taken over Sarajevo’s citizens. All forms of art, not simply theatre began to improve

artistically,

The field has now opened up for an entirely new generation of men and women in their twenties, some of whom, like Seric Nebojsa-Soba, spent four years as soldiers. ''Before the war, art here was very conservative,'' he explained at a summer long rotating exhibition organized by the Soros Center for Contemporary Art. ''Now, there are lots of installations, performances and video work.'' Some of this work addresses the legacy of war, but many young artists seem eager to look forward. 73

The legacy of the war and not the war itself is the crux of what should be explored.

Forms of art have shifted, due to this legacy, filled with destruction. Artists make

installations out of rubble and smashed glass; artefacts remaining from the war used

sometimes in an ironic way, for example making pens out of bullet cartridges. The

emotional upheaval of any conflict is in no doubt strong.

72 Dragan Klaic The crisis of Theatre? The theatre of crisis! in Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 157 73 Alan Riding- Stunned by War, the Arts of Sarajevo are Awakening- http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/18/movies/stunned-by-war-the-arts-of-sarajevo-are-reawakening.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

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On the other hand, art, including theatre and film, has suffered the backlash of

religious tensions that caused the conflict in the first place. Once the war was over, and

religion became immersed in the politics of each new state, it was clear that the fate of

Bosnia would not bode well economically. With an attempt at having three leaders

Muslim, Catholic and Protestant, no quick decisions were being made, and the effect of

the formation of a new state no doubt had its effects on culture, as Tim Edensor explains,

Attempts to draw boundaries may mobilise reified notions of history and roots, cultural traditions and often exploit popular symbolic images, rituals, sites and objects… they can be claimed by a multitude of different identities for various purposes.74

In the process of rebuilding not just the city but the whole country, its citizens have been

faced with many new issues of identity, and the loss of Former Yugoslavia. Religion once

again has become a focal point on the intention of art- religion is linked to identity,

especially in Sarajevo where the Islamic population has increased dramatically due to the

huge influx of refugees coming into the city. Theatre has taken a backseat in proceedings,

as Alan Riding, writing for The New York Times describes ‘culture suddenly became less

important than finding homes for refugees, restoring water and electricity supplies and

modernizing the Bosnian Army’75.

SARTR as a company is still in existence; in 1994 they were able to leave the

besieged city in order to partake in a tour of Europe with The Shelter. With the help of

Waclav Havel, Ingmar Bergman and Bibi Anderson the play was also performed at the

Ibsen Stage Festival in Oslo; the first production to be staged which was not written by

Ibsen. As Plakalo described, the tour had ‘many benefits to the health of the company.

We left through the tunnel under the airport after months of trying’76. The infamous

tunnel, built throughout the siege as a lifeline to the rest of the world was also bringing

the world the theatre produced in the time of crisis. Although the tour was successful, The 74 Tim Edensor National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2002) p. 25 75 Alan Riding- Stunned by War, the Arts of Sarajevo are Awakening- http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/18/movies/stunned-by-war-the-arts-of-sarajevo-are-reawakening.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

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Shelter and Plakalo’s post-war follow up The Diaries of Mina Hausen were slowly

forgotten and new pieces of theatre took presidence. When questioned why there is no

transcript of The Shelter in print, Plakalo explains,

For the 20th anniversary it will be done. The only language it was translated to was in Italian. This is because at one of the performances, an Italian journalist was attending… Mina Hausen chose him to address her monologue to, and the only words she knew in Italian were ‘Do not lean out of the window’… how they have on trains. He liked it very much, so published it in Italy. But that was a long time ago. 77

His humour on the subject is tinged with a sadness that The Shelter was very much a

product of its time, and that it would remain that way, no longer being appropriate for the

post-siege stage. The play that changed his and not doubt many other’s opinions on the

power and role of theatre is confined to the destructive time it reflects.

The Shelter is no longer as valuable as it was to audiences in Sarajevo, who

needed a theatre which would explore the legacy of the war, rather than the reality of it.

Thus, SARTR’s most successful show in recent times has been their version of °Ay

Carmela!, by José Sanchis Sinisterra, set in the backdrop of the Spanish civil war, but, as

Robert Raponja Ay explains, with very similar themes to that what the company had been

through;

Artistic honour and dignity, the humanness and moral quality of the collective antifascist conscience…presents the complex position of the artist who in certain situations, dictated by war and politics, is prepared for heroism, as well as for baseness…because for the true artist his art is his life.78

Still touring the world, the play has proved Artaud’s thought that ‘no one says we cannot

think of speech as well as gestures on a universal level’.79 It has touched audiences not

only in Bosnia, but everywhere it has been performed, as Plakalo explains, ‘one lady

described to me exactly what had happened in the play, even though she could not

76 Author’s interview conducted with Safet Plakalo 17/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 77 Author’s interview conducted with Safet Plakalo 17/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian 78 Robert Raponja Ay, Kamela- http://www.unet.com.mk/mot/mot24/karmela-e.html 79 Antonin Artaud The Theatre and its Double (London: Calder Publications Ltd, 1993) p. 52

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understand a word’80. This play also confirmins Klaic’s notion that ‘after the war, with

some breathing space recovered, some time-distance built in, theatre would have more of

a chance to dramatize wartime experience.81 To audiences in Sarajevo, it has been a

cathartic experience in healing their traumas; an element of theatre which was needed

during the siege but was also very important in the years that followed.

Emir Kusturica, a film director who stayed away from the siege but was once

Sarajevo’s pride and joy is now in exile from the city. Forgoing his mother’s Islamic

roots, he has moved to Serbia and converted to Orthodox Christianity. He continues to

make films, but the people of Sarajevo have felt betrayed by his behaviour, not only

because he left the city, but because of his sudden interest in politics and religion.

Pasovic has claimed that Kusturica is not an artist, because of his burgeoning nationalistic

tendencies, ‘art is a matter of ethics and morals… not just talent and technical ability’ 82.

Whether this claim can be verified is debatable. It is true that Kusturica’s behaviour is

bizarre and controversial in such an unstable time, when tensions from the Yugoslav

conflict are still strong. It cannot be doubted however, that the level of theatricality which

remains in his touring band The No Smoking Orchestra, a collaboration with The

Surrealists, is something which Artaud would see as ‘staging from the angle of magic

and enchantment, not as reflecting a script… but as a fiery projection of all the objective

results of gestures, words, sounds, music or their combinations’.83 Their latest concert at

the Barbican on the 9th May 2009 was a spectacle, retaining the ironic humour and

parody seen in The Surrealists’ work and merging it with gypsy funk music and an anti-

capitalist message, as Kusturica puts it ‘a band that has toured the world for a decade

without the support of a big record label’84 and song titles such as Fuck you MTV.

Furthermore, the members of his band, the people who had once formed The

Surrealists have also changed; twenty years later their principals are unrecognisable. 80 Author’s interview conducted with Safet Plakalo 17/02/09, Sarajevo, 81 Dragan Klaic The crisis of Theatre? The theatre of crisis! in Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 150 82 Haris Pasovic in Teatar u Ratnom Sarajevu 1992-1995, Memories ed. Davor Diklic (Sarajevo; Zemun 2004) p. 206 83 Antonin Artaud The Theatre and its Double (London: Calder Publications Ltd, 1993) p. 54

27.

They were once overtly loyal to the plight of Yugoslavia and the respective fate of

Sarajevo, as well as severely critical of the nationalist, under the guise of socialist,

tendencies of many of its politicians. However, now many of them have also left the city

and are falling prey to this nationalist zeal. At the concert, the audience was cajoled into

shouting slogans such as ‘We won’t give up Kosovo’85 even though many of them did not

understand the words and thus implications of their meaning. The music was utilised to

spread a message which sometimes verged from an ironic support of Serbia, to a very real

one. Perhaps what Haris Pasovic is trying to say, is that as soon as art begins to spread

propaganda, it is no longer a true art. He also retains a certain acrimony towards the fact

that Kusturica did not stay in Sarajevo throughout the siege, ‘I will never be able to say

Kusturica is as valuable an artist as the artist who remained in Sarajevo’86, which was

undoubtedly a prosperous time in his creative sphere.

Many of The Surrealists did remain in Sarajevo and only left after the siege when

they realised that the city would never return to the cultural melting pot it had once been.

The loss of this, the loss of their homes and Yugoslav identities, has hit many of them

hard, including Kusturica, whose first film after the war, Underground, was labelled as

‘an exercise in nostalgia for Yugoslavia in its largest sense’ because ‘Kusturica defended

the Miloševic regime in its early years in interviews…At the film's premiere in Belgrade,

the warlord Arkan and other high-profile nationalists were invited and attended’.87 In this

light, it becomes a little more understandable as to why a group of people, once so

devoted to Sarajevo and having lost it, need something, or a place, to hold on to. As

Ioannis Armakolas describes,

Nostalgia for a lost authentic experience of place was omnipresent in the narratives of ex-Sarajevan Serbs… unaware of this, one could be shocked by the way in which [they] nonchalantly switch from nostalgia for a mutli-ethnic Sarajevo to ‘never again together’ talk and other powerful separatist messages and back. 88

84 http://www.barbican.org.uk/media/events/84223588emirproglowres.pdf 85 Author’s translation from ‘Nedamo Kosovo’, Nenad Jankovic at the Barbican, London 09/05/09 86 Haris Pasovic in Teatar u Ratnom Sarajevu 1992-1995, Memories ed. Davor Diklic (Sarajevo; Zemun 2004) p. 206 87 Kinoeye- Emir Kusturica: Critical Mush- http://www.ce-review.org/00/14/kinoeye14_horton.html 88 Ioannis Armakolas Sarajevo No More in The New Bosnian Mosaic- Identities, Memories and Moral

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This should in no way excuse their actions, and their use of theatre to provoke such

controversial messages, but lend us to an understanding of their frustration and loss of

identity.

Sadly, it seems that the purest forms of theatre, ones which were without

propaganda or want of monetary gain, were produced only throughout the siege, while

present productions revert to capitalist necessity. The theatres in Sarajevo lack funding,

and no longer have the expression of ‘everything filling the stage, everything that can be

shown and materially expressed on stage, intended first of all to appeal to the senses,

instead of being addressed primarily to the mind’89. This was the theatre within the siege

of Sarajevo. It was a theatre of the soul, and theatre of truth, and a theatre of resistance.

When there is nothing to resist, and when lives must be rebuilt and put back on their

social track, when religion and politics once again dictate society through a series of

unstable and deadly relationships, when there is no symbiotic relationship between

performers and spectators; theatre falls down and must be pulled out of a slump. Once

again Artaud states ‘I propose something to get us out of the slump, instead of continuing

to moan about it, about the boredom, dullness and stupidity of everything’90. And as

Slavko Pervan pointed out, when speaking of the state of theatre in Sarajevo today,

It reminds me of that early, wild capitalism, were everyone is stealing from each other and there is no control from the government or any humanity, and there is no true human inspiration… of course there are a few people here and there, but the atmosphere is not what it was. The streets are dirty, maybe people’s homes are not, but the streets are. The general vocabulary when describing theatrical work at the moment is ridiculous and I have never heard such words to describe absolutely everything. Amazing! Spectacular! 91

Yet another disaffected artist, Pervan does not want to surrender to the current lack of

culture, as he sees it. He does notice however, the crucial element which is missing and

Claims in a Post-War Society ed Xavier Bougarel, Elissa Helms and Ger Duijzings (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2007) p. 89 89 Antonin Artaud The Theatre and its Double (London: Calder Publications Ltd, 1993) p. 53 90 Ibid,. 27 91 Author’s interview conducted with Slavko Pervan 18/02/09, Sarajevo, translated from Bosnian

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which was so powerful during the siege; communion and collective truth.

SARAJEVO’S TREASURE

The attack on Sarajevo’s national library, once the mutli-cultural and architectural

treasure in the city, is arguably emblematic of the attack on the city itself. On the evening

of August 26, 1992, Serbian criminals launched a specific assault on the building, with

the intent of reducing it to rubble. The neo-Orientalist structure of the building was a

cross-pollination of Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman architecture, the symbol of all of

Sarajevo’s mutli-ethnic influences throughout history. Donia describes,

the attacks were unmistakably directed against the city’s chief institutions of collective memory, leading some observers to characterize these attacks as “memoricide”… shattering civic pride by wiping out records and physical manifestations of the city’s diverse history. 92

The fight to save the burning library was in vain, and today its shell still stands as a

reminder of the horrors that occurred. Unlike most buildings which were targeted

throughout the siege, the library was not a specific place of religious worship, but on

dedicated to preserving what Sarajevo had always stood for. Thus, many feel that

Sarajevo is no longer the city it once was, a hub of art, culture and tolerance; the library is

a poignant aide-mémoire that they are perhaps correct. The cultural defence which its

citizens provided during the siege demonstrated the success of theatre and performance as

a form of spiritual resistance, in more than one format. Performance on theatre stages and

the act of normality performed by the citizens of Sarajevo kept them sane and strong, but

also upheld the importance of art and culture in the city. As Svich postulates, ‘Utopian

visions rise for a moment… then find themselves in the less media-haunted gaze of a

theatre that looks outwards and within, that incorporates elements of all its histories to

bless both its ancient and nascent soul’93. This is what happened in the city of Sarajevo,

as its citizen’s fought to preserve what they were proud of and that which they held 92 Robert J. Donia Sarajevo- A Biography (London: Hurst and Company, 2006) p. 315 93 Caridad Svich Theatre in crisis? Living memory in an unstable time in Theatre in Crisis? Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester

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collective truth for; it’s soul.

This success failed to translate beyond the city during the siege, as attempts made

by the people who were aware of its downfall were either ignored by those in political

power, or not understood by those who could not gauge the exact destruction of culture

and humanity taking place. This theatre, Klaic realised, was not reaching ‘to the very core

of the pain and horror of the war’ but ‘developing a discourse around the catastrophe’94

and is because it was not living it, it was not part of the synaptic regime of power which

was occurring inside the besieged city. Thus, it was not useful to those people

experiencing it, who were the ones needing help and resistance. As well as this, time has

been needed in order for the wounds of the siege to heal slowly before they can be

dressed and addressed, and the post-traumatic stress to be healed. Theatre’s healing

power has been one remaining and relevant factor in today’s society.

Unfortunately, the aftermath of the siege has brought a new, more Western sort of

theatre, with its centrality to the humanity of its geographical locality now lost. Culture

has not been lost, as in Pervan’s view, but it is one that has been perverted for political

ends and the basic necessities of a capitalist economic system; the pure theatre which had

taken place in Sarajevo is no longer possible due to the loss of a collective truth between

its citizens. People’s loss of a home and national identity has spawned a new hybrid of a

political and religiously charged way of life, which does not have the time to look

inwards as it did during the siege. Ultimately, theatre and performance rose successfully

within the realms of a besieged Sarajevo, to fight for normality and sanity in a city where

every other vestige of civilisation had been lost to the conflict. However, today, just as

the library has been left as a skeleton, so have Sarajevo’s previous strong cultural

influences and examples to the rest of Europe; a Europe which failed to assert its strength

against the powers destroying the city.

University Press, 2002) p. 19 94 Dragan Klaic The crisis of Theatre? The theatre of crisis! in Performance manifestations for a new century ed Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 150