Where the Stress Falls (34 page)
Read Where the Stress Falls Online
Authors: Susan Sontag
INDEED, THE QUESTION IS
not why there is any cultural activity in Sarajevo now after seventeen months of siege, but why there isn’t more. Outside a boarded-up movie theatre next to the Chamber Theatre is a sun-bleached poster for
The Silence of the Lambs
with a diagonal strip across it that says DANAS (today), which was April 6, 1992, the day moviegoing stopped. Since the war began, all of the movie theatres in Sarajevo have remained shut, even if not all have been severely damaged by shelling. A building in which people gather so predictably would be too tempting a target for the Serb guns; anyway, there is no electricity to run a projector. There are no concerts, except for those given by a lone string quartet that rehearses every morning and performs
occasionally in a small room that also doubles as an art gallery, seating forty. (It’s in the same building on Marshal Tito Street that houses the Chamber Theatre.) There is only one active space for painting and photography, the Obala Gallery, whose exhibits sometimes stay up only one day and never more than a week.
not why there is any cultural activity in Sarajevo now after seventeen months of siege, but why there isn’t more. Outside a boarded-up movie theatre next to the Chamber Theatre is a sun-bleached poster for
The Silence of the Lambs
with a diagonal strip across it that says DANAS (today), which was April 6, 1992, the day moviegoing stopped. Since the war began, all of the movie theatres in Sarajevo have remained shut, even if not all have been severely damaged by shelling. A building in which people gather so predictably would be too tempting a target for the Serb guns; anyway, there is no electricity to run a projector. There are no concerts, except for those given by a lone string quartet that rehearses every morning and performs
occasionally in a small room that also doubles as an art gallery, seating forty. (It’s in the same building on Marshal Tito Street that houses the Chamber Theatre.) There is only one active space for painting and photography, the Obala Gallery, whose exhibits sometimes stay up only one day and never more than a week.
No one I talked with in Sarajevo disputes the sparseness of cultural life in this city where, after all, between 300,000 and 400,000 inhabitants still live. The majority of the city’s intellectuals and creative people, including most of the faculty of the University of Sarajevo, fled at the beginning of the war, before the city was completely encircled. Besides, many Sarajevans are reluctant to leave their apartments except when it is absolutely necessary, to collect water and the rations distributed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); though no one is safe anywhere, they have more to fear when they are in the street. And beyond fear, there is depression—most Sarajevans are very depressed—which produces lethargy, exhaustion, apathy.
Moreover, Belgrade was the cultural capital of the former Yugoslavia, and I have the impression that in Sarajevo the visual arts were derivative; that ballet, opera, and musical life were routine. Only film and theatre were distinguished, so it is not surprising that these continue under siege. A film production company, SAGA, makes both documentary and fiction films, and there are the two functioning theatres.
IN FACT, THE AUDIENCE
for theatre expects to see a play like
Waiting for Godot.
What my production of
Godot
signifies to them, apart from the fact that an eccentric American writer and part-time director volunteered to work in the theatre as an expression of solidarity with the city (a fact inflated by the local press and radio as evidence that the rest of the world “does care,” when I knew, to my indignation and shame, that I represented nobody but myself), is that this is a great European play and that they are members of European culture. For all their attachment to American popular culture, as intense here as anywhere else, it is the high culture of Europe that represents for them their ideal, their passport to a European identity. People had told me
again and again on my earlier visit in April: We are part of Europe. We are the people in the former Yugoslavia who stand for European values—secularism, religious tolerance, and multi-ethnicity. How can the rest of Europe let this happen to us? When I replied that Europe is and always has been as much a place of barbarism as a place of civilization, they didn’t want to hear. Now no one would dispute such a statement.
for theatre expects to see a play like
Waiting for Godot.
What my production of
Godot
signifies to them, apart from the fact that an eccentric American writer and part-time director volunteered to work in the theatre as an expression of solidarity with the city (a fact inflated by the local press and radio as evidence that the rest of the world “does care,” when I knew, to my indignation and shame, that I represented nobody but myself), is that this is a great European play and that they are members of European culture. For all their attachment to American popular culture, as intense here as anywhere else, it is the high culture of Europe that represents for them their ideal, their passport to a European identity. People had told me
again and again on my earlier visit in April: We are part of Europe. We are the people in the former Yugoslavia who stand for European values—secularism, religious tolerance, and multi-ethnicity. How can the rest of Europe let this happen to us? When I replied that Europe is and always has been as much a place of barbarism as a place of civilization, they didn’t want to hear. Now no one would dispute such a statement.
CULTURE, SERIOUS CULTURE
, is an expression of human dignity—which is what people in Sarajevo feel they have lost, even when they know themselves to be brave, or stoical, or angry. For they also know themselves to be terminally weak: waiting, hoping, not wanting to hope, knowing that they aren’t going to be saved. They are humiliated by their disappointment, by their fear, and by the indignities of daily life—for instance, by having to spend a good part of each day seeing to it that their toilets flush, so that their bathrooms don’t become cesspools. That is how they use most of the water they queue for in public spaces, at great risk to their lives. Their sense of humiliation may be even greater than their fear.
, is an expression of human dignity—which is what people in Sarajevo feel they have lost, even when they know themselves to be brave, or stoical, or angry. For they also know themselves to be terminally weak: waiting, hoping, not wanting to hope, knowing that they aren’t going to be saved. They are humiliated by their disappointment, by their fear, and by the indignities of daily life—for instance, by having to spend a good part of each day seeing to it that their toilets flush, so that their bathrooms don’t become cesspools. That is how they use most of the water they queue for in public spaces, at great risk to their lives. Their sense of humiliation may be even greater than their fear.
Putting on a play means so much to the local theatre professionals in Sarajevo because it allows them to be normal, that is, to do what they did before the war; to be not just haulers of water or passive recipients of humanitarian aid. Indeed, the lucky people in Sarajevo are those who can carry on with their professional work. It is not a question of money, since Sarajevo has only a black-market economy, whose currency is German marks, and many people are living on their savings, which were always in deutsche marks, or on remittances from abroad. (To get an idea of the city’s economy, consider that a skilled professional—say, a surgeon at the city’s main hospital or a television journalist—earns three deutsche marks a month, while cigarettes, a local version of Marlboros, cost ten deutsche marks a pack.) The actors and I, of course, were not on salary. Other theatre people would sit in on rehearsals not just because they wanted to watch our work but because they were glad to have, once again, a theatre to go to every day.
Far from it being frivolous to put on a play—this play or any
other—it is a welcome expression of normality. “Isn’t putting on a play like fiddling while Rome burns?” a journalist asked one of the actors. “Just asking a provocative question,” the journalist explained to me when I reproached her, worried that the actor might have been offended. He was not. He didn’t know what she was talking about.
other—it is a welcome expression of normality. “Isn’t putting on a play like fiddling while Rome burns?” a journalist asked one of the actors. “Just asking a provocative question,” the journalist explained to me when I reproached her, worried that the actor might have been offended. He was not. He didn’t know what she was talking about.
I STARTED
AUDITIONING
actors the day after I arrived, one role already cast in my head. At a meeting with theatre people in April, I couldn’t have failed to notice a stout older woman wearing a large broad-brimmed black hat who sat silently, imperiously, in a corner of the room. A few days later when I saw her in Pašovi
’s
Grad
, I learned that she was the senior actor of the pre-siege Sarajevo theatre, and when I decided to direct
Godot
I immediately thought of her as Pozzo. Pašovi
concluded that I would cast only women (he told me that an all-woman
Godot
had been done in Belgrade some years ago). But that wasn’t my intention. I wanted the casting to be gender-blind, confident that this is one of the few plays where it makes sense, since the characters are representative, even allegorical figures. If Everyman (like the pronoun “he”) really does stand for everybody—as women are always being told—then Everyman doesn’t have to be played by a man. I was not making the statement that a woman can also be a tyrant—which Pašovi
then decided I meant by casting Ines Fan
ovi
in the role—but rather that a woman can play the role of a tyrant. In contrast, Admir (“Atko”) Glamo
ak, the actor I cast as Lucky, a gaunt, lithe man of thirty whom I’d admired as Death in
Alcestis
, fit perfectly the traditional conception of Pozzo’s slave.
AUDITIONING
actors the day after I arrived, one role already cast in my head. At a meeting with theatre people in April, I couldn’t have failed to notice a stout older woman wearing a large broad-brimmed black hat who sat silently, imperiously, in a corner of the room. A few days later when I saw her in Pašovi
’sGrad
, I learned that she was the senior actor of the pre-siege Sarajevo theatre, and when I decided to direct
Godot
I immediately thought of her as Pozzo. Pašovi
concluded that I would cast only women (he told me that an all-womanGodot
had been done in Belgrade some years ago). But that wasn’t my intention. I wanted the casting to be gender-blind, confident that this is one of the few plays where it makes sense, since the characters are representative, even allegorical figures. If Everyman (like the pronoun “he”) really does stand for everybody—as women are always being told—then Everyman doesn’t have to be played by a man. I was not making the statement that a woman can also be a tyrant—which Pašovi
then decided I meant by casting Ines Fanoviin the role—but rather that a woman can play the role of a tyrant. In contrast, Admir (“Atko”) Glamoak, the actor I cast as Lucky, a gaunt, lithe man of thirty whom I’d admired as Death inAlcestis
, fit perfectly the traditional conception of Pozzo’s slave.
Three other roles were left: Vladimir and Estragon, the pair of forlorn tramps, and Godot’s messenger, a small boy. It was troubling that there were more good actors available than parts, since I knew how much it meant to the actors I auditioned to be in the play. Three seemed particularly gifted: Velibor Topic, who was playing Death in
Alcestis;
Izudin (“Izo”) Bajrovi
, who was
Alcestis
’s Hercules; and Nada Djurevska, who had the lead in the Krleža play.
Alcestis;
Izudin (“Izo”) Bajrovi
, who wasAlcestis
’s Hercules; and Nada Djurevska, who had the lead in the Krleža play.
Then it occurred to me I could have three pairs of Vladimir and Estragon
and put them all on the stage at once. Velibor and Izo seemed likely to make the most powerful, fluent couple; there was no reason
not
to use what Beckett envisaged, two men, at the center; but they would be flanked on the left side of the stage by two women and on the right by a woman and a man—three variations on the theme of the couple.
and put them all on the stage at once. Velibor and Izo seemed likely to make the most powerful, fluent couple; there was no reason
not
to use what Beckett envisaged, two men, at the center; but they would be flanked on the left side of the stage by two women and on the right by a woman and a man—three variations on the theme of the couple.
Since child actors were not available and I dreaded using a nonprofessional, I decided to make the messenger an adult: the boyish-looking Mirza Halilovi
, a talented actor who happened to speak the best English of anyone in the cast. Of the other eight actors, three knew no English at all. It was a great help to have Mirza as interpreter, so I could communicate with everybody at the same time.
, a talented actor who happened to speak the best English of anyone in the cast. Of the other eight actors, three knew no English at all. It was a great help to have Mirza as interpreter, so I could communicate with everybody at the same time.BY THE SECOND DAY
of rehearsal, I had begun to divide up and apportion the text, like a musical score, among the three pairs of Vladimir and Estragon. I had once before worked in a foreign language, when I directed Pirandello’s
As You Desire Me
at the Teatro Stabile in Turin. But I knew some Italian, while my Serbo-Croatian (or “the mother tongue,” as people in Sarajevo call it, the words “Serbo-Croatian” being hard to utter now) was limited when I arrived to “Please,” “Hello,” “Thank you,” and “Not now.” I had brought with me an English-Serbo-Croatian phrase book, paperback copies of the play in English and French, and an enlarged photocopy of the text into which I copied in pencil the “Bosnian” translation, line by line, as soon as I received it. I also copied the English and French line by line into the Bosnian script. In about ten days I had managed to learn by heart the words of Beckett’s play in the language in which my actors were speaking it.
of rehearsal, I had begun to divide up and apportion the text, like a musical score, among the three pairs of Vladimir and Estragon. I had once before worked in a foreign language, when I directed Pirandello’s
As You Desire Me
at the Teatro Stabile in Turin. But I knew some Italian, while my Serbo-Croatian (or “the mother tongue,” as people in Sarajevo call it, the words “Serbo-Croatian” being hard to utter now) was limited when I arrived to “Please,” “Hello,” “Thank you,” and “Not now.” I had brought with me an English-Serbo-Croatian phrase book, paperback copies of the play in English and French, and an enlarged photocopy of the text into which I copied in pencil the “Bosnian” translation, line by line, as soon as I received it. I also copied the English and French line by line into the Bosnian script. In about ten days I had managed to learn by heart the words of Beckett’s play in the language in which my actors were speaking it.
DID I HAVE
a multi-ethnic cast? many people have asked me. And if so, was there conflict or tension among the actors, or did they, as someone here in New York put it to me, “get along with each other”?
a multi-ethnic cast? many people have asked me. And if so, was there conflict or tension among the actors, or did they, as someone here in New York put it to me, “get along with each other”?
But of course I did—the population of Sarajevo is so mixed, and intermarriage is so common, that it would be hard to assemble any kind
of group in which all three ethnic identities were not represented. Eventually I learned that Velibor Topic (Estragon I) has a Muslim mother and a Croat father, though he has a Serb first name, while Ines Fan
ovi
(Pozzo) had to be Croatian, since Ines is a Croat name and she was born and grew up in the coastal town of Split and came to Sarajevo thirty years ago. Both parents of Milijana Zirojevi
(Estragon II) are Serb, while Irena Mulamuhi
(Estragon III) must have had at least a Muslim father. I never learned the ethnic origins of all the actors. They knew them and took them for granted because they are colleagues—they’ve acted in many plays together—and friends.
of group in which all three ethnic identities were not represented. Eventually I learned that Velibor Topic (Estragon I) has a Muslim mother and a Croat father, though he has a Serb first name, while Ines Fan
ovi(Pozzo) had to be Croatian, since Ines is a Croat name and she was born and grew up in the coastal town of Split and came to Sarajevo thirty years ago. Both parents of Milijana Zirojevi(Estragon II) are Serb, while Irena Mulamuhi(Estragon III) must have had at least a Muslim father. I never learned the ethnic origins of all the actors. They knew them and took them for granted because they are colleagues—they’ve acted in many plays together—and friends.Other books
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