70th Sterijino pozorje: a critical dialogue

Following news of the decision not to allocate any funding to Sterijino pozorje, Serbia’s most prominent national theatre festival, critics Borisav Matić and Andrej Čanji reflect on this year’s edition and what this decision means for the future of the festival.

Andrej: Let’s start at the end, with the applause. In most Serbian theatres, every curtain call over the past months has ended on a note of protest. Actors raise student index booklets, red-painted hands, and banners of support for the student protests. This has marked the theatre scene from November of last year up until today. The 70th anniversary edition of Sterijino pozorje was no exception. Several ensembles expressed their support for the mass protests across Serbia, including the Zagreb Youth Theatre from Croatia. The loud applause given to the performance would intensify with the appearance of protest symbols on stage. The echo of that theatrical rebellion travelled far and did not go unnoticed. Without a doubt, as a consequence of this visible support for the protests and the students – first in theaters across the country and then at Sterijino pozorje – we were met, on the final day of the festival, with the news that the Provincial Secretariat for Culture had entirely cut the funds intended for Sterijino pozorje, along with several other important theater festivals, organizations, and projects.

Borisav: I would say that this year’s Sterijino pozorje will, for me, remain framed with two images. The first image occurred just before the festival, in front of the Serbian National Theatre, where the students of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad stood with raised student indices and a banner: “Let Theater Be Your Change, Let Change Be Your Theatre” – a reference to both the ongoing protests and the student-led Change Theatre at the Academy. And the second picture represents us, festival guests, at the closing of the festival on June 3rd, when we received the news confirming that retaliation against almost the entire cultural scene is taking place, more precisely against all the actors who are in some way, even peripherally, connected with the student and civic protests.

It’s a euphemism to call the decision to award Sterijino pozorje zero dinars from the provincial budget ” scandalous”. Sterijino pozorje used to have the status of a festival of national importance in Yugoslavia and I don’t know why it doesn’t have that status today, why it is forced to participate in such open calls at all and how it is possible that some dilettantes and partocrats may decide not to allocate any funds for it.

In this dialogue, we will have a critical look at the performances from this year’s competition programme. However, regardless of what we think about these performances, this year’s Sterijino pozorje served as a platform for different aesthetic and political voices, and as such, a platform for dialogue about the future of our theater and our society. And shame on all levels of the government that we now have to fight for such a basic thing, for something that should be taken for granted, because it’s a question of whether next year’s Sterijino pozorje will be able to happen at all, after 70 years of continuity! I would put it this way, either we will be victorious and have another government by the next Sterijino pozorje, or it’s a question of whether Sterijino pozorje and our theatre scene will exist by then in the form we know them. And no, this is not fatalism; this is pure realism.

So, with this optimistic tone, I will begin the analysis of the competition programme. I would certainly point out that this social context is inseparable from these performances; it is essential for us to analyze what kind of attitude they take towards society and politics, not necessarily towards the current protests, since many performances we created before November last year, but towards society as such.

Andrej: I would say that, in this context, there are two theatrical acts. One is the performance itself; the other is the protest gesture that follows. Often, a dissonance emerges between the artistic language of the production, which may not be particularly striking, and the power of the protest that comes after. I notice a gap between the expressive force of the performance and the impact of the post-show protest. So perhaps we should begin by looking at the productions where that gap is absent – those outstanding works that, with artistic precision and high standards, offer an engaging and sharp critical perspective on specific aspects of reality.

Borisav: The best two performances that simultaneously managed to have a socially critical note and a complex aesthetic language were Football Boot Tongue and The Exempt. Can you go a bit deeper into the analysis of these shows?

Andrej: Football Boot Tongue is a production by Zagreb Youth Theatre, directed by Borut Šeparović, based on a text co-written by author Filip Grujić and former footballer Ivan Ergić. Football can be approached in many ways, as entertainment, as sport, but in the regional context, it opens a particularly rich field for exploring the entanglement of politics, sports, fan groups, and violence. One cannot overlook the influence of corporate capital on the game, nor the fates of the players themselves and the passions of its devoted followers. In this case, what makes the perspective especially relevant is that of Ivan Ergić, a former professional footballer whose experience in major European clubs brings a grounded and critical insight.

Through the fictional character of David Polovina, a young footballer, we follow the trajectory of a sports career and its entanglement with his family, girlfriend, friends, employers, and fans. From a background of poverty, we witness his rise and his confrontation with corporate interests, toxic masculinity, drugs, celebrity culture, decadence, anxiety, and therapy…

Borisav: Two things are crucial for the Football Boot Tongue. Through the story of football, more precisely about the international football industry, we have a critique of capitalism and the exploitation of football players and their bodies by the industry. According to their contracts, they have to pay a thousand euros for every kilogram of excess body weight.  If they are late even for a minute to their training, they have to pay fifteen hundred euros. And the other focal point is the emotional constipation of straight men, a topic rarely examined in society in general, and especially in theater, but which is important since repressed emotionality is one of the few fields where you can see how the patriarchy is repressive towards straight men as well.

The real-life experiences of Ivan Ergić, a former football player, are translated into the dramatic text by Ergić and Filip Grujić and the direction of Borut Šeparović is how the direction of a new play should look – not just a simple staging of the material but a process full of intelligent directorial procedures. For example, the entire performance is being filmed and the live video is projected on the background of the stage, which indicates that football players are constantly under surveillance, which can of course also be a comment on contemporary surveillance capitalism.

Andrej: At the same time, we are presented with the image of a celebrated life. Many admire his play, he is an expensive, beloved player, a role model for the youth; children wear jerseys with his name and number. Yet his life is, in truth, a catalogue of suffering and anxiety. This becomes especially apparent in the perverse influence of corporate capital on elite sport: the athlete’s body is pushed to exhaustion, culminating in injuries whose consequences may linger for a lifetime. In the relentless pursuit of results and victory, football is transformed into an industry willing to sacrifice the playful spirit of the game. The actors portraying the footballers remark that their characters don’t celebrate after a win, but rather they claim to feel indifferent when it happens.

Borisav: Yes, they actually say they don’t feel joy, they feel more relief, because they have a responsibility to the team, to the club, to the fans, who would otherwise be furious if they didn’t win.

It’s interesting how Football Boot Tongue and The Exempt are both rebellious and socially critical, but in starkly different ways. The Exempt from the National Theatre in Sombor, based on Đorđe Petrović’s play, thematizes the cases of mysteriously missing newborns. This occurrence took place in Serbia from the 1960s to the end of the 20th century.  Specifically, there are hundreds of couples who suspect that their children were falsely declared dead after birth and then sold to wealthy couples either in the country or abroad. Several inputs point to this, especially the fact that the parents never saw their supposedly dead children, were not allowed to bury them, and did not receive adequate medical documentation. Yet these cases, even decades later, remain unresolved.

Đorđe Petrović, the author of the dramatic text, and the director Mia Knežević deal with this topic by basing the show on documentary material but developing a fictional narrative. This narrative includes the parents, primarily the mothers, whose children were abducted, as well as the medical personnel who participated and were in some way involved… And police officers are also involved, along with various other individuals who may have been entangled in this criminal act.

Andrej, since you’ve watched this show for the second time now, can you tell us your point of view in more detail?

Andrej: The plot resembles something straight out of a soap opera, built around dramatic coincidences that, on the surface, verge on the implausible. A mother sits in a hospital waiting room as her child lies seriously injured. The doctor who can operate on the child has a son of her own in urgent need of a bone marrow transplant and the injured boy turns out to be a compatible donor. As the story unfolds, it appears that the patient may, in fact, be the doctor’s long-lost son, abducted years ago. Characters who at first seem entirely unconnected turn out to share a tangled history. One mother, initially portrayed as the victim of a corrupt doctor, is later revealed to have bought her child. The other mother, the doctor, travels the opposite moral arc: first positioned as the perpetrator, ultimately as a victim of child abduction.

With its large cast, its constant shifting between past and present, corrupt systems of policing and healthcare, and parents in desperate search of truth, the result is a sharply crafted thriller that gradually exposes an intricate criminal network. So yes, the fabula may lean toward the sensational, even melodramatic, but the sujet, the way the story is structured and presented, is so skilfully rendered that it lends the material a striking sense of credibility and urgency.

The Excluded succeeds not only as a socially engaged drama that directly addresses a real and painful issue, the abduction of newborns in Serbia, but also as a compelling genre piece. This is due in no small part to the always outstanding Sombor ensemble, who maintain the emotional and narrative tension with remarkable finesse.

This might be a good place to pause and take stock. The two productions we’ve discussed, one centered on the fate of a footballer, the other on the stolen babies scandal in Serbia, stand out as the only works at this year’s Sterijino pozorje that offer specific subject matter as a vehicle for examining broader social concerns with thoughtfulness, detail, and imagination. The rest of the selection revealed a variety of shortcomings: overloaded content, social critique tipping into defeatism, abstract forms of engagement, uninspired interpretations of classic texts, stylistic flourishes masking weak dramaturgy, and a tendency to lean too heavily on a “compelling story,” often resulting in directorial stagnation.

Let us now turn to two productions that most directly respond to the present moment: Dimitrije Tucović Addressing The Serbian Youth by Puls Theatre Lazarevac, directed by Zlatko Paković, and Back by the Montenegrin National Theatre, directed by Boris Liješević. Both take on urgent political questions, but from a deeply problematic artistic standpoint. Would you agree?

Borisav:  I would even say that they are poorly articulated, even in a political sense. Let’s start by talking about Dimitrije Tucović Addressing The Serbian Youth. This is the only play that directly addresses the current civil protests and Aleksandar Vučić’s autocracy. The play doesn’t stop there. It is titled this way because it draws inspiration from Tucović, a historical figure of the socialist and freedom fighter. It connects his ideals and political views with our present moment and, in the style of Frljić’s political theater, calls on citizens to rise and fight against the current autocratic regime in Serbia.

I must congratulate Paković and Puls Theater for the courage to put such a show in their repertoire, especially considering the current retaliation against theaters and cultural workers.

Andrej: I would especially emphasize that the process of creating a theatrical production is very short, and addressing current events forces the authors to quickly develop a stance and critical distance towards them. This is a risky path that few dare to take.

Borisav: Of course. But I have to shift toward a critical assessment. Many at Sterijino pozorje criticized the play for being a pamphlet. I would say that’s not the problem. Especially in the current situation, we need quality agitprop theater. The issue here is that it’s simply a bad pamphlet. This play is essentially composed of various fragmentary scenes in which the author tackles Vučić’s current autocracy, the Ribnikar school massacre, the state of workers’ rights during Tucović’s time, and Cana Babović’s, the partisan and communist.

The two historical figures also appear as characters, critically commenting on the current situation in Serbia. However, what fascinates me is how someone like Paković can create an hour and ten minutes of political theater without taking almost any clear political stance. The only two positions he articulated during the performance were “Down with capitalism” and “Down with Vučić” – without offering any political analysis of Serbia’s current situation, without telling us what kind of political system we need after the fall of Vučić’s regime. The show is not the type of political theatre that provokes and dissects the repressive reality, but attempts to capitalize on the current protest, as it is the first one to address them directly. I have to paraphrase a sentence from our colleague and critic Svetislav Jovanov, who said this during the roundtable discussion on this show: Reality got in a car and drove off. That is, the student protests have been going on for over six months, and this play got on a bicycle and is trying to catch up with that reality. This show indeed premiered in February, but it ends by calling on citizens to take to the streets, while protests, including blockades and other radical actions, have already been happening for over three months.

Andrej: I would highlight two main problems with this show. First, there is an excessive accumulation of content. Paković introduces a slew of motifs: bankers, the well-known Serbian businessman Miroslav Mišković, Aleksandar Vučić, and the massacre at Ribnikar Elementary School, trying to compare them with the ideals of early communists, vaguely defined through concepts like the common good and solidarity. This results in a superficial treatment, compounded by an intense acting style focused on loud, angry delivery rather than nuanced expression.

The second issue concerns structure. The content piles up in an arbitrary, unsystematic way, presenting the audience with a random catalogue of evils. This harsh theatrical language alienates even those who share the play’s critical stance. For example, the confrontation between Tucović’s values and contemporary authorities is only hinted at. The potential of juxtaposing past and present, a promising structural device, remains unexplored.

This lack of structure also leads to an inadequately motivated evocation of the tragic Ribnikar massacre. This profoundly painful event is treated on par with other problems listed by Paković, which, for me, borders on tastelessness and possibly even exploitation. I couldn’t shake the impression that the author used the names of the murdered children as a tool to emphasise his political position (with which I mostly agree). The pathological psychological profile of the teenage killer, explained through a story of stolen toys and social injustice, felt careless, trivializing a major tragedy.

The problem of content overload and lack of structure is also present in Boris Liješević’s Back, where the plot revolves around a drug cartel in Montenegro. It explores links between crime clans and political power, the small man caught in vast criminal schemes, attempts at resistance, prosecutorial corruption, the discrediting of green political alternatives, and the exploitation of innocent girls. While referencing relevant issues, the show kills not only hope but belief in any alternative, individual or collective, to pervasive corruption. Directorial structure is notably absent. A large container serves more as a stage prop than a symbolic act. The sheer volume of problems depicted dilutes the show’s critical potential, resulting in a deeply defeatist, even cynical commentary on contemporary Montenegro.

Borisav: I would just like to add, from a formal perspective, that this is an auteur project developed by Liješević with the ensemble of the Montenegrin National Theatre. The show’s text was created during rehearsals and is based on personal experiences – either direct or indirect – of the actors. So, this piece is indeed grounded in documentary events that point to the intertwining of politics and crime structures. However, its essence is defeatism. I think this is best reflected in the character of young Luka, who is a worker involved in drug trafficking. At the beginning of the story, we see him as someone who wants to devote himself to family life and withdraw from the criminal world. However, through blackmail and manipulation, he is dragged back into that world. But by the end, he turns into one of the key players in that world of crime. There’s a transformation here: from someone who is a dissident in that world to someone who becomes a leader. I think that’s the key element that supports the sense of defeatism of the show.

I find it interesting that almost all the productions in this year’s competition selection are, in some way, socially critical. We even have a case of a crime story – more precisely, a whodunit – in the show Nobody Is Forgotten and Nothing Is Remembered, from Atelje 212, directed by Bojana Lazić. The show is based on the novel of the same name by Mirjana Drljević and, through its genre framework, it addresses the consequences of the wars of the 1990s. I found the show intriguing because, behind the crime that unfolds in the plot, the roots of that crime lie in the wars of the 1990s – in something that our society tries to forget. And all of it is told through a female perspective, as the majority of characters are women, portrayed by five actresses – they even play a few male roles. So, we see women who are forced to confront and dismantle a legacy of male violence – and to move forward.

However, the main issue with this show is that the suspense, which is crucial for any detective genre, gets lost. I don’t know if you agree, but already by the middle of the show, maybe even earlier, the focus shifts more toward the personal stories and the broader social context, so we genuinely stop caring about who committed the crime. And in the end, even when we do find out who did it, we’ve already lost interest. This might not seem like a major flaw at first glance, but in a whodunit, the whole story should be driven by that central question – who committed the crime?

Andrej: Yes, I believe the main problem here was directorial. The production has a hybrid genre character, a detective story, a stylised collective performance, and a comedy to some extent. The core plot evokes a thriller’s atmosphere. The actresses, all in brown coats, play multiple roles. Characters aren’t distinguished by actors but only by names, which undermines our ability to immerse ourselves, empathise, and seek the responsible figure. This is compounded by the choice to portray all characters with a degree of abstraction rather than realism. Suspense and genre precision suffer as a result.

Finally, the plot itself isn’t particularly compelling. A high-ranking Serbian officer fails to prevent his friend’s son from going to war because his young daughter run away from home to go to the seaside. That son, now a traumatised adult, kidnaps the officer’s granddaughter and her friends’ children who accompanied her. The horrors of war are not the focus but merely a trigger for the plot. What we get is a diluted story that tangentially addresses the 1990s war, offering only small doses of detective-thriller excitement.

Borisav: This theme of returning to the past, specifically, to the wars of the 1990s, also brings us to the next thematic unit, which includes shows in the competition selection that, in some way, deal with history. I’d first like to talk about three such productions: St. George Slays the Dragon from the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Redemption from the Serbian National Theater, and Belgrade Trio from the Anton Podbevšek Teater and Cankarjev dom, Slovenia.

I won’t go into detail about St. George Slays the Dragon and Redemption, since I’ve already written reviews of these productions for SEE Stage. But I would briefly say that both plays can, in some ways, be associated with nationalist or revisionist interpretations of history. St. George Slays the Dragon is one of the weaker plays by Dušan Kolačević, dealing with the position of the Serbian people before and during the early days of World War I. Essentially, through various conflicts – primarily a central melodramatic one – the play explores the internal divisions within the Serbian people during moments of crisis. And this play, beneath all its various ironic and melodramatic layers, essentially conveys the idea that we, as a nation, are failing to realize our potential because we are not united. I would say that there’s something quite insidious hidden within those layers, something deeply conservative and traditionalist. Namely, the notion that pluralism is viewed as weakness. I think the main takeaway from this play could easily be summed up in that worn-out phrase: “God forbid the Serbs ever agree.” In other words, the underlying message seems to be that we could have been one great nation, only if we had united into a monolith.

Andrej: The novel Redemption and the play St. George Slays the Dragon both originate from the 1980s, a period when many political and cultural actors with nationalist agendas sought to confront the communist legacy. This context strongly marks both works, and they gain their full meaning only when this is taken into account. I won’t delve deeply into whether these works flirt with nationalism or critique it; analyses exist supporting both views. What I do observe, regarding both productions, is the absence of a clear reason for their staging. The directorial interpretations fail to convincingly explain why these texts should resonate with the contemporary moment.

Borisav: Redemption is a show is based on Branimir Šćepanović’s novel set in Yugoslavia during the 1970s. I believe that the director Veliko Mićunović intended to interpret this story as an existential, Kafkaesque tale about a man who cannot prove his own identity. However, as the show unfolds, that existentialist note gradually fades, and the historical context becomes increasingly relevant. It paints a picture of 1970s Yugoslavia as a state plagued by corruption, nepotism, and cronyism – one that ultimately betrayed and exploited the heroes of the National Liberation struggle for the new political class. In this light, the novel, written back in 1980, aligns quite neatly with a revisionist narrative suggesting that we, as a nation, essentially lost World War II, because it led to the establishment of the socialist state. And even though the show doesn’t delve deeply into WWII itself, there’s an underlying feeling throughout that we lost that war, as only its epilogue – depicted here in very negative terms – is brought into focus.

Overall, I would say that Mićunović’s primary focus was not on emphasizing the historical context. But I’d also argue that the existential aspect is handled so clumsily here that I have no choice but to focus on what this show, whether intentionally or not, is doing about the historical context.

Andrej: In Redemption, we see people who claim credit for others’ heroism. Who are these people today, and whose achievements are they stealing? The plot’s premise doesn’t align with the contemporary moment. The show works well, but only in an abstract sense. There’s a certain stylization in the acting: characters finish each other’s sentences, perform synchronized movements, creating a strange, Twin Peaks-like atmosphere that suits the novel’s tone. The problem is that throughout the performance, one is left asking: why am I watching this now, and what message do the authors want to convey?

Borisav: That’s why I believe Belgrade Trio offers a much more honest relationship with history. Unlike the previous two shows, it doesn’t fall into the trap of revisionist or nationalist narratives. Instead, it deals with the Goli Otok concentration camp in a way that aligns with the actual historical facts. In contrast to many other narratives, most of which have existed since the 1980s, that use Goli Otok as a pretext to falsely portray the entire existence of Yugoslavia as a totalitarian system, a state of terror, this production avoids such simplifications. This show truly addresses a dark chapter of Yugoslav history, without trying to equate Yugoslavia with totalitarian regimes like Nazism.

That said, I must admit that it’s unclear to me what exactly the production was trying to achieve, because history is hardly its only focus. On the one hand, it speaks about the persecution, primarily of Stalinists, and later of other dissidents in Yugoslavia, and their struggle on Goli Otok. On the other hand, the historical context serves merely as a backdrop for a melodramatic plot – in this case, a love triangle. And on yet another level, the show also toys with history through a pseudo-documentary form: some of the historical figures are quasi-historical, based on real people and bearing similar names. The entire production uses documentary-style projections and characters who speak into microphones, narrating the story themselves. So, in the end, I genuinely don’t know what the production was trying to achieve. It touches on three different approaches – pseudo-documentary, melodramatic, and historical – but ultimately ends up doing a little bit of each without fully committing to any.

Andrej: I completely agree, the story is genuinely gripping. A melodramatic love triangle unfolds between the comforts of life and the horrors of Goli Otok, between communist East and capitalist West, in the aftermath of World War II. It’s a kind of Balkan spy-ideological Casablanca, so inherently compelling that it never raises the question of why we’re watching a historical story or what it might be saying to us today.

What stands out as an obstacle in this production is a directorial-dramaturgical monotony: one rhythm, one tempo, one tone from beginning to end, with a symmetrically arranged stage and repeated placings and actions. The actors remain somewhat detached from their characters, the dramatic potential of the story is neglected, and everything is conveyed through narrative devices. An exciting story is told in such a dull manner that it took considerable mental effort to remain actively engaged throughout the performance.

 

Borisav: I agree, but I still value this production more, because there were playful dramaturgical and directorial choices made – even if they didn’t work together. I value it more than The People’s Deputy by Egon Savin, from the Macedonian National Theater, which is such an old-fashioned production that, in terms of its aesthetic and approach to the text, it belongs to the late 19th century, when Branislav Nušić wrote it.

It’s truly sad that a director like Egon Savin, who in the past recontextualized and creatively interpreted classical texts, has fallen to this level. Yes, there is some dramaturgical work here, since Nušić’s comedy was condensed and a number of characters were reduced. But the director falls into a trap: he treats Nušić as an eternal mirror of Serbian society and its ills and as the most contemporary Serbian writer, so brilliant and universal that we, as directors and dramaturgs, don’t even need to try to interpret his work. The assumption is that the text, just as it is, will automatically speak to our contemporary society and mentality.

Andrej: I found Egon Savin’s statement at the Round Table of Critics particularly interesting, as it exposed a certain inconsistency in his authorial intent. He claimed that Nušić is our only true theatrical genius, yet his dramaturgical intervention in Nušić’s first comedy removed everything that makes Nušić Nušić. He reduced the vivid, familiar, and beloved cast of characters to just five roles, stripped away the colourful intricacies of the plot, and created an artificial dramatic distillate of Nušić.

Then, in a production he’s staging in North Macedonia, he inserted references to the political situation in Serbia, purely for a mild comic effect. All this was done in the spirit of reconstructing the historical context in which Nušić wrote – a directorial gesture so conventional it could hardly be more typical of regional theatre.

Borisav: At the end of our dialogue, I have to emphasize – just as I said at the beginning – that this Sterijino pozorje is such an important festival, because it allows us to engage with a wide variety of theatrical poetics. Whether we agree with them or not, what truly matters is that this opens up a dialogue about the current state of theater in our country. And I must sincerely thank Sterijino pozorje for creating a space where critical thinking is possible. I wrote reviews of shows in the competition programme for the festival bulletin. I was able to be completely open and critical, and so were students of the Academy of Arts, who also published their reviews. What’s more, anyone could speak freely at the roundtable discussions, whether their perspective was critical or not. This is a truly valuable festival. And we must all stand in its defense, in defense of theater, of culture, and of education in Serbia – against a monstrous regime that only cares about culture when it serves as propaganda.

Andrej: I wholeheartedly share your conclusion. Sterijino pozorje stands as an example of how freedom of thought, critical thought above all, is sustained and protected. The work of the Pozorje team truly deserves praise, not only for this, but also for the high level of organizational professionalism they have maintained. Those in power who have denied Pozorje the public funding it rightfully deserves qualify for the public reproach, and should be ashamed of their actions.

Sterijino pozorje should not be the target of their retaliation – it should be their role model.

Further reading: Sterijino Pozorje festival has its funding denied