Atelje 212, Belgrade, premiere 24th March 2024
Directed by Iva Milošević and based on the novel of the same name by Milica Sniva, Symptoms is an intimate performance that deals with some difficult topics. It touches on loss, aging, family tragedy, self-harm and intrusive thoughts, in the kind of direct yet sensitive way that we don’t usually see on stage.
Thirty-eight year old Sanja (played by Ana Mandić) is sleeping on the couch of her aunt who has dementia, and thinking about committing suicide. However, the voices in her head, played by Branislav Trifunović and Jelena Stupljanin, prevent her from doing so, instead making her deal with her problems, with her feelings of disappointment, anger, and loss after her husband cheated on her with a younger woman.
While Mandić generates a depressive atmosphere on the stage, in her grey sweatpants, the voices in her head are often funny and absurd, behaving like anchormen in the show of her life, speaking into microphones and acknowledging the presence of the audience to whom the story of Sanja’s life is being told, chapter by chapter.
As the play progresses, we learn that Sanja also cheated on her husband, Josif, for revenge, that he’s dying in hospital, and that their relationship started passionately even though now his seduction methods feel comic to her. Branislav Trifunović plays her husband in his younger years. Trifunović is darkly funny in these moments, whether mansplaining punk to girls at parties, singing into a microphone like he’s masturbating or getting stinking drunk on the couch. We learn that Josif used to be emotionally violent and that in the end, he became physically violent as well.
Ana Mandić gives a very authentic and compelling depiction of an immature woman getting older, feeling desire for her husband and hate towards him, the same way she feels about her own life and herself. We learn that she suffered fertility issues because of complications after the abortion of a child she conceived with an unknown man, one of many she slept with while on drugs. Her drug addiction and her sex addiction are depicted as a way for her to compensate for the lack of love she has for herself, love which she never got from her parents.
It turns out that Sanja has a difficult family history. Her father lost everything through gambling, and later died by suicide; her mother was violent towards her and suffered psychotic episodes, which eventually led to her early death. These burden are passed on to Sanja, who cuts herself to express anger. Yet, her desire for living is present in her enjoyment of sex, music, dancing, and parties – and in her love of Josif.
Symptoms, Atelje212 Photos: Boško Đorđević
The only person who truly loves Sanja and is there for her, is her aunt, Senka, played by Dara Džokić, who is suffering from dementia. Though Senka appears on stage only in the last quarter of a play, she has a strong impact on the whole story – and Sanja’s life. Dara Džokić’s performance is skilled and subtle; through small details she conveys the sense of a woman who seems completely lost in her Alzheimer’s, however, she still manages to make her sympathetic. Even tge scenes of her memory lapses have a warmth to them. For example, she buys four packages of green apples that Sanja loves, because she forgot she bought them the first three times. These apples represent her love for Sanja, and they represent Sanja as well – young, immature, sour, yet sweet, lovable and enough.
In Iva Milošević’s production, with dramaturgy by Dimitrije Kokanov, the surrealism of the voices in Sanja’s head are contrasted with the realism of Gorčin Stojanović’s scenography, recreating a small apartment on stage, with cheap furniture and babushka on the shelf, and the naturalistic conversation between Sanja and Senka about apples, the market, and Senka’s past, a story which Sanja never knew, about her husband who disappeared and a child that died. Sanja and Senka’s relationship warms this often dark story and makes it possible to have a happy ending – with the two of them fantasizing about how they’ll open a flower store while eating the apples.
The show sensitively explores the process of aging as a woman. Sanja is 38 and her husband cheated on her with a woman who is 25, which was the age she was when they first met. This is the reason Sanja feels unworthy, she feels as if she has wasted her life and has nothing. When she was 25, she used to sleep on her aunt’s couch and dream about the future; now she’s back on that couch and she only ruminates about the past. However, her aunt Senka is 80, and she has a different perspective on Sanja’s age. She finds her and her husband, who is 50, young. She sees a life ahead for Sanja, and it seems that Sanja can finally see it as well. In a loving relationship with her aunt and small everyday things like eating apples and growing flowers, Sanja finally finds the meaning of life.
This show touches on a lot of painful but important topics. It is full of heavy emotions and leaves you shaken. It confronts its audience with the prospect of death and the lack of meaning and hope in the world. It is full of nostalgia for the past, for the youth, for the country and an age that is now just part of history. But its strength is the way it finds meaning and light amid all this, even in the mind of a depressed woman prone to self-destructive behaviour.
It also grants us a view of Serbian contemporary literature of the generation traumatized by war, poverty, crime, and violence that followed in the early 2000s. Talking about it – finding things and people to hold onto and connect with – is the only way our society can heal itself, can stop itself from reproducing the trauma and passing down the violence, from descending into despair.
Credits:
Director: Iva Milošević//Author: Milica Sniva//Dramatization and adaptation: Iva Milošević//Dramaturg: Dimitrije Kokanov//Scenography: Gorčin Stojanović// Costumes: Marija Marković Milojev
Cast: Branislav Trifunović and Jelena Stupljanin, Ana Mandić, Dara Džokić
For tickets and more information, visit: Atelje212.rs
Mina Milošević is a playwright, dramaturg, screenwriter, and theoretician based in Belgrade. She holds a BA in Dramaturgy and an MA in Theory of Drama Arts at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. She worked as a dramaturg on plays in Atelje 212, Belgrade Drama Theatre, Yugoslav Drama Theatre, National Theatre in Belgrade, and Oda Theatre in Prishtina. Her play "Dr Ausländer (Made for Germany)" was presented at BITEF festival 2022. Her master's thesis on female friendship in Serbian contemporary theatre won the "Professor Boško Milin" Award.
