Zvezdara is my second home
MY MOST RECENT PLAY, WIDOW OF A LIV- ING MAN , had its premiere performances at Zvezdara Theatre on 6 th , 7 th and 8 th October, and 8 th October is also the birthday of this theatre, when we this year celebrated four decades of operations. And my new play is dedicated to that anniversary. I’ve spent more than half of my working life at Zvezdara Theatre. And in the meantime, when I wasn’t writing drama sto- ries, I was writing novels and poems and working on films. In short, I’ve spent my entire life as either a reader and lover of art or as a creator of art. The examination of drama stories is a way of life for me. I love this job and it loves me; that love is mutual. We all have someone who isn’t there yet is alive. That sounds ironic and paradoxical, but that’s how it is when it causes us mental or physical pain. I have more love for some dear people that are long departed than for some who are alive. You are on- ly alive as long as people love and respect you. And this new, bitter comedy of mine is akin to almost everything I’ve written over the last half century, since The Marathon Family, with hope that I will do some- thing else properly. What Zvezdara theatre means to me It’s my second home. My mission at Zvezdara is to read text and fix it if required. There I deal exclu-
sively with the production of art. And what vexed me the most was when a bomb fell on the theatre during the 1999 bombing of Serbia, on the same day that an earthquake hit. I remember that we were sitting in the garden of the theatre that day, and instead of going our separate ways, we decided by some miracle to start all over again from scratch as a team. There’s always something being added, repaired, modified, finished and improved in and on that theatre to this day. Zvezdara Theatre has now entered its best years if measured by human parameters. It is 40 years old. Those of us who created the life of this theatre were in our best years during its infancy. It is a kind of ab- surdity that a theatre becomes better, more respect- ed and with more vitality the older it is, in contrast to a man who heads towards his demise. What Zvezdara means to Belgrade It means a lot. For example, it took less than an hour to sell out my new play for the entire month. Zvezdara Theatre is extremely important to Belgrade, Serbia and even the region. We’ve had attendance lev- els at 97 per cent over the previous 40 years. We have two stages in the building and one for guest perfor- mances, and only 18 employees and more than 103 collaborators. When it comes to its operations, this theatre is an extremely efficient enterprise.
76 | Beograd » Belgrade
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