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removed from the repertoire of the Bel- grade Drama Theatre, while legend has it that the key role in this was played by Mi- roslav Krleža, who didn’t like the nihilistic tone of the drama. Director Vasilije Popo- vić, who was actually the rst student to graduate in theatre direction at the Bel- grade Academy of Dramatic Arts, under the pseudonym Pavle Ugrinov, sustained a terrible blow professionally and found him- self banned from directing at the theatre in the Crveni Krst neighbourhood. The play’s authors didn’t allow this to prevent them from presenting their work to the public, and they received help in their eorts from then young, promising painter Mića Popović, who made his paint- ing studio at the Old Fairground available for this occasion. The place of the perfor- mance, which had housed a notorious Na- zi concentration camp during World War II, suited the atmosphere of the play. The backbone of the drama Waiting for Godot is the idea of a quest for meaning in the aftermath of the horror and meaningless- ness of the Holocaust, which propelled the entire planet into a state of silent despair. Montenegrin painter Mario Maskareli was a collaborator on the set design and oered an extremely stylised solution for the play’s legendary tree. Due to a lack of resourc- es for décor for the play, instead of some laminated tree intended to imitate a real tree, Maskareli used a broom handle and a half-rusted wire that had been discard- ed. This tree, which literally came from a “dump”, de ed the sterile realism and ide- ology it represented, opening the door to the wonderful world of imagination. This event addressed an important is- sue for the development of the theatrical arts in Belgrade. Both the artists and the audience were confronted by the lack of stages for avant-garde art, which was then in full bloom around the rest of the world. From the recognising of this cultural need, theatre Atelje 212 emerged in 1956, with Waiting for Godot the rst play to be per- formed on its stage. Maskareli’s tree was the herald of the Yugoslav post-war avant-gar- de. It only appears as though nothing’s hap- pening. Predstava Čekajući Godoa , koja se igra u Ateljeu, nastala je 2011. kao studentska predstava, a iz nje je proizašla mala beogradska avangardna pozorišna trupa Tri groša The version of Waiting for Godot that is performed at Atelje 212 was created in 2011 as a student play. It spawned the small, avant-garde Belgrade theatre troupe “Tri groša” [Three Groats]
I t is not well known that Nobel laure- ate Samuel Beckett visited Belgrade in 1958. He spent a few days in the then capital of Yugoslavia, resolving copy- right issues for the translations of his nov- els, and then he travelled to the Croatian town of Lovran, where he stayed, with his wife Suzanne, at the Hotel Belgrade. Spe- ci cally, Yugoslav Serbo-Croat was the rst European language into which Beckett’s works were translated – not counting the writer’s personal translations. The translator, Kaća Samardžić, was the wife of Radomir Konstantinović, a unique intellectual, whose Small Town Philosophy book we quote today more than ever. Thanks to the letters that Ra- domir exchanged with Beckett, as well as one photograph shot surreptitiously by Politika reporter Srboljub Vranić, we to- day have a memento of Beckett’s visit to Belgrade. Shown in the image are Beckett and Kaća, walking along Narodnog Fron- ta Street. Beckett was modest and retiring. As if that’s exactly why he attracted the at- tention of the public. The love between the Irish and Serbi- an peoples extends from personal sympa- thies to the appetite of the local readership for Irish literature. Closeness and recogni- tion were also re ected in the early interest among young Belgrade theatre artists in the play Waiting for Godot, which prompt- ed a global revolution in the perception of the theatre. Belgrade was the rst city after Paris to receive a setting for its rst anti-play in the history of theatre. As with other rev- olutions, this one was also tough. On the actual day of the premiere, the play was
pović, koji je za tu priliku ustupio svoj slikarski atelje na Starom saj- mištu. Mesto izvođenja, na kojem se tokom Drugog svetskog rata na- lazio ozloglašeni nacistički logor, igralo je za atmosferu komada. Kič- ma drame Čekajući Godoa je ide- ja potrage za smislom u vremenu nakon strahota i besmisla Holoka- usta, koji je celu planetu bacio u tihi očaj. Crnogorski slikar Mario Maskareli bio je saradnik na sce- nografiji i ponudio je krajnje sti- lizovano rešenje legendarnog dr- veta iz komada. Zbog nedostatka sredstava za opremanje predsta- ve, umesto nekog kaširanog sta- bla koje bi težilo da imitira pravo drvo, Maskareli je upotrebio dršku za metlu i polurđavu žicu s nekog smetlišta. To drvo, koje je doslov- no bilo sa đubrišta, prkosilo je ste- rilnom realizmu i ideologiji koju je predstavljalo, otvarajući vrata ču- desnom svetu mašte. Ovaj događaj je otvorio važno pitanje za razvoj beogradske pozori- šne umetnosti. I umetnici i publika suočili su se s nedostatkom scene za avangardnu umetnost, koja je u tom periodu bila u punom cvatu u ostatku sveta. Iz prepoznavanja te kulturne potrebe 1956. nastalo je po- zorište Atelje 212, a Čekajući Godoa prva predstava koja je igrana na sce- ni tog pozorišta. Maskarelijevo drvo bilo je vesnik jugoslovenske posle- ratne avangarde. Samo naizgled – ništa se ne dešava.
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