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Directed and adapted by EGON SAVIN
based on dramatisation by
Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz
Dramaturgy BRANISLAVA ILIĆ
Idea for the setting EGON SAVIN
Costume design JELENA STOKUĆA
Composer ZORAN HRISTIĆ
Stage Speech LjILjANA MRKIĆ-POPOVIĆ
Sound design ZORAN JERKOVIĆ
Lighting design MIODRAG MILIVOJEVIĆ
Assistant director ANA GRIGOROVIĆ
Assistant dramaturge MILA MAŠOVIĆ
Assistant costume designer OLGA MRĐENOVIĆ
Premiere: December 27th 2008 |
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CAST |
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Ahmed Nurudin |
NIKOLA RISTANOVSKI |
Jusuf (Mula Jusuf) |
NENAD STOJMENOVIĆ |
Fugative-stranger |
ALEKSANDAR ĐURICA |
Judge's wife (cadi's wife) |
NATAŠA NINKOVIĆ |
Hasan Dželebdžija |
LjUBOMIR BANDOVIĆ |
Inspector (Muselim) |
BORIS PINGOVIĆ |
Police officer (spy) |
ZORAN ĆOSIĆ |
Judge (Cadi) |
SLOBODAN BEŠTIĆ |
Sinanudin (Hadži Sinanudin) |
MARKO NIKOLIĆ |
Jailor |
NEBOJŠA KUNDAČINA |
Kara Zaim |
TANASIJE UZUNOVIĆ |
Colonel Osman (Miralaj Osman bey) |
DARKO TOMOVIĆ |
Secretary (Vizier's accountant) |
MIODRAG KRIVOKAPIĆ |
Young man |
MARKO JANKETIĆ |
Dervish |
IGOR ILIĆ |
Dervish (ballet dancer) |
ŽELjKO GROZDANOVIĆ |
Dervishes |
Aleksandar Vukić, Slaven Radovanović, Miloš Obrenović |
Guards |
Milan Šavija, Miloš Dmitrović |
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| NATIONAL THEATRE - BELGRADE |
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| The activity of the Drama of the National Theatre can be viewed as a development in four stages: from 1868 till 1914, from 1918 till 1941, from 1945 till 1991, and from 1991 till today.The first stage is marked by many tragedies and enactments inspired by mediaeval and modern history, like The Death of Uroš V by Stefan Stefanović.The characteristic of the repertoire of the National Theatre, especially at the end of the 19th century were plays with singing like dramatizations of Stevan Sremac’s popular short stories: Zona Zamfirova and Ivkova Slava In the first two decades of the 20th century the broadening of subject matters was noticeable. Beside Branislav Nušić, best young authors write for the National Theatre, and we must mention Simo Matavulj, Vojislav Jovanović Mirabo and Milivoj Predić.Koštana by Borisav Stanković was first shown at the very beginning of the 20th century and it has remained the cult performance of this theatre till this day.In the first stage on the repertoire of the National Theatre were plays written by the most significant writers of all periods: from the earliest (Sophocles), to Shakespeare, Calderon, Moliere, Racine, Goldoni, Rostand, Gete, Ibzen, Strindberg, Gogol, Ostrovsky, Chekhov and Gorky. Between the two world wars, speaking of domestic dramaturgy, the plays of Jovan Sterija Popović, Branislav Nušić, Milutin Bojić, Borisav Stanković, Ivo Vojnović, Milan Begović, Ivan Cankar and Todor Manojlović were staged.In the period from 1945 till 1953 the plays with clear political message were played. In the first two years of this period, the Russian playwrights had the primacy .Political changes and certain liberalization characterise the relationship towards the foreign dramaturgy and discovering of the American drama and the works of Jonesco and Becket.Seventies and eighties were marked by plays of Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz, Aleksandar Popović, Žarko Komanin, Ljubomir Simović and Jovan Hristić.The National Theatre opened its door to the contemporary world dramaturgy. Plays by Martin Mcdona, Erich Emanuel Schmidt, Nina Valsa, Jasmina Reza, Pavel Kohout are played and plays by Serbian contemporary writers Siniša Kovačević, Vida Ognjenović, Jelena Kajgo, Miloš Nikolić, Stevan Pešić can be seen on the stage of the National Theatre. |
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P E R F O R M A N C E...... |
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Discovering repressive methods by which the state authority operates, Nurudin gradually loses self-respect, and the pain of losing his brother is replaced with hatred and a wish for revenge. More than once Meša Selimović mentioned that hatred, envy, love and passion in general greatly influence human actions on the conscious or unconscious level and that denial of all human fluctuations is a denial of life itself (...) By looking at the complexity of Nurudin' character, we can only assume the greatness of the drama taking place within the writer, while trying to understand the act of killing his innocent brother, but also to explain his own silence of many years.
The performance adapted and directed by Egon Savin points to the reasons for keeping silent, which was just a part of the deafening silence in the period when it was impossible to speak without consequences. The story was moved from the 18th century into 1950s, into the post-war Sarajevo and the new state. In a political system in which people sing about construction and freedom, one word can cost one's life, the moral responsibility of any individual, even dervish's, cannot been seen out of the context of power and state.
Unfortunately, regardless of the efforts and laws to protect the rights and life of individuals in a modern world, we are witnesses of the fact that Ahmed Nurudin could walk through our time, and would surely run into a closed door, people who refuse to give answers, into dead silence and sneer, and he could even lose his life because of the spoken words.
The only thing we do not know is whether Ahmed Nurudin would, in a moment of doubt, utter the last sentence "For death is senseless as is life" aloud or keep his mouth shut.
 Branislava ILIĆ |
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S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T...... |
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The first sign of this play, extremely rich in its stage radiation, woven out of a mature imaginative weaving of Egon Savin, reaches from the claustrophobically rewritten perspective of a classical scene of a box diagonally narrowed down by a heavy wall as an almost palpable symbolic image of that (un)human power that tramples upon the convictions and desires of the characters in Selimovic's work. All the rest is equally important and powerful as that wall here, and it adds up together just like when proven masters are gathered together. Savin is here again leading a successful dialogue not only with Selimovic's work/persona and the embraced discourse of the epochs, but also with a brilliant soloist Nikola Ristanovski is capable of being - unique and universal, with an ensemble in which both stars and the emptied space between them glows, with a skillful instrumentalization of decor and all the visible and audible elements of the stage. The play, which, for its external features, like costumes, we can prize as a topical innovation, and which may still, in the impression of its overall quality, remain almost insignificant. Just as it is not of extreme importance for the dervish dance producing the interplays of this successful theatrical revival of the celebrated novel whether or not the circle in which the dance takes place is visibly marked or entirely fictive, accessible only to the spirit of the person dancing or to us all.
Igor BURIĆ & Vladimir KOPICL |
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Egon Savin: Born in 1955 in Sarajevo in a family of opera singers. He earned his degree in directing in 1979 from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, in the class of Prof. Dejan Mijac. Already with his first directing he presented himself as one of the most significant Serbian and Yugoslav directors. He works as a full professor at the Department of Theatre Directing of the FDA. He has 70 directing jobs of various dramatic repertoir behind him, from contemporary national authors that he directed with informal troupes to the world classics in the greatest national theatres. He worked across the former Yugoslavia: in Belgrade, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Skopje, Sarajevo, Podgorica, Rijeka, Sombor, Krusevac and Zrenjanin. The plays of Egon Savin were performed all over the world: in New York, Chicago, Montreal, Toronto, Paris, Vienna, Nancy, Mullheim, Wiesbaden, Zurich, Tel Aviv, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Trieste...
Awards: Prize for best director „Jurislav Korenić“ MES Sarajevo, 1979; „Golden Laurel Wreath“ for best director MES Sarajevo, 1980; „Three Golden Stars“ for best director MES Sarajevo, 1981; Prize for best director at the Meeting of the Theatres of Vojvodina, 1987, 2006, 2008; Prize for best director at the Theatre Ceremonies of Mladenovac, 1992; Prize „Bojan Stupica“ for best director, 1992/93, 2004; Statuette Freedom for best director at the Theatre Ceremonies of Mladenovac, 1993; Gold Medal „Jovan Đorđević“ SNP Novi Sad, 1997; „Ardalion“ for dramatisation at the Yugoslav Theatre Festival, 1999; Great Prize CNP Podgorica for best director, 2000; Great Prize Grand Prix at the V biannual of set design 2004; „Ardalion“ for best director at the Yugoslav Theatre Festival, 2004; „Turkey“ for best director at the Comedy Days, 2005, 2006, 2008; Statuette „Joakim Vujić“ Kragujevac, 2005; April Prize of the City of Belgrade, 2005; Prize for best director Vrsac Autumn, 2007; Prize for best director „Joakim Vujić“ Joakim INTERFEST Kragujevac, 2008; Prize for best director at the Internationl Festival of Small Stages, Rijeka 2008.
Sterijina Prizes: Sterija Prize for best director - 1989, 1992, 1993, 1997, 2008; Sterija Prize for adaptation - 2000, 2005; Sterija Prize for extraordinary achievements - 2006.
Most significant plays: World classics: YDT Beograd - M. Gorki, On Vacation, W. Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, A. N. Ostrovski, Forest, Moliere, Tartuffe; NT Belgrade- E. Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, I. Singer, Demon; Bitef teatar - F. M. Dostoyevskyi, Crime and Punishment; MNT Podgorica - I. Gončarov, Oblomov; SNP Novi Sad - Dostoyevsky, Uncle's Dream.
Contemporary international authors: I. Iredinski, Goodbye, Judas (graduation play), F. K. Krec, No fish nor meat, Chamber Theatre 55 Sarajevo; V. Havel, Largo Desolato, CT 55 Sarajevo; S. Sheppard, State of Shock, NT Belgrade; E. Bond, I don't have anyone, MNT Podgorica; E. Puig, The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Zvezdara Theatre Belgrade.
National Classics: SNT Novi Sad - Sterija, Laža i paralaža, A. Popović, Mrešćenje šarana, M. Krleža, Gospoda Glembajevi, J. Gotovac/M. Begović, Ero s onoga svijeta, Opera SNP; NP Beograd - Sterija, Kir Janja, Sterija, Pokondirena tikva, M. Selimović, Derviš i smrt; Kult teatar Beograd - A. Popović, Tamna je noć; CNP Podgorica - D. Kiš, Elektra; NP Kruševac - A. Popović, Svinjski otac; Atelje 212 Beograd - A. Popović, Smrtonosna motoristika; JDP Beograd - B. Nušić, Tako je moralo biti.
Contemporary national playwrights: SNP Novi Sad - D. Kovačević, Sveti Georije ubiva aždahu, Lj. Simović, Čudo u Šarganu, Lj. Simović, Putujuće pozorište Šopalović, D. Leskovar, Tri čekića, N. Romčević, Laki komad; BDP Beograd - S. Kovačević, Novo je doba, S. Koprivica, Dugo putovanje u Jevropu, B. Radaković, Kaj sad?, M. Fehimović, Ćeif ; SKC Beograd - R. Pavlović, Šovinistička farsa; Zvezdara teatar Beograd - M. Popović, Buba; Atelje 212 Beograd - D. Spasojević, Odumiranje; NP „Toša Jovanović“ Zrenjanin - I. Lalić, Heroj nacije. |
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Meša (Mehmed) Selimović (1910 - 1982), prose writer and essayist. Born in Tuzla, earned a degree from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, fought in the “People’s Liberation Movement” since 1941. From 1944 worked in the Committee for discovering crimes of the occupying forces in Belgrade, from 1946 in the Committee for culture of the Yugoslav government. From 1947 in Sarajevo, assistant professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, art director of “Bosnia-Film,” Drama director at the National Theatre. Many years editor-in-chief of the publishing house “Svjetlost.” Until death lived in Belgrade.
War themes dominated his early works, equally in stories and in the novels Silences (1961) and Mist and Moonlight (1965). Subtle psychology and accurate personality characterisation mark those texts and doubtlessly set them apart from the series of works thematically linked to war motifs. His most significant work, the novel Death and the Dervish (1966), is not only characterised by a well formed style and subtle psychological analyses, but also with its dramatic atmosphere, an extraordinary vertical line between its conceptual and stylistic meaning, in the entire period of Yugoslav literatures after the war, it appears as one of the most particular and most representative books. The entire philosophy of life, experienced and realised in the middle of Bosnia, in the midst of the oriental-Islamic structure of viewing the world and thinking, is here expressed in an inspired projection, with powerful universal meanings. (...) The novel was written multi-dimensionally, in a complex, contemporary manner, attentive to everything that threatens humans among the great worlds and evil imperatives of an unjust government.
Bibl: The Offended Man, The First Squadron, Foreign Land, Essays and Commentaries, For and Against Vuk, Fortress (novel), Writers, Opinions, Conversations, Island (novel), Reminiscences. (Yugoslav Literature Lexicon, Matica Srpska, Novi Sad, 1984). |
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NOVEL: Every man who believes in certain ideology, no matter which one, is dervish. He is a believer and a communist, everyone who is firmly embedded in general dogma...
...Anyway, I was not interested in the contemplative system, but in the image of people in life, their psychology and their moral dilemmas, and all of that in the conditions which are general, of all time, and which are ours, contemporary...
Human traits which last for centuries (love, hate, fear, envy...) are man’s immanent characteristics that make his core, whether in the public or private property sphere.
His most intimate and most essential ones - both good and bad - man usually hides, but they have great impact on his actions. Hiding their real face, people sometimes use masks, which become “exterior expression”, tuned to the ruling standards of society and milieu. Socialization of the private awareness, which would not harm the individuality, that is the ideal of the evolution of a modern man...
... For me, man is the battlefield of the struggle between basic instincts and the wish to remain a man. He is a tragic being who comes to the world without wishes and leaves it against his will, lives in fear of infinite cosmos and short vital inspiration, limited by two unknown secrets at the beginning and the end of his life, burdened by conscience which tortures him, not allowing him to throw himself at the mercy of the devastating and appealing powers of his passions, drawn downwards by all afflictions, and by some shining spark and fire drawn upwards without any special reason to be happy, often lit up with his own thought or someone else’s love, short and great, tiny and elevated, damned and magnificent...
RELIGION: Personally I feel no need for religion as my personal belief or means of communication, because I have been an atheist for a long time now (...) I cannot be against religious conviction, because of the fact that my mother was deeply religious, and until she died, a few years ago, she bowed five times a day...
... I respect Kur-an as one of the pillars of the human thought in development and search, not as an absolute truth, because there is not such a thing. However, many critics did not notice that I do not cite the Kur-an in order to promote its truths, or to introduce eastern philosophy into our literature, but to point out the custom and need of the insecure people always to rely on some authorities and to back up their dead, stereotype idea with the stronger, canonised one, sterilizing theirs and someone else’s spirit.
I did not study Islam philosophy, only as much as was needed to inform myself. If there is philosophy in my work, it comes from this soil, from my Muslim roots, from our tradition, from our spirit...
As far as I know, in my novel, for the first time the Kur-an is extensively quoted in the European literature, while that was done with the Bible many times...
Meša SELIMOVIĆ, Pisci, mišljenja i razgovori, BIGZ, Beograd, 1983. (Writers, Opinions and Talks, BIGZ, Belgrade 1983) |
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DERVIŠ AND A POET
In the midst of a picturesque and mythical milieu, concrete and symbolic, in the middle of this seemingly rationally organised imperial province and events provided with ideological, moral and psychological motivation, in the background or depth, you can feel intensive presence of a blurred essence, difficult to explain, from which the existence is separated. We are reached by hollow voices of a world which humanity hardly has the insight into. Presence of some irrational instigators and layers becomes more and more obvious. The power of words and understanding is weakened under the terror, violence, under the burst of bestiality and indifference which nature intercepts man with. Here where everything is wavering, the border between good and evil, deception and reality, truth and lie, language and matter, conscience and world, is also wavering. Prolonged into a typical oriental meditation and metaphysics, above which the spirit and the word of the Kurgan and Islamic philosophical tradition float, the world of certainty and law is disintegrating thanks to one real being filled with anxiety and fear, to be exposed as the reality of a nightmare, fate, coincidence. The world condensed into the metaphor of “running away and pursuing”, into the image of a dungeon whose foundations are cosmic and historical, could not motivate Ahmed Nurudin to believe in reason, but on the contrary, the suspicion that he himself was handed over into the hands of irrational, demonic powers which handle man and his destiny.
The air of this great perplexity and inquiry are being breathed by all characters of Selimovic’s novel. While they talk, we have an inkling of what they are silent about. This procedure of leaving out, conveying through well-composed blanks is characteristic of Mesa Selimovic’s style and way of thinking. Mesa made a present of his contemplative temperament and his inclination towards philosophical to Ahmed Nurudin, placing him in the life circumstances which make such a man and such a contemplation feasible. Action and contemplation are permeated like literariness and viability, modelling that inner voice which is speaking. This dedication with which one talks cannot be brought down to the literalness. Dervish is guilty in his own eyes and he might become a hero, a traitor who might redeem himself, a judge who is his own judge and a witness, “a soul who scolds himself in a voice” intimate but not private, with irrelevant proportion of self-pity and intellectual affectation, in a refined but not lifeless voice, succulently but also subtly, with lucidity and experience, with restraint and at the same time with enthusiasm and elation, gentlemanly but not formally nor dreary. Death and the Dervish is a book of maturity, and the strength and force of its wisdom does not lie in the philosophical uniqueness of Nurudin’s deliberations, but in the poetic worthiness of the language, tone, suitable to the “mode of being” and its environment. What this book impresses by is not some isolated spectacular intelligence, but the sensibility and imagination of a poet on which this tragic vision of life leans on. Individual and solemn tone conquers, balanced and frenetic at the same time, the tone of a man who thinks about himself maturely and with profound.
From: Muharem PERVIĆ, Dervish and a poet (Selection of critical texts about Death and the Dervish in Miroslav Egeric “Death and the Dervish” by M. Selimovic) Zavod za udzbenike i nastavna sredstva, Belgrade, 1995 |
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Life as Fear and Guilt
(...) Egon Savin and collaborators recognise and see Selimovic’s, Andric’s and our Bosnia as a great metaphor of the world without love and trust, as a place of constant conflicts, a territory lined by prison walls from which, through narrow passages, sometimes, and occasionally, one can see the other, sunny side of life. (...) Nikola Ristanovski’s Ahmet Nurudin thinks and feels without the wise man’s intellectual pretension; humanely and convincingly he carries his dilemma, suffering, dilemmas, questions, pain, misfortune and worry that everything in this world is so nauseating, heavy, burdening, unexplainable, and that, in such a world, a decent man cannot succeed in remaining so. (...)
Muharem PERVIĆ, Politika, December 29 2008
Under Tito's Bust
(...) “What am I now? An atrophied brother or an uncertain dervish? Have I lost the human love or have I damaged the firmness of faith, thereby losing everything?” (...) The principal question posed here is not how but why. Savin consciously set an entirely different concept: by placing the action during the time of the conception of the work, he gave homage to the ethic and spiritual hardship of the writer himself, to whom the Communist regime killed an innocent brother. Apart from this, with this approach the director stripped Selimovic’s allusions and clearly showed what was always known: that Nurudin’s fate, in fact, is the drama of an intellectual in every totalitarian regime, Ottoman, Titoist or any other. That choice finds support in the fact that the problems of contemporary politics is different: we do not live in the times when we can be, without a word, swallowed by the darkness of a fortress in Bosnian crevices and the stone pit of an Adriatic island. That does not mean it is better - bodies are not suffering any more, but buying souls - but it is, most certainly, different. (...) From a plethora of details, one can single out the brilliant metaphor of the rug: while he is faithful to himself, to his faith and principles, Nurudin carries the praying rung everywhere with him because his fate is determined by it, and when he betrays himself and becomes a politician, same as the people he fought against, then he has a red cabinet carpet constantly being crumpled, thus hinting at his final falterning of his life (...)
Ivan MEDENICA, Vreme, January 29 2009 |
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