Not only Paris is the city of light. It can be other cities as well, because the light of the city is not lighting. The lights are the people who make it and who, with their spirit, attitude towards the city - build the spirit of the place where they live. The actors from Kragujevac who performed the play "City of Light" at the Novi Sad Theatre Festival told us about one such place in Serbia - their city Kragujevac.
Chilean director and actor David Zuazola directed this unusual play, which revealed to us how Kragujevac breathes, how it used to breathe, but also what kind of theatre its actors are capable of creating. The play told us about the many symbols of the city, from potholes and heavy traffic - which is not exclusively specific of Kragujevac, to the phenomenon of the disappearance of the spirit of the city - which we witness in many Serbian cities and the ecological message in the form of the destroyed Lepenica river, to a strong anti-fascist message, embodied in the story of Šumarice.
One of the actresses in the play, Ljubica Radomirović, spoke about Kragujevac as a city of light...
In the play, you spoke very well about the anti-fascist past of Kragujevac and our country in general, the anti-fascist tradition that today we are ashamed of and push under the carpet. Some true values on which generations grew up are being erased and some other "values" are being written. How much does Kragujevac respect its anti-fascist tradition?
I was born in Užice, and the struggle against fascism is in the blood of the Užice people. I was on an excursion in Kragujevac, I was then in Šumarice, but it's different when you live in that city and understand what happened there. The anti-fascist tradition is very much alive and it is a moment of history that must not be forgotten. Because the newer generations are trying to downplay it, we have to tell the children of each new generation about Šumarica and that suffering, especially since today, unfortunately, we are witnessing a genocide that is happening against a nation, and no one is reacting. I think it is very important that we covered this topic in the theatre for children. People forget and need to be reminded. We experience all kinds of things on a daily basis, the news changes so quickly that we don't even remember some of the recent horrors.
The theater is there to warn and remind us of everything around us...
And it has been doing that for 2000 years.
It is a great responsibility to teach and remind children and young people about environmental and various other social topics... Do you ever get tired?
But that is our task, the theatre should not – whether it is for adults, or children - deal with trivial topics and for people to get mere entertainment. Unfortunately, many people go to the theatre to get mere entertainment and think that’s theatre’s only purpose. But the theatre is a well-mannered educational institution and it's absolutely fine to deal with all these topics. Maybe it discourages someone, but until something changes, until people learn that they should throw garbage in the bin, we need to work on it, be persistent.
Here at the festival, we keep talking about how in Serbia a certain age group of young people in one part of their lives has nothing to watch in the theater. Why aren't we interested in creating the taste of those young people?
We always ask what they are actually interested in, what interests them more, because we wouldn't make plays about Tiktok and Instagram. And then we are always on a seesaw. We opened the Youth Stage about a year ago and, if nothing else, we put on plays based on the mandatory reading material. So, over time we will find out what they would like to watch. Also, they are a little confused, not exactly sure what they would like to see in the theatre.
What kind of audience are children and young people in Kragujevac? Do you manage to get their attention?
We have a really well-groomed audience, parents bring their children, and we also have real fans who watch plays up to 15 times. The culture of going to the theatre in Kragujevac is very much present, even though there is a segment of the population that doesn't even know that there is a theatre, whereas those who know - they adore it.
Snežana Miletić