What does it look like when pain is danced, when the longing for freedom is danced, what kind of diary of today's world pain could be written every day, and where can a person save oneself from today's world; these are the questions for Renata Vidić, the director of the play "The Diary of Anne Frank", which opened the 3rd Novi Sad Theatre Festival on the stage of the Youth Theatre.The Slovenian director says that the common denominator of all the questions raised is freedom, which it is the key to everything - and that is why we must fight for it. She does it on the theater stage.
The time we live in is not as dramatic as that of Anne Frank’s, but even at this moment there are parts of the world where it is difficult and almost impossible to live. At the moment when we are talking, some people in Gaza, Ukraine, in other parts of the world, are in some basements or attics and fear for their lives and the lives of their children... If you were writing a diary like that of Anne Frank, what would you write about this time in it?
I think that Anne Frank chose the form of her diary well, to write to her friend. And the diary that I would write would also be a kind of dialogue, because writing a diary is always like a dialogue, you talk about yourself - you think about yourself and the things around you, about the world you live in and write about it, but always before you write, you think about what you are going to say, you think about your feelings. That self-reflection is still very important today. Self-reflection is a way to go through life so that you know what you want, to see injustice, whether it concerns you or someone else, and to speak about it. Today we live at a very fast pace, the rhythm is astonishingly fast, we live with photos and thumbnails on our phones... Man is no longer a man, we are not the being we once were.. Things are snatched from our hands and we don't know how to understand them. ...
At what point did you realize that you would do Anne Frank as a dance performance?
It was actually the idea of Katja Pegan, director of the Koper Theatre. She suggested that we do a play about Anne Frank since the book had been taken out of the reading list at schools. And she also suggested the dance format, asking me to write a dramatic template, a kind of script, so that Siniša Bukinac would have material for choreography.
Why do you think The Diary of Anne Frank was removed from Slovenian reading list? Why do we today, everywhere, seem to be ashamed of those people who are symbols of the struggle for freedom that we live in today...
In Slovenia, the argument was that it is no longer relevant... And let's look at Gaza, Ukraine, Africa, Iran, Iraq... These horrors are still happening to people. We still live in the age of fascism. Not all of us, but quite a lot of us. We have those skinheads, those fools from football games, neo-Nazism is on the rise, as well as right-wing parties in all of Europe. Let's say, our Slovenia is very xenophobic. We don't like foreigners. Our policy is bad rhetoric towards foreigners. Illegal emigrants pass through Slovenia and people would not help them.
The Slovenian writer Goran Vojnović wrote a novel on that topic - "Chefurji raus". We - people, actually do not tolerate anything that is new and unknown, we do not accept new people, ideas, new opportunities... We only talk about change, and since change is a responsibility, we actually long for the status quo. Is it different in the area of art and theatre, for example?
The theatre, it seems to me, is still a place of freedom. At least that's been my experience, wherever I've worked. Not only freedom on stage, but freedom of ideas. Theatre works in various ways. It is a space of acceptance of communication and an extended hand, sometimes even despite some circumstances. It is above all a space of freedom.
What is the most interesting topic for you in Slovenia, in the theater today?
Several times during our conversation I said the word - freedom. It is the highest value for me. It is my main subject. Freedom of the individual and society in general.
Is it present among the actors, do you feel it in the actors you work with?
There is no actor without freedom. If they did not feel the desire for freedom, they would not be actors.
Do you know someone who fights for freedom - speech, action, freedom of thought?
I know. Every artist is a freedom fighter.
Snežana Miletić