Instructive, playful and fast, artistically interesting and musically impressive, that's what "The Goat Trial in Višnja Gora" was like. The performance of the Slovenian National Theater Celje introduced us to six skilled actors, among whom was Urban Kuntarič. Tired, but satisfied with the reaction of the audience, he spoke shortly after the long applause, about how to communicate with the audience today, especially the young, why comedies are so marginal and underrated and how, even at the family level, we have replaced the common good with individualism...
How should you address the young audience today?
For all audiences, especially the young, it's important not to underestimate them, to give them something that's easy for them to watch, but tell them important things. In our play, it was done by speeding everything up, in the rhythm of the generations for which it is intended: there is a quick sequence of stories, a narrative, then there is a joke, a stunt, then music, then again like layers, stories, jokes... The young are used to Tiktok speed, they don't react to anything slower. And this is one of the ways to get closer to them, to introduce them to what you actually want to tell them. You have to think of a way to tell them some stories, it's not enough just to tell them. That's just the way it is, that's the way this time is. You have to combine science and comedy. It seems to me that comedy is a good way to communicate with them. I like comedy. It is always a good way of communicating something about the world.
And why are comedies so marginalized and underestimated, the profession itself underestimates them and looks at them with suspicion, both in the theater for children and in the theater for adults?
I don’t know. We had a comedy festival in Celje some time ago, I had a podcast with the best Slovenian comedians. We agreed that comedy was underrated, that there weren't enough good comedies being made, but basically we didn't understand why. We only concluded that the problem of theater space is that everyone would prefer to do art, to be special, to do some contemporary theater all the time. But I like performances made for the masses, which does not mean commercial or cheap theater plays. People like comedies, they like to laugh, and it's easier to swallow some dangerous things through comedy, things they wouldn't want to hear otherwise. Laughter is what brings us together and it's a fantastic feeling when I'm in a full hall and we're all laughing together. It's so cathartic and wonderful.
What do the children ask you after this play?
Not much, but they are always enthusiastic about goat masks, they want to try them, they really like how we sing.
The Slovenian folk tale, based on which the play was created, teaches us to distinguish good from bad, what is bribery, self-interest. Why, even in a time when everything is much easier to find out than, for example, when children were raised on folk tales, that difference must be constantly taught, pointed out, even to mature generations. Life is fast, liberal capitalism grinds us, and yet, how did we become so terribly alienated from the good?
The problem is individualism. We are a society of individuals. Just me, me, me, me... And we have forgotten about the welfare of the community, the welfare of the society. And that individualism now starts in the family. The violation of the core of the community, the common good, begins in the family. If a family unit works, children can get security, self-confidence, courage, joy, curiosity, that is, all those values that help them, when they go out into the world, to spread values they took and learned from home. Equipped with those values, they will not go astray. But since those values are undermined in the family itself, children do not have a healthy base or support. Because of the constant pressure on people, the need to prove things, to make money, everything has been distorted and shaken. I'm not a parent yet, but people I know who are parents already have problems communicating with their children, because of phones and the Internet. That absence of communication and awareness of the need and importance of that communication makes this world alienated as it is today.
How do you personally resist that rush, the pressure of speed, the imperative of living in two realities - real and online? As an actor, you have to absorb everything, and as a living being, you have to have some normal, safe base...
I have always saved myself by doing sports, riding a bicycle. And I like to read books. I like the saying: the one who doesn't read - lives one life, and the one who reads - lives a hundred. Those are my two bases and they are good for an actor. Because if you live a hundred lives in books, you might be able to live some in the real world.
Snežana Miletić