Our friend Slaven Kranjc was a proud student of the Political Sciences when we met. He saw one of the shows that The EVENT THEATER proudly presented at the famous SKC in Belgrade and came to tell us that he had a better place for us in mind. No, he didn't mean the correctional institution of any sort. He came to that later. At first he just wanted us to move our activities to the neighborhood where he would offer us a better deal. Anyway, why don't we listen to the tape of that conversation?
THE PLACE; Restaurant MANJEZ, Belgrade, South East Europe.
CHARACTERS:
SLAVEN: Waiter, two brandies over here, and try to make it
today! (turns towards me) You still here? Good. I like your
play. Good, funny stuff. Too profound for me, almost
esoteric, bordering on obscure... But, and this is
important, it's the first time I enjoyed a show that did not
have a car chase or naked people in it. I guess it's good.
ME: Actually, I wanted to have somebody unclothed on stage
but our most likely candidate, Dragana, has a father who's a
retired Army Officer...
SLAVEN: Say no more. Anyway, "to present the uttermost to
the eye is to bind the wings of fancy"!
ME: I'll drink to that!
SLAVEN: If it's all right with you, I'll review your plays
some more: see, the way they all end, nobody dies, nobody
gets married, nobody comes up with some big revelation, and
still you come out with a sense that you've witnessed a well
rounded, finished peace of art.
ME: Can I have one of your cigarettes?
SLAVEN: This strictly among us: I can't stand those plays
that are intimate journeys towards self-revelation that will
never happen... You know, theater-as-therapy, plays that do
not invite us in, because they were not written with anybody
but the author in mind. The author who was looking forward
to achieve some degree of personal catharsis from writing.
Oh, and the pain that I've felt while sitting through
numerous plays without focus, that splatter outward in every
direction...
ME: Do you have any money? Who's gonna pay for all this?
SLAVEN: I'll pay! That's the least I can do for such a
genius. You have no idea what an honor and delight this is.
Oh, there are so many things I would like to know, I don't
know where to start... Tell me, do you write to discuss a
social issue or to demand a change in a society or to
explore the mystery of life or are you interested more in
Prometean striving for omnipotence and omniscience...
ME: Waiter, one more round over here! (turning towards
Slaven) Young man, I like you and that's why I hate to
disappoint you. I write comedies. The best I can hope for is
to write a farce in which possible people will be doing
improbable things. I've read it somewhere as a definition of
a good farce and that is what I'll try to write. I too hate
plays that you've described, and which I call "out of gas
and in the middle of nowhere plays". I would like to write a
play about teenage suicide or about perpetrators of the lost
causes, but only if I can make it funny. And I can, I know I
can! Where's that brandy?!
SLAVEN: Perpetrators? Lost causes? Don't get us into a
trouble! I know you artists! Always looking for an
opportunity to provoke some controversy. After you spent a
couple of years in jail, you're off to the West to go on a
lecturing circuit. "How I suffered in the hands of the
Communists only because I tried to freely express myself!"
And at the reception afterwards, you confidence bolstered by
some cheap white wine, you find yourself reciting Yesenin in
Russian to a wide-eyed female holder of a master's degree in
English...
ME: Sounds good.
SLAVEN: But in reality it's a destiny worse than death. A
great Russian writer, after only a few months in the West,
wrote: "without any censorship in the West, fashionable
trends are fastidiously separated from those that are not
fashionable. And the latter, without ever being forbidden,
have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or
books or being heard in colleges. Their scholars are free in
e legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the
prevailing fad. A selection dictated by fashion and the need
to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most
independent minded persons from contributing to public life
and gives rise to dangerous heard instinct that block
successful development." Up to the point, isn't it?
ME: Huh? Oh, sorry young man, I've been wondering about that
looking at the brunette over there. She looks familiar...
Anyway, you were saying?
End of tape.
But this was not the end of our interchange. You may try
tape number 2
or you may go get yourself some
beer.
