Word of the director

The screenplay by Olga Dimitrijevic takes in question the position of the working class in Serbia today as a starting point, inspiration, motivation, but not as the issue, or at least not central, nor the only topic engaged. I’ve experienced it as a story about people whose position in the community (civil, labor, and family, marriage) is not satisfying, and they don’t have enough power to be able to change it. Few possibilities that are left are used by them, and yet not used at the same time. They waste their energy for a change. The power becomes impotence. One gets the impression that change is impossible, and falls into fatalism: the rich will always exploit the poor, the powerful will always tread the weak, the poor and the weak will always suffer, all that remains for them is to sing or wail.

The parental position in the play is portrayed through Zoran, a frustrated and weak father, and Danica’s character, played also by choir of the Mothers, that use motherhood space primarily for an exhibition of their own suffering. Children are mentioned in every convenient opportunity, mainly as an excuse for weak and cowardly choices. That introduces topics of learned helplessness that is transmitted from generation to generation and becomes the psychological mentality for becoming a social and historical problem.

Language characters in Olga’s drama rarely reach the authenticity of the speech of an individual. It is being communicated by slogans, proverbs, and political platitudes. Innermost emotions are articulated through folk verses, protests are expressed in the rhythm of football cheerleading or through turbo-folk. Memories of the different historical moments and ideology are flowing to the mass of accumulated rage, dissatisfaction, aggression. Authentic emotions, especially authentic thoughts, are hardly breaking through this great confusion of different, often conflicting languages and voices. This establishes a link between economic, social, political, ethical and finally aesthetic reality that we live in for decades. I think the greatest value of the pieces “Workers Die Singing” lies in the detection of the devaluation of language and connecting different types of collapse of the individual and society. I based my direction on these motives.

My first impression of the genre was that it was a musical without music. In this drinkable and popular form of theater there was some major depression, emptiness and silence. To make a show that does not renounce that lightness, but transmits a feeling of weight was one of the biggest challenges that I recently had.

This project represents a continuation of questioning the sense of engaged theater and the scope of its operations, which I dealt with in the play “Da nam živi, živi rad”, along with Milan Markovic. We tend to ignore the first target group which we address – the very artistic collective that prepares the show. In both of the processes we were asking the same questions: what does that have to do with me/us? We often forget the fact that we as cultural workers have not only the right but also the duty to deal with the collapse of the working class approach directly. Questions of personal and collective responsibility, the right to work, right to speech, the right to vote, the ease with which we all give up these rights, of power and space that belongs to us, then the question of solidarity, gender and other inequalities, the question of democracy and autocracy, censorship and self-censorship, that are present in any work situation – whether we were in a factory, company or theater. I wanted the awareness of the primary situation, which precedes any theatrical illusion, to be involved in the process, and in the final result, even in a symbolic way – as a reminder for myself, for my colleagues, for the audience it serves.

Direction of the first performance of a piece, especially if it is a young author, but also rewarded text, binds in a specific way. Nevertheless, I tried to make a show that is personal. The play, which tells about me: my responsibilities and irresponsibility, on how I gave up my right to speak, and remain speechless, how and why I give up my voice, and how those choices are making the general situation more complex, hamper and hopeless.