Egon Savin, theater director / Photo: Kire Galevski

Interview with theater director Egon Savin for "People's Representative" in MNT: I ​​do every play as if it were my first

As part of the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Macedonian National Theater, the premiere performance of the play "People's Representative" by Branislav Nušić, adapted and directed by Egon Savin, will take place on January 25.

The cult director Egon Savin returns to the MNT after a long period. This is his third play in the theater, and he has previously staged "Crime and Punishment" (1994) and "Lie and Parallax" (1996). The play "People's Representative" by Branislav Nušić features a carefully selected and already proven cast: Aleksandar Mikić, Darja Rizova, Toni Mihajlovski, Jordan Simonov and Tanja Kočovska.

Branislav Nušić, on the other hand, is one of the most frequently performed authors on the MNT stage, and this "People's Representative" is the third production of Nušić's famous play. We spoke with Serbian director Egon Savin shortly before the premiere of the play.

How did the opportunity arise for you to direct a play again at the Macedonian National Theater in Skopje?

– I love Skopje and you have an excellent theater, where I once staged two plays, "Crime and Punishment" and "Lies and Parallax". I am in contact with this theater all the time and we are constantly agreeing and negotiating something. This time we agreed that I would work on a text by Branislav Nušić and the theater's anniversary coincided nicely, because Nušić was the first director and founder of this theater.

While Yugoslavia existed, I worked in all the major cities and national theaters throughout the country and as far as I know, all theaters staged texts by Nušić. There was no Yugoslav theater, not only national or city, there was no cultural center, village cooperative or amateur theater where Nušić was not staged. We can freely say that he is one of the most staged playwrights in the Balkans. So, there is no need to think much about whether to stage a text by Nušić.

I love his civic plays, as well as his melodramas, and so far I have staged several of his plays in different theaters. About half a year ago I made an adaptation of the text "People's Representative" inspired by the events in Belgrade and by politics as our everyday destiny. Our entire life has somehow been turned into a political euphoria "for" and "against". There are major political divisions in Serbia again, something that happened here a few years ago. That was the reason for me to make a radical adaptation of Nušić's play. I halved the number of roles, I turned the one-act form into a four-act play, but I don't think I betrayed Nušić. I took it upon myself to add some things, but these are very brief additions.

I think Nušić is the only Serbian theatrical genius. Serbian comedy is significant in European terms and I think that rarely does any culture have such a strong comedy, starting from Sterija Popović, through Branislav Nušić to Aleksandar Popović and Dušan Kovačević. That is the magnificent four of Serbian comedy from which the theater can live for decades, if not centuries.

The poster design for the play is by Zoran Kardula.

Nušić wrote the play "People's Representative" as a comedy. What form does it take on through your adaptation?

– The play I staged is not a comedy in the classical sense. Namely, laughter is not the only goal or motive. In this case, laughter is more of a mockery. It is about an intensified satirical dimension of the text. Nušić has many vaudeville themes in his comedies, but I put all that in the background, because the most important thing for me was the satirical edge, something similar to the one in the drama "The Deceased".

The approach with a funny-scary and grotesque expression is not so much theatrically motivated, as it is a need related to our everyday life and our reality, between what we live and what we see on television. These are scenes of horror. We can no longer stage Nušić in order to good-naturedly make the audience laugh with sympathetic and somewhat negative characters. This is about a social situation that we as a theater must comment on, point out, evaluate and, ultimately, we must also set some kind of moral imperative as the backbone of the play itself.

There is a lot of malice among the people. The mentality has become much more evil than it was before, because such are the political circumstances in which we live. It is normal that one must respond to the demands of the time and the environment in which we live. My adaptation of the text is an attempt to achieve exactly that. I think that we achieved this to a large extent precisely because of the simplicity of the story itself, which is simplified, but also with the excellent actors at MNT, with whom it is a real pleasure to work.

The audience will probably expect something very funny and in that sense it is possible to be a little disappointed. I will say that Nušić is no longer a theater that entertains. It is not even political theater, because that is already another extreme. It is more of a current and lively theater, because the text, the lines and the content of Nušić's work carry universal values ​​with a serious satirical edge.

About half a year ago, I made an adaptation of the text "People's Representative" inspired by the events in Belgrade and politics as our daily destiny / Photo: Kristijan Teodorov

Is there a message that the audience should read through the play?

– I am a little reserved about the idea and the need for theater to send messages. Every play is a message. And the message of this play is a commentary on the terrible political situations we live in. And I think that this is a general, global problem. It is not just a problem of Serbia or Macedonia, but a problem of the whole world. There are wars all around us, there is horror, and one has to ask oneself what is the root of all this and where it comes from.

And these dramatic texts are small family dramas and big political ambitions of small incompetent people. In Nušić's time, the character Jevrem Protić could not become a member of parliament, but today he can. Today we have Jevrem Protić in all parliaments around the world. These are ambitious, semi-competent, but, above all, corrupt people who work for party interests, not for the people. That is the message of the play.

Scene from the play "People's Representative" at the MNT / Photo: Kire Galevski

How did the casting for the roles in the play go?

– There was no problem here. It is a question of typology and the choice of roles and actors was very easy. These are caricatures of a mentality in which we have been living for a hundred years. Of course, according to the quality of the actors, I could make three divisions for the play at the MNT. I decided on these five actors, although I could have chosen about fifteen other exceptionally talented actors and actresses.

After about eighty plays that you have staged in various theaters, and for many years you have been a professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, how do you manage to maintain your style and craft the play in a unique way?

– So I do every play as if it were my first. We, theater people, must not be overcome by routine. Routine is the most dangerous thing for people who work a lot and who have already done a lot. That is why you need to create psychological conditions in which you will feel each next play as the first play in your life, at all. I don't want to say – and the last, so as not to be too pathetic. But I am at such an age that I really don't know how long I will be directing plays. That is exactly why every play is important to me. I am completely dedicated to the theater and the faculty and that is my way of life. That is why it is very important to me that what I do is valuable not only for me, but also for the people I work with and, of course, for the audience. That is the only recipe.

In terms of your teaching work with future theater directors, how do you differentiate between the time when you were a student and today's time, which has changed drastically in the last thirty years?

– Times have really changed. I entered the theater and started working during the socialist Yugoslavia. Never before and never since has culture been better than during the socialist era. And since socialism was officially abolished throughout the world, culture has stagnated everywhere. The consumer society and the neoliberal mentality, where only profit is important, can only affirm a theater that serves as entertainment. Serious art theater still exists in large metropolises, but it is reduced to one or two theaters. Everything else is very difficult for young people to access. They have to be strongly affirmed in order to get the opportunity to work in one of the significant European or Balkan theaters.

In that sense, my generation had easier access and conditions to enter the theater on the small stage, graduation plays were made in the theater, young directors assisted the older ones and thus took their first steps towards the theater stage. In the seventies of the last century, when I started doing this work, theater was expanding all over the world. Back then, it was very important, very popular and very nice to be a director. Back then, it had some significance in society.

Today, people no longer recognize who a director is or what he is. They used to recognize us on the street. We were simply popular and it was a real pleasure for young people to get involved in theater. Back then, it was much easier, because there was three times more production, there were more theaters, more premieres were made, more financial resources were invested and, of course, theater was at the center of social cultural attention. Today, we are marginalized. Not only theater, but all of culture is marginalized. There are probably no longer people who want to buy culture or be interested in theater.

In that sense, how do you instill optimism in your students to pursue theater?

– There is no need to lie to them or promise them something impossible. They see for themselves. Even during their studies, we involve them in the work of theaters and everything is clear to them. First of all, they themselves need to recognize that theater is their world in which they feel good. Some talented people, for certain reasons, do not feel good in the theater. Some talented people will enter the theater and, disappointed with their work and the attitude of others towards them, they leave the theater. And some young people recognize theater as something they love the most. They spontaneously begin to live for the theater and dedicate their entire lives to the theater. There are no rules here. Although theater is a mother to some and a stepmother to others, not everyone takes their first steps in the theater with the same success.

But that is less important. The most important thing is for young people to feel that this is their world. And for them to want to stay in that world and do something. There are such young and ambitious people. There are excellent directors and with them we have rejuvenated the department. Well, now, trends in theater are changing and young people are finding it a little harder to cope here because they have a need and tendency to copy European trends. I don't think that is good. We need to research in terms of our authentic theater, literature, language and audience.

By the way, during this period, students took on the main social role in Serbia in terms of the fate of all of us. And that is magnificent because the entire movement started from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, and there are already demands for a general strike throughout the country.

Scene from the play "People's Representative" at the MNT / Photo: Kire Galevski

You mentioned new trends, and a few years ago, with the Covid pandemic, there was a complete blackout of theater art. At that time, new sub-variants of theater also appeared. In what direction could theater art move in the future?

– That is difficult to say. I think that theater trends occur in cycles. If we look generally, there is mainstream and alternative theater everywhere in the world. About twenty years ago, a phenomenon happened, when alternative approaches entered the big theaters, and private troupes started to deal with mainstream theater. That has its own logic because it is very difficult to make money with avant-garde. The avant-garde is often inaccessible to the audience. People do not know what they are watching. No matter how brilliant the performance is, it cannot delight the audience. Content that is not receptive enough, that is not recognizable enough and that, in the end, is not at all clear, but is completely inaccessible, is already becoming a trend in the big national theaters.

And private troupes live off popular plays that people want to see several times, because they support themselves with the money they collect at the box office. They do not have state subsidies and alternative theaters are slowly moving to another level, becoming entertainment theaters with current and political themes, all of which are set very precisely, very classically and well thought out.

Meanwhile, in the national theaters, they are experimenting. I even think that they are experimenting too much and I constantly warn young people who want to be unconventional, which is normal, but I think that the audience will start to avoid experimental theater in the big theater houses. How long this phenomenon of experimentation in the national theaters will last, I could not assume. I think that now political theater is on the move, because you can no longer make theater that does not have a specific political message. If nothing else, then at least in the critical sense of pointing out the horrors that politics has brought us. We really should already look with contempt at both politics and the politicians who have brought the world into great wars – and misery.

(The interview was published in "Kulturen Pechat" number 265, in the print edition of the newspaper "Sloboden Pechat" on 25-26.01.2025)

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