Bitef

konvencionalnom literarnom smislu, ali koja deluje na vas, jer predstavlja nešto što je blisko zivotu. (Clive Barnes, The New York Times, 20. oktobar 1975)

Most of the time I write l about plays, good, bad or indifferent. Once in a

serban's

while I get to write about the theater. It always sends shivers down the back of my typewriter.

trilogy

is an

event

work into the layers of the theatrical unconscious. The plays are »Medea«, »The Trojan Women« and »Electra«. All are surprisingly different in approach. And all are verbally impossible to understand. This is a nonverbal theater of aural communication. Mr. Serban uses language like music. His actors talk ancient Greek, Latin, a touch of this and a touch of that, and gutteral dirty. A linguist couldnt understand it, but, like anyone else, a linguist would just know what they are acting. The immediacy of Mr. Ser ban’s theater far transcends the narrative notion of knowing what happens in any literary sense. Mr. Serban makes you feel such basic emotions as love, suffering anguish ,disgust and fear, at a level not so farm removed from reality. Of course, they are in essence totally removed no theatrical experience can duplicate, for example, the raw thrust of real pain but that particular removal has the tincture of poetic honesty to it. Mr. Serban’s theater helps you to know what you think. The plays-all rightly described as » fragments of a trilogy « are oddly different in texture. They are all music pieces in a sense for Miss Swados’s lambently twanging music provides the cave for the performance. It is a dramatic world very much structured to its sound environment.

Now is one of those times. The Rumanian-born Mr. Serban is one of the most interesting and innovative directors around anywhere in the world.

,He, and his vitally important musical collaborators, Elizabeth Swados, state in the program that they »have

both participated in the work of Peter Brook’s International Center of Theater Research, with which they feel connected in their explorations «. It is a statement that is, all at once, modest, accurate and misleading. Miss Swados is Mr. Brook’s composer, and Mr. Serbati has also intervened in Mr. Brook’s experiments with time, place and life. Yet this trilogy, which has been brewing for more than two years, belongs entirely to them. It is a personal extension of Mr. Brook’s

»Medea« is tight, dark and silent. A tragedy seen through pursed eyes. Even the screams sound strangled. »The Trojan Women« is an orgy, one of the very few examples of genuinely erotic theater I have ever encountered. » Electra « is a ritual of fulfillment, complete with a live snake and a live dove. Mr. Serban is nothing, if not strong on symbolism.

This musical dramatic trilogy is beautiful, and dedicatedly acted by its cast, who make it not only touching but also credible. You have to wander through these Greek myths, remembering this and forgetting that. Put the mind on hold. Nothing deliberately, is as explicit as finite words.

Everything depends on the theatrical act, which may not be understood in any conventional literary sense, but comes upon you as a familiar of life.

Clive Barnes)

(by

1938. godine, francuski nadrealistički pesnik, glumac, reditelj, dramaturg, genìjalni

užas i bol

ludak, Antonin Arto, objavio je zbirku eseja »Pozariste i njegov dvojnik «, u kojoj je rekao da tradicionalno pozoriíte Zapada nije pravo pozoriíte, jer je postalo malo vise od » podređenog ogranka istorije govornog jezika«. To je bilo pozoriíte dijaloga, a njemu je bilo dosta toga. »Pozornica«, naglaíavao je Arto, »je konkretno mesto« (koje mora da ima svoj sopstveni konkretni jezìk) stvoreno za cala, nezavisno od govora ... Postojì poezija aula kao ito postoji poezija jezika. A taj »konkretni, fizìcki jezik ... je upravo pozoriini samo do onog stepena do kog

su misti koje on iskazuje van dome ta govornog jezika«. Sto se tiče »reči«, ukoliko se one uopšte koriste, one treba da služe na pozornici da stvore » sebi svojstvenu muziku, zavisno od načina na koji se izgovaraju, a nezavisno od svog konkretnog značenja, pa čak i u suprotnosti sa njim stvarajući ispod površine jezika jedan tok utisaka, spojeva i analogija ...«

Jezik pozorišta je bio » muzika, igra, plastična umetnost, pantomima, gestikulacija, intonacija, arhitektura, osvetljenje i dekor... Mise en scène je mnogo vise od napisanog i igranog komada... Pozoriste koje podreduje mise en scène produkciji ... je pozoriste idiota, ludaka, nastranih, uèitelja jezika, piljara, antipesnika i pozitivîsta tj. zapadnjaka«.

Arto je bio svestan da jezik pokreta i stavova, igre i muzike ima manje mogućnosti da analizira ličnosti, da otkriva ljudske misli ili da objasni stanja svesti nego lío to može gov orni jezik; ali ko je rekao da je pozoriste stvoreno da analizira ličnosti, da relava sukobe Ijubavì i duznosti, da se bori sa svim problemima tematske i psihološke prirode, koji monopolisti sovvenienti pozornicu. Pozoriste za koje pie dira Arto, vraéa se »obrednoj magijì «.