From the earliest times, Montenegro was “the battlefield of human and social drama”1 (Perović 2014: 109): unfavourable circumstances delayed the appearance of an organized form of theatre, but the “dynamism of everyday war reality replaced […] and compensated for the need for this kind of collective artistic expression” (ibid.: 111). In spite of this, Montenegrin theatre has a rich history which draws from diverse cultural traditions.
Anglophone playwrights were present in large numbers and adapted for the Montenegrin stages long before the period described in this paper. The theatre and performance archives reveal that in the period from the 1950’s to 2000 the most popular Anglophone playwrights on the stages of the Royal Theatre Zetski Dom, the Montenegrin National Theatre and Nikšić Theatre were: Shakespeare, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Edmund Morris, Somerset Maugham, George Bernard Shaw, Margaret Mayo, Agatha Christie, Ben Jonson, Samuel Beckett, J.B. Priestley, James Gow, Arnaud d’Usseau, Norman Krasna, Barry Conners, Brandon Thomas, Avery Hopwood, Robinson Jeffers, Alan Paton, Reginald Rose, Joseph Kesserling, Sean O’Casey, Paul Zindel, Harold Pinter, John Patrick, Elmer Harris and Oscar Wilde.
The study of the reception of contemporary Anglophone playwrights in Montenegro in the period from 2000 to 2015 is based on the research carried out in two state theatres (the Royal Theatre Zetski Dom, Cetinje and the Montenegrin National Theatre, Podgorica) and two city theatres (the City Theatre Podgorica and Nikšić Theatre). In the Montenegrin National Theatre, eleven contemporary Anglophone plays (out of seventy-one premieres held) were staged in the period from 2000 to 2015. Of the fifty-two premieres held in the Royal Theatre Zetski Dom (the oldest state theatre in Montenegro) in the same period, five premieres were stage adaptations of contemporary Anglophone plays. The difference between the two city theatres is much bigger, both in terms of the number of plays produced in this period (fifty-two premieres in the City Theatre Podgorica and only nineteen premieres in Nikšić Theatre, the second-oldest theatre in Montenegro) and in terms of the number of contemporary Anglophone plays that were put on their stages (seven plays in the City Theatre Podgorica and only one in Nikšić Theatre).
The contemporary Anglophone plays that were staged in these theatres belong to different theatre genres (tragedy and absurd drama, tragicomedy, vaudeville, black comedy, comedy of errors, farcical comedy, and children’s plays) and different time periods: from “classics” such as T. Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), through to those published in the second half of the 20th century, such as S. Silverstein’s The Giving Tree (1964), W. Allen’s Death (1975), C. Durang’s Beyond Therapy (1981), A. Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden (1991), to the more recent ones, such as N. Wood’s Warrior Square (2004) and P. Quilter’s Glorious (2005). It is obvious from the list that some “classic” playwrights (T. Williams, A. Miller, E. Albee, S. Beckett and H. Pinter) retained their popularity with Montenegrin audiences and critics after 2000. At the same time, the theatre practitioners showed great interest in adapting modern-day playwrights, such as Edward Bond, Steven Berkoff, Ray Cooney, Patrick Marber, Martin McDonagh, Peter Quilter and Anthony Neilson. In order to understand the factors that contributed to the reception of these particular authors and their plays, we should look at the specific political, social, economic, and cultural environment in Montenegro from 2000 to 2015.
In the first two decades of the twenty-first century theatre practitioners in Montenegro continued to explore in their works universal, existentialist themes, but also tried to find “dramaturgical and theatrical expression capturing the decades during which Montenegro was partly an active participant, and partly an observer of the events in the former Yugoslavia” (Lukan: 186). Summarizing the last decade of the 20th century, renowned Montenegrin theatre scholars and practitioners wrote indignantly about the civilizations ruined in the name of religion, “interconfessional inquisitions surpassed by the wicked ideologies of the past century” (Perović 2002: 6), “dilettantism, arrogance and immorality” (Radulović: 8), which brought about “the sinking of the fatigued and displaced Montenegro into the darkness of the province” (Radojević 2002: 7). No sooner was this traumatic decade over than another turbulent period in Montenegro’s history (2000-2015) started, bringing the disintegration of the common state with Serbia, Montenegro’s proclamation of independence, the beginning of the EU accession process and the big investment boom. With xenophobia and fundamentalism still present in the “colonized” Montenegrin society going through the transition and “self-definition”, the theatre practitioners were made to face new traumas which only covered “old scars and still unhealed wounds” (Perović 2002: 6): refugee issues, the problem of impunity for war crimes, corruption, political favouritism, nepotism, prosecution of political and societal opponents, police violence and all sorts of discrimination. Their stage works also brought to the surface other, wider issues such as “the absurd waiting for the recognition of the natural rights of the nation” (Brković 2002: 3), “forms of cynicism which reflect the relationship of the International Community to the small countries today” (ibid.), “the trend towards globalization [which] brings unification and a new form of collonialism” (Radojević 2002: 7) and “the beginning of a new, very subtle totalitarianism […] with less faith in authentic communication between different worlds” (Brković 2002: 3).
Each of the adapted Anglophone stage plays which was premiered in one of the four Montenegrin theatres deals with a number of themes (existential, political, family) that overlap. However, the plays are here divided into three larger groups, each presenting one particular aspect or layer of meaning accentuated during the theatre production. Thus, the first group of plays, referred to as “existentialist”, includes the plays that deal with universal problems, such as: the absurdity of human existence and the despiritualization of the modern world (Endgame and Waiting for Godot), the corruption of our civilization and degradation of humanity in times of liberal capitalism (Have I None, Existence), the hypocrisy and degeneracy in modern society (The Lying Kind), the lack of love and emotional intimacy in the era of technologization and globalization (Closer, Beyond Therapy), the absurdity of reality (Glorious), transience, materialism and alienation (The Giving Tree), the contradictions between past and present and the conflict between fantasy and reality (Fool for Love, A Streetcar Named Desire). The second group includes the plays that deal with the political issues of current relevance for Montenegrin society: the consequences of ethnic conflict (Warrior Square), the mechanisms of repression in a totalitarian regime (Party Time, Death and the Maiden), the opposition between the individual and the collective and the defiance and revolt against the system (The Tiger, Death). The third group of plays highlights “family” issues, such as: the crisis of marriage and the limits of ‘liberal’ societies (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Goat, or Who’s Sylvia), patriarchal family relationships (The Beauty Queen, A View from the Bridge, The Homecoming) or anxiety, hypocrisy and hypertrophic sexuality seen as the manifestations of contemporary collective neurosis (Kvetch, Run for Your Wife).
The results of this research are based on the analysis of all the listed stage plays. However, as the overview of the reception of all the plays would take up much more space than required by this article, this essay will include only the plays that are representative of each group in terms of the themes addressed, the specific directorial approaches and their popularity.
The Beauty Queen was the longest-running stage play in the Montenegrin National Theatre (it has been performed more than 100 times since the premiere in 2004). By adapting McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the tale about a turbulent and manipulative relationship between an ailing mother and her daughter, the director Ana Vukotić created a production focused on “family madness” typical of patriarchal mentality, i.e. the phenomenon of “egoism of the elderly justified by the ‘divine order’ of the patriarchal society” (Brković 2004). As cited by the director, the main reason for the selection of this particular play was a tremendous similarity between an Irish milieu and that of Montenegro (Ćetković 2005). The director explained that two main reasons for the play’s popularity among theatregoers and critics were the play’s strong appeal to different generations who can identify with the characters in the performance as well as the combination of different actors’ sensibilities on stage (ibid.). The play has been highly regarded both by the critics and audiences and won awards at regional and international festivals. According to the critic Brković (2004), the story about a patriarchal mentality which required actualization and the “transposing of Irish topoi into Montenegrin ones” was effectively put on stage owing to the director’s “remarkable creative potentials”, her “clever, accurate, suggestive and sometimes lucidly humorous approach” to the play and her focus on the manipulative relationship between the mother-tyrant and the enslaved daughter. The critic also praised the lead actress Dragica Tomas, who, due to “the shift of the interpreting modus towards humour” managed to create one of her most memorable roles (ibid.)
Other popular Anglophone plays staged in the state theatres were Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love (4 seasons) and Murray Schisgal’s The Tiger (3 seasons). Both plays were premiered in The Royal Theatre Zetski Dom. The universality of Shepard’s play (the primacy of love, the sufferings of individuals struggling with their own conflicting emotions), as well as the provocative theme (incest taboo) strongly appealed to the Montenegrin theatregoers who were made to rethink established social restrictions and their own feeelings of hatred, fear and intolerance to “non-standard” forms of love. Another reason why this play made a stunning effect on the audience was the fact that the young stage directors Jelena Milačić and Emir Ćatović put it on stage in a minimalistic way, with no music, so that the audience was able to focus on the acting and identify with the characters (Čolpa 2012). The Tiger tells us another story which contemporary theatregoers in Montenegro could easily identify with: the frustrations of “a little man” who, dissatisfied with his own life and the system he lives in, wreaks his anger and helplessness on his victim, trying to find a “tiger” within himself. The pathological situation in which the executioner and the victim get closer, the stage director’s (Petar Pejaković) minimalistic aesthetics and the use of alternative techniques (having the audience together with the actors on stage) aimed at intensifying communication between the spectators and the actors all make this stage play even more appealing.
Other plays staged in the state theatres were on the repertoire for one to two seasons. At a time when the Montenegrin economy completely depended on the oligarchs, Bond’s Existence, an effective portrayal of the cruelty of neoliberal capitalism, was a text Montenegrin audiences could easily identify with. The play was positively received both by the theatre critics and by the theatregoers. It was described as an artwork that possesses “the minimalism and ultimate purity of the scenic language” as well as the extraordinary “intensity of the atmosphere” (Tasić 2012). The critics praised the way the stage director R. Vojvodić experimented with the spectators’ perception and her ability to stage Bond’s poetics of violence in such a forceful way that the relationship between the torturer and the victim is “metalinguistically reflected in the relationship between the theatre apparatus and the viewer” (I. Čukić 2013). The originality of the production in this stage work contributing to “the authenticity of the total experience” (Tasić 2012) is evident in the choice of the setting for the premiere in Kotor: the sacral space of the church of the Holy Spirit, quite different from Bond’s stage setting (a room in an old building) described in the production notes, which accentuates the degradation of humanity and “conscientious search for lost innocence and forgotten virtue” (Tasić 2012) but also allows us to read the play as “the criticism of the sacred but also of all public, ethically non-indifferent discourses that allow ethics to depart from the experience of righteousness, from life, to freeze in abstractions and there die” (Nelević 2012). In addition to the new setting, the inserted ending – excerpts from Bond’s Rough Notes on Justice (and injustice) with which the stage director (unlike Bond!) gave back the main protagonist the power of speech, is seen by the critics as the necessary contribution to the director’s vision of the play which, in her staging, becomes a violent attack on the viewer, but also serves as an act of liberation (Čukić 2013).
Another “effective recapitulation” or “settling of accounts with the 20th century” (Milosavljević 2001) was the show called Requiem of the 20th Century, the most demanding project in the history of Montenegrin theatre (Brković 2000a) and “the biggest challenge for the local theatre industry” (Brković 2000b). Party Time is the first performance in the project and, in the words of most of the critics, the best part of the trilogy (Brković 2000b) because it is “the closest to the Balkan socio-psychological pulse” at the end of the twentieth century (Perović 2000). Four of Pinter’s short plays: The New World Order (1991), One for the Road (1984), Mountain Language (1988) and Party Time (1991) were grouped under the same title Party Time because they address the same theme − the legacy of totalitarianism. Slovenian director Eduard Miler was praised by the critics for creating such “an exciting polyphony, an oratory which reveals various forms of violence rooted in all forms of life, the kinds of fear and anxiety” (Nelević 2001) and for putting the focus on the phenomenon of repression and the mechanisms by which it is activated not only in totalitarian, but in more developed societies in which the strategies of repression are more sophisticated (Novović 2000). Furthermore, the process by which the characters constantly alternate their roles of victim and torturer serves in this play only to show us that these voices belong to “the general history of violence” (Nelević: 2001).
In the City Theatre, most of the shows have had a long run (up to 10 seasons). This theatre’s programming policy of staging internationally popular comedies is, as noted by the critics, aimed at meeting the needs of the audience, which does not imply the exclusion of “cautiousness and intelligent dialogue” (Nelević 2008). The longest-running plays in this period were: R. Cooney’s Run for Your Wife (10 seasons), the worldwide popular vaudeville about a taxi driver’s futile attempts to explain himself to two wives and two police officers, A. Neilson’s The Lying Kind (10 seasons), a shocking black comedy about our reality made up of a tangled web of lies and deceits and P. Quilter’s Glorious (5 seasons), a true story about the amazing success of the worst soprano in the world. The huge success of Run for Your Wife could be attributed to the entertaining plot line, brilliant cast, especially the charismatic lead actor (Nikolić 2000) and the talent of the young stage director I. Bogićević, who sticking to the rules of the vaudeville genre (which is not commonly found on Montenegrin stages) staged the story of people’s inability to communicate, and, solving “a number of complex situations with filmic scenes and dynamism” (ibid.) made a play which appealed to a wide audience. Though set in a different time and place, the stage play Glorious had current relevance for the Montenegrin theatregoers because it tells us a story about a woman who managed to transform herself into a central event of a province like ours “with her own efforts, bribes and corruption” (K. J. 2014). In such a way, as observed by the director, the female protagonist revealed the absurdity of our reality and “‘the triumph of lies, kitch and deceit’ in our time in which it is hard to differentiate between fake and true values” (M.I. 2014). The serious social message of the play combined with its playfulness made a strong impression on the “usually shy local theatre audience”, who burst into laughter every time they heard the brilliant actress D. Drakić sing out of tune (Mučalica 2017). The positive reception of The Lying Kind could also be explained by the current relevance of the play: the plot revolves around the white lie (made up by the police officers to protect the frail, elderly parents from the news of their daughter’s death) that sets off a whole chain of “deceits, provisional interpretations, grotesque situations and errors” (Nelević 2008). In spite of the challenge of translating British black humour to suit the Montenegrin context, the genre of black comedy allowed stage director M. Manojlović to bring to the surface Neilson’s harsh criticism of society and deal, through comedy, with such serious issues as paedophilia, transvestitism, child abuse, dementia and deaths of humans and animals.
Most of the Anglophone plays produced in this theatre after 2000 (The Lying Kind, Glorious, A View from the Bridge, Beyond Therapy) are still being performed. Nikšić Theatre, in line with its traditional programming policy of adapting classics, staged T. Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, the world-famous work about lost youth, transience, fear of death and fantasy’s inability to overcome reality. The stage play, directed by Croatian director Ž. Orešković, was received exceptionally well both by the audience, not only in Montenegro, but in the whole region, confirming the attitude that theatre audiences in Montenegro are more attracted to classical theatre (G. K. 2004). In the words of the critics, the performance served as a good example of “the aesthetically-based creative courage producing good results” (G. K. 2005) and of the theatre house capable of producing the most complex professional projects (ibid.). However, despite its enormous success, the play has not been included in the repertoire since 2004/2005.
This insight into the reception of the individual plays shows that the decisive factors in the selection of these particular texts was the high artistic value and widespread popularity of the texts. A great number of these plays are still being performed on the world’s stages and most of them have been adapted for the screen, which has obviously aroused strong interest in the plays among theatregoers in Montenegro. Another important factor that has contributed to the selection of the plays and to their positive reception by the critics and the audience was their current relevance, i.e. viewers’ receptiveness to the themes (the possibility for contemporary spectators to identify with their characters) (Radulović 2013). In most cases, the positive reception of the plays was the result of the talent and skills of the director who knew how to stage the play and, thanks to fruitful cooperation with other theatre practitioners, convey its specific meanings to theatregoers in Montenegro. In some cases, it was the combination of different actors’ sensibilities on stage and the appeal of the specific theatre genre that have contributed to the favourable reception.
Lidija Dedović, the director of the Royal Theatre Zetski Dom and one of the most famous Montenegrin stage directors confirms that the “official” criteria for the selection of plays (not only Anglophone) are in line with the results of this research:
The most important criterion [...] is the content of the selected text and the absolute relevance of this content for the audience, presented in a truthful, uncompromising, sensuous, analytic, and transformative way! Then, it is indispensable to have the feeling for the choice of the stage director who will stage that particular text and that particular theme which reflects an idea about the world, man and time. This requires talent, instinct and education. Of course, a high-quality acting team is taken for granted. For us in the theatre this is a recipe which helped us achieve the greatest international fame since the theatre Zetski Dom was founded. (personal interview, October 7, 2018.)
The same demand is imposed upon the theatre critics in Montenegro today. On the occasion of Biennial of the Montenegrin Theatre, 2012, N. Nelević, one of the most renowned Montenegrin theatre critics and playwright in Montenegro, said that it was the task of the theatre critic today to study “how the theatre is immersed in its time and how it responds to the different challenges of modern times” (J.N. 2012). The dominant trend of the Montenegrin theatre in the first two decades of 21st century seems to have responded to this demand.
Several trends in contemporary Montenegrin theatre have emerged as the theatrical responses to the challenges of modern times: a trend towards “the politization of the theatre by means of the fictional dramatic text”, a trend towards the development of postdramatic and communicative theatre and a trend towards women’s playwriting (J.N. 2012). Bearing in mind the problematic social and political reality of Montenegro in the first fifteen years of the 21st century, it was not surprising that the theatre felt the need to deal more directly with political and social issues and (re)enter a dialogue with society. The twenty-three contemporary Anglophone plays that were put on the stages of the Montenegrin theatres during this period played an important role in this dialogue. These stage productions addressed the most burning issues of the Montenegrin society in the period of transition and, having been aimed at generating greater audience participation and involvement, managed to challenge the accepted notions Montenegrin patriarchal society is based on. The apocalyptic and dystopian vision in Endgame and Have I None reflects the state of emptiness, hopelessness, disorientation and passivity in Montenegro after the collapse of the values of civilized society, but also expresses severe criticism of neoliberal capitalism. Some stage plays challenge the stereotyped images of refugees and asylum seekers (Warrior Square) or spur the activism against gender-based violence (Death and the Maiden); others raise our awareness of the psychological modes of power functioning (Party Time) and of the ills of modern society (The Lying Kind) or point to the collapse of patriarchal family relations (Beauty Queen) and to the destruction of an individual in the modern age (Death). In some cases, the theatre practitioners found that postdramatic strategies were “more suited to dealing with social issues” (Carrol, Jürs-Munby, et.al.: 3), and chose to abandon the theatre building in favour of some other space that carries other meanings (church in Existence), invite the audience on stage (The Tiger), or deviate significantly from the stage directions and the script of the original play, such as the productions of Waiting for Godot, which transformed it into an alternative comedy in which the main character is played by a woman.
Positive reception of the contemporary Anglophone plays staged in the four Montenegrin theatres shows that these theatres have, after so many years in an environment of war and isolation, turned towards “the decontamination of the legacy of the painful 1990s” (J.Lj. 2013: 144) and that they have been quite successful in developing the concept of “openness through the internationalization of theatrical production” (ibid.).