It seems that the true answer to that is – measure. Having the foresight of the story, which as such provides potential, expresses a destructive force, Mladenović decides to make a balance between fear, screams, death and family warmth, vitalist sensitivity, and empathy. Just when the viewer thinks that Senka’s emotional rendition of the sevdalinka “Sto te nema” will melt with the scream and thus put an end, she sings her rock and roll version. The heartbreaking scenes do not deepen further, instead, they are cut by the typewriter sound, and the cut leads to a new scene/chapter. The actors follow the story’s rhythm and go through a wide emotional range, alternating between the roles of victim and executioner. The additional complicated acting task is also based on the fact that they do not have defined characters whose progress we can follow, but they are guided by the interesting dramaturgical solution. Namely, the actor leaves the mask of their character and enters into a specific dialogue and sometimes into a conflict with the writer, reacting about his further development in the play itself as well as about the completion of the scene itself. Since the writer gave his characters from the novel the opportunity to speak from their own point of view, according to the same principle, that opportunity is also given to them in the play. The staging of the novel provides an opportunity to play out everything that could have happened and yet did not, which in Cvijetic’s artistic point of view seems to be equally important. The writer allows his characters to fantasize about certain developments, although he sometimes demonstrates his superiority over them. But the awareness that Cvijetic himself is part of the story on the stage does not subside, so he himself is determined by the duality, as the writer and character of the story. At one point, the characters from Cvijetic’s novel in the play leave the story. That is, they are leaving the scene in a column, demonstrating that “It wasn’t like that!”. So the question of the authenticity of the work of art and its relationship to reality, as one of the key questions on which it rests, is effectively incorporated into the play. Hence, the writer is neither a dominant nor a subordinate figure but is equally melted into the fabric of the trauma of the war, thus accepting the unenviable position of participant, witness, and artist. His mother says about the act of writing: “And it wasn’t the way he writes. He constantly adds and takes something away. I don’t even remember what he added and what he forgot to write” (Cvijetić 2020: 86). She says that her Darko, from the fact that her father was a railwayman, “makes literature”, imitating Danilo Kish. The enumeration characteristic of “Hourglass” by Kish, which enumerates everything that remains after the destruction, really translated into the form of observations, questions, and short rhythmic statements in a chapter that is the “senseless speech” of Grandma Maya and Grandpa Franjo. Also, the chapters are kind of “short-cuts” where he shows concentrated, simple, and above all powerful prose fragments, more precisely the testimonies of the suffering individual and powerful pictures encircled by tragedy. Therefore, the dramaturgical and directorial actions of the actors from the Cvijetic’s novelist world do not tire us, but their dynamics draw the audience deeper into the abyss of Balkan suffering and do not allow indifference. It seems that the director of the play approaches the stylistic procedures immanent to literature, so he reaches for metaphor at the moments when one would expect the culmination of the disturbing and the effect of shock. One such scene, particularly illustrative, is the one in which Senka portrays the loss of her hand in black, like tar, which passes from her hand to Bota’s face, and the blackness continues to flow and pass on. Senka uses the black color to write “The heaven doesn’t shoot!” on her body. Black is the color of suffering, but also the color by which the story is written on paper and fills the “void of the world”, so Senka’s faith in the benevolence of heaven exceeds the power of spoken words.
Documentary and fiction, formed in the novel’s mosaic structure, dictate the receptive rhythm that will certainly lead the readers of Cvijetic’s novel to the path of comparison with the receptive nature of the theatrical adaptation. They differ to a large extent, logically, but they are guided by a consistent common idea thread, which at not one moment is shaken by additional rethinking. Surprisingly, book fans and theater fans alike would be pleased. To the greatest extent, it would move those who are looking forward with joy to the true measure of the synthesis of the word and the game, what is written and awakened on stage. This is precisely where one of the key virtues of this theatrical venture lies. It would not be possible if the acting team coming from Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Novi Sad did not breathe life into it with the words. Hence, the play was created with a specific touch and originality of what was spoken but also what was experienced, because the time distance of thirty years is not enough to not feel at least an echo of what happened. In Cvijetic’s words, “it” is named, and every victim is equally important, and their story; it is paradoxically silent and loud protest at the same time, to the deepening and intensification of which exactly this theatrical venture contributes. It is up to the viewers to find out what is hidden behind the question “Why do you sleep on the floor?” and whether it is even possible to answer.
Author: MA Nina Stokic
REFERENCES:
Avdić, Selvedin 2020. „Vrane pamte dugo“. „Što na podu spavaš“. Književna radionica Rašić, Beograd. 109–110.
Cvijetić, Darko 2020. „Što na podu spavaš“. Književna radionica Rašić, Beograd
Lopandić, Duško 2021. „Što na podu spavaš ili: da li nas reč može pomiriti sa svetom?“. Sveske:časopis za književnost, umetnost i kulturu. God 31. br. 140. Jun 2021. 83–87.