Time of the Moment

Umberto Ecco, the big erudite, writer and intellectual, in his diary says: “Parody fits me most and I don’t have to fear that I will exaggerate”.
Daniel Harmes exaggerated in his parody for sure, that is why he was killed in Stalinist prisons, but Ecco lived in a different time. At the time when irony and cynicism in expression entertain more than they fear. That is why I and many others have read with pleasures, and will continue to read the diary of the man with sharp mind and X-ray look. What Ecco writes down is what happens to him, in everyday life. So, topics are different, but the tone he articulates them with is identical, sharp and cynical.
In his note entitled: “How to organize a public library” he gives the model of an ideal librarian. According to him, the ideal librarian should limp so that the process of opening the card with the book list, going to the basement and returning lasts longer. Those, whose task is to reach the shelves higher than eight meters are recommended that the hand they miss is replaced with an artificial one or a hook. Those who do not have either hand are recommended that the supply of book is done by teeth.
The entertaining approach to topics of Eco made me ask myself a similar question. The question is: How should be the ideal actor today?
This question, avoiding the humor of the answer, would be answered by the one who does not now the ways of theatre: The ideal actor should first of all be: impudent as Michael Chekhov in 1912 when he went to the audition before Stanislawski. There was nothing of an actor in him. He was short, too thin, he was deaf and he had a rusty voice. He had many shortcomings, but he had the guts (prudence) to stand in front of the great Stanislawski. This same person who does not know the situation would say: The ideal actor should be defiant and keep his word in theatre art. He should be polemical, a man who does not recognize another type of dialogue during his repetitions.
Bit the connoisseurs of the theatre events, those who characterize the current day theatre as what Gorky told about his time: “Everybody until the last man is involved in the whirlpool of the reality messed up as it has never been messed before”, see the ideal actor as a handicapped person. He has to be handicapped, so that his handicap is seen not in the dislike of the audience, but in the stop to all communication with it. If this is not so, then how do we justify the actors who take their salaries, and they do not appear on stage for years, they have not had any communication relations with the audience for years.
The handicap of today’s actor is reflected in the working hours as well, His working hours are close or identical, even shorter than the working hours of the handicapped persons.
His handicap is also visible in his relation to the Ministry of Culture as well, with his superiors. Because of his obvious shortcomings, he bows his head, bend his spine and becomes headless and spineless. How would you otherwise understand his indolent view on the national program on theatres, where there is such a cacophony as the theatres in Macedonia have never seen before. Our people would say even a donkey laughs. On one hand, there is a discussion on democratization, decentralization in culture, on the other all the national theatres are closed in a city of three hundred thousand citizens, (if Skopje people do not believe me, let them count themselves).
Their handicap is also reflected in the fact that they always accuse the others for their limping on the stage, their rusty voices, their short size, their lack of talent, least the fate, most the directors, playwrights and audience who at any case do not know what they want.