DON JUAN OF ALEKSANDAR POPOVSKI
Molière’s Don Juan on the stage of Dramski Theater is a play of the director Aleksandar Popovski made according and with everything the actor Nikola Ristanovski can create on the stage. Popovski and Ristanovski have confirmed their ideas on the theater stage through several projects in which they regularly turn the space of the play event in their rink where the battle is won together. Sixteen more actors are with them in this Don Juan, all of them that used to work with Popovski before and they at equal basis build his view in defense of the topic, and among them there are also individual actors who only fill in the idea. Although the biggest burden is carried by Ristanovski, it is a fact that the team that is on the stage loves what they create, even if it is a single occurrence, one or several dialogues. By imposing his idea, Popovski imposes a tempo in which they thin together.
#3 In the fulfilled idea, everything starts and ends with the concept of Popovski who breaks the text into pieces, as done by the dramaturge Despina Angelovska, and then a process of research is implemented where the stage is a space at which everything is possible. Through the director’s idea and acting performance of the costumes of Ivana Vasić, the choreography of Krenare Nevzati-Keri, as well as the applied video design and music, a play is created that through its concept has a clear view to what it says. It starts and ends as a theater within theater: Don Juan of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673, France), aka Molière, is played in the theater. Further on, through the open stage one can see the wordrobe of the actors, everything is game and fun on the topic of hypocrisy at a global level.
For Popovski and Ristanovski the fact that this is a dramatic story of a man without moral who does not have any scruples, a murderer, heretic, breaker of female hearts who would marry any woman, a dog or a cat, is not important… What is important is love and passion where an open process for proving that everything is possible on the topic of new democratic system that persists on two levels of destruction: hypocrisy and double morality.
The variations of destruction are brought to a boiling point by Popovski and Ristanovski. Popovski opens the space in which Ristanovski as Don Juan is provoked and satisfied. Together they research, look for, dig into the most hidden details of the most important thing that they set for themselves: why hypocrisy and double morality is accepted and why there is no battle against them. If there are answers sought at all, they are collected in one – spirituality. This relation is deeply in everything that is played on the stage. Nikola Ristanovski in his interpretation of Don Juan (to whom a monologue of Don Luis is added) researches within himself and through himself creates a character that builds the dark side of life on the unbearable weight of nonchalance.
#4 The second relation that the play thinks of is the twisted classical relation of master vs. servant, embodies in the characters of Don Juan and Sganarelle for which Poposki sets/looks for a new relation. Sganarelle is seen as a female character, played by Irena Ristić. This idea is researching the completeness: the genders made of two halves – the female and the male – create a unity. Irena Ristić as Sganarelle (and also transformed in other characters) is only seemingly a companion. This character now via the power of the female imagination relaxes the relations, but also completes the idea that everything is possible. The third one is the level of joy and pleasure that are felt in the atmosphere that this Don Juan is created in, at the level of the whole in which characters complete the twisting of the glove of the action and it is in the function of the first two levels of the show. They practically close the circle in which love is the most important, and therefore (and further on) everything is possible. The detail and details are proven again through a process of thought in which the characters that via their openness fill in with the others are mixed, merged, matured. Neither Don Juan nor Zganarel are only themselves on the stage. The situation is the same with the other characters that the actors play via the need of the main idea to come to the global as a supplement for oneself. These are the characters of Charlotte of Snežana Stameska, Elvira divided between Dragana Kostadinovska and Milica Stojanova, Mathurine of Saška Dimitrovska, Peter of Dime Iliev, Francisco of Dimitar Zozi, Don Luis of Aco Jovanovski, Don Alonso of Kalina Naumovska, Gusman of Samoil Dukovski, Don Carlos of Gordana Endrovska, Mister Dimanche of Laze Manaskovski, the Priest of Gjorgji Todorovski, Violeta Sapovska, Viktorija Angjuševa and Dušica Stojanova.
The transitions towards the new action of this Don Juan are also in the scenes that Popovski makes as a view of the people which via movements or with few words shows their attitude towards the hypocrisy and the double morality.
The play does not ask questions such as: shall anybody punish the sin! Or: will anybody ask for forgiveness for his sin! It only asks for attention in the revealing of the details on which hypocrisy and double morality are created.
Still, it seems that the stage belongs to the idea of Aleksandar Popovski on his reading of Molière’s Don Juan in the totality of the realization, and now the acting habitus of Nikola Ristanovski is built in this idea. Together they reach the goal of the idea that is in front of them. Through what they have achieved, they prove that they are a director-actor tandem that functions through the togetherness of the interpretation of the view that they together reveal and them fulfill.