#3
At NT Kumanovo: Pure idea and pure play
The directing of Ljubiša Georgievski at Kumanovo stage has a cruel truth at its basis – hope is born at the garbage dump. “Orkestar Titanik”, conceived like this at the stage of the National Theatre in Kumanovo, whose opening was on 18 March 2006, has a course with many meanings. The complete team in this performance is in the function of this idea: the actors Goran Ilić, Aleksandra Peševska, Dragiša Dimitrijevski, Dragan Spasovski and Gorast Cvetkovski, the stage setting of Ljubiša Jovanovski, costumes of Meri Jovanov, Robert Simonovski, who is directors assistant, and the director himself who also chose the music for the play.
All of them created a play that has a lot of honesty and lot of labor with a specific result. This is a play that communicates through its layers based on mutual honesty and respect to work, and it honestly communicates both on the stage and with the audience.
The first level is in the realization between the acting and directing, that is, in the revealed many layers and dramaturgically set course of the idea and situations in the play of Bojčev. The second is in the way in which Ljubiša Georgievski stages the play: as a theatre play on a theatre stage which, as a system, opens a common space to realize himself along with all others in it. That is why they are all safe and secure in the process of weight of the existence which turns it into a funny tragedy in which they had all invested a lot, and it is recognized by the audience. But, it also laughs at them being lost in their own troubles. The third one is in the way and investment of each of the five actors – to find themselves and confidently, together with the director, create a world where one waits for some salvation at the level of absurdity, which, of course, neither comes nor is it known if it ever will. Hope, is born in the garbage dump, isn’t it?
They are all sure of the situation: hopes for future only have sinking. That is what pulls us deeper and deeper. Moving around or trying to save yourself is only a confirmation of the general apathy. The hope of a new and different world is interpreted by the actors through what can only be the reflection of an empty soul, which sinks in the old things, although it reaches for the new.
The hope is in the illusion. Life that sinks as the passengers of the ship, now placed at Titonic, a house-land that is breaking apart and where the travelers-residents will maybe be saved by an illusionist, a seller of tricks. The one who comes from nowhere, who can play his tricks that he claims are unique, is disguised in front of the mirror that can be found in each theatre wardrobe.
A play has been created that is trusted, both when it was being prepared, and now, when it is completed. One believes everybody in the difficulty of the situation and the investment in it which has a strong reflection in the acting of the actors who become real heroes, sufferers and martyrs of the mess in which everybody who believes in salvation sinks.
The directing of Georgievski, the stage setting frame of Jovanovski and the costumes of Jovanov are together with the actors in the comical-tragic situations. Everything takes place in the theatre – in front of the mirror in the wardrobe and at the stage where there are rehearsals. The salvation from the dike side of the life, the only one for man who is at the wrong place and on the wrong side is being rehearsed. There are rehearsals of the waiting for the train, and all trains for Europe and world have some other destinations, other stops, other paths. The situation of “there is no escape from here” is played, along with the lingering question of whether the life on Titanic of Titonic is eventually, the only possible escape to illusions.
Georgievski (after last year’s unsuccessful return to theatre, after his ambassadorial work, with the play “Richard III” in Bitola) is now again at his field: he implements a pure idea and attitude to theatre in which the actor is safe in the work with the director. Although he used both verbal and symbol citations of what he has created, taken by the depth of the play, he definitely also researches and reaches the real garbage dump in which the life here is placed. The actors and characters are in the trash that is only piled up coming from everywhere. He mocks life in which the small good man moves around, but remains with the hope of his salvation. The hermit is an illusionist, the clown has no future, the masks (after each show) fall. Everybody remains for himself and with everybody else to survive like a juggler, in the middle of the garbage dump where “the bear” – the one who leads him or drives him, runs the train according to his own schedule.
The actors carry the entire burden until the end: a kind of a circus or parade of clowns. In a space that looks like a stinky garbage dump, where they are lost within their characters, disenfranchised marginal people – victims of the transition processes. They act the situation of lost values till the end, suffocation in their own screams, real apathy and lack of force or motive to rebel, individually or collectively and show their revolt that is growing: as a garbage dump growing bigger by the minute.
Do people need only bread and theatre, is one of the questions of the play. The hypnosis is an escape from the reality, but man has to wake up from it. The awakening in this “Orkestar Titanik” is in the truth and honesty with which it was made. In the strength of the actors to believe in themselves, the director and the text. That is why the characters are made from within, according to Stanislavski whose system of game is literally spoken and implemented in the function of realization. The gradation is in the honesty of the acting of the five actors. They are strictly precise in playing the life from within, passengers who look for the salvation in the tricks of the illusionists, in the concept of the play where everything starts and ends with the idea that Hope is born at the garbage dump!
Translated by: Elizabeta Bakovska