Jovana Tomic: A life directed towards work and worries
Director Jovana Tomic, the winner of the "Bojan Stupica" award for directing the play "Movement" of the Bitef Theater, says in an interview with SEEcult.org that there is little space in the theater today for the young and / or unaffirmed, who must therefore arm themselves with a lot of patience and perseverance, in order not to give up their desires, priorities, and affinities. Speaking about the pandemic, the Director of the plays "My Husband", "Cabaret Nusic", "Meadow full of darkness", "Middle Sex" ... notes that human existence is reduced to work and care for others, and the worst thing is that we are used to it.
"The epidemic has directed us all – the young and old, to caring for our loved ones who are sick, and to work. All other activities are not necessary due to the risk of Covid, or are not fully available, and at the end of the day, it is not even enjoying e.g. to travel somewhere with constant concern for infection. So, when human existence is directed towards work and worries, it is quite depressing. And the worst thing is that we got used to it ", stated Jovana Tomic.
Professionally, for her, this was a very important period.
"Crisis situations are a test for realizing who really needs and wants to stay with you, and vice versa. The epidemic was stressful, but on a personal level it is a very important period for me. In the theater, paradoxically, I managed to realize all the projects, in difficult conditions, with numerous delays, and I was lucky", she added.
Photo: Vukica Mikaca
Jovana Tomic believes that institutional theaters have fought well over these two years to keep repertoires afloat. She also believes that the Ministry of Culture, on the other hand, has not done anything significant, so she suggests that they start doing their job.
"I have a proposal for them to start dealing with their department, because they are on the periphery of the state's interests, which is understandable and expected in relation to the government structure, so, in fact, no advice can help," she said.
Jovana Tomic assesses the society in Serbia as conservative, patriarchal and machismo, which mocks the victims and glorifies the perpetrators. It seems to her that much more time, effort, work and struggle will be needed to get things out of the deadlock.
"It's just a picture of us, small countries of stupid people, so poor that the price of a theater ticket is inaccessible to the majority of the population", said Jovana Tomic.
Noting that Serbia is a poor country where the price of a theater ticket is inaccessible to the majority of the population, Jovana Tomic said that topics addressed to people who do not come to the theater are a kind of author's self-sufficiency, fetishization of the working class, which is quite popular today in terms of the left-wing politicians.
"When the focus is turned to the theater clientele, taboo topics are very open, but one must be self-critical, because we, the authors, mostly belong to that group," added Jovana Tomic.
According to her, everyone has individual fields of struggle, which are sometimes visible in larger groups, at protests, for example, but there are also those invisible to the public, which does not mean that they do not exist. "Generalizations are dangerous, there have always been salon anarchists, but also people who change things. There are a lot of positions between these two extremes, the topic is complex", added Jovana Tomic.
The entire interview (in Serbian) can be found on this link.
(SEEcult.org)
Funded by the International Relief Fund for Organisations in Culture and Education 2021 of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut and other partners, goethe.de/relieffund
