On Thursday, June 11, on the Big Stage National Theatre ballet premiered in Belgrade Zorba the Greek to the music of Mikis Theodorakis, choreographed and directed by Konstantin Kostyukov.
Photo: Tanjug/Dejan ŽivančevićFrom the ballet "Zorba the Greek" National Theater
For Sunday, June 14, the premiere is also announced by the Drama of the National Theater. It will be a show God's people directed by Jug Đorđević based on the prose of Borislav Stanković.
These two premieres will mark the end of the 2025/26 season at the National Theatre, and at the same time the end of the year in which he heads the Board of Directors Dragoslav Bokan. However, the applause and joy that are an integral part of the premiere are not suitable for the atmosphere and situation in which the National Theater is located, thanks to Dragoslav Bokan and his colleagues from the National Theater Administration.
Prime Minister
First, about the premieres in this season in all three ensembles of the National Theatre.
God's people are the second drama production of the National Theater this season. Many would say that there were not two of them, but only one and a half, because the previous one, Mrs. Olga, was actually a co-production with the National Theater of the Republic of Srpska from Banja Luka, which was agreed upon during the previous administration, and which was only realized during Bokan's time.
U To God's people starring six actors. In To Mrs. Olga three actors are from Narodni, while the rest are part of the team from the Banja Luka Theater, with two of them acting in both plays. This means that this season only seven actors from the entire Drama ensemble have been hired in new plays. There are 66 of them on the website of the National Theater in the Drama ensemble.
Zorba the Greek is the second ballet premiere, the previous one was Don Quixote to the music of Ludwig Minkus, choreographed by guest Jose Carlos Martinez, director of the Paris Opera Ballet. And this play is an acquisition from the time of the previous administration.
The opera had one premiere - Eugene Onegin Tchaikovsky directed by Mario Pavlo del Monaco, as well as three renewals of old plays that have not been in the repertoire for a long time.
What is there little of and what is there a lot of?
In short: since Dragoslav Bokan has been at the National Theatre, Drama, Opera and Ballet have only had five premieres.
During that time, however, there were many, many things that were illegal and unworthy: the two-month closure of the building, unrealized but planned performances, dismissals, banning members of the collective from entering the building, fines, mobbing, illegal rules, material damage, lost reputation, strikes, protests, criminal charges to the Prosecutor's Office for organized crime, requests for the dismissal of the minister, the Administration, Bokan...
On the good/bad scale, this bad is incomparably heavier than those five prime ministers.
And all of this would not have happened if the Ministry of Culture had not proposed to the Government of Serbia to elect Dragoslav Bokan as the President of the Board of Directors.
Requests for replacement
A few days after Bokan was elected, the employees of the National Theater, mainly the artistic part of the collective, publicly said at a press conference that they would not accept him. That the National Theater will not be led by a crime-ridden personality, the commander of the White Eagles in the Wars of the Nineties, an outspoken right-winger, and that they demand his removal.
Photo: Media CenterMedia conference of employees of the National Theater
The Singlus Actors' Union, the Ballet Dancers' Union, and the Music Artists' Union of the National Theater asked the Ministry of Culture and the Government of Serbia to reconsider their decision.
When people selected by the Ministry of Culture and Bokan were appointed to the management positions of the Theater, the employees extended the request for Bokan's dismissal to the Theater Management and to the Minister of Culture, Nikola Selaković. This became the main demand of their warning strikes, of which there have been a dozen since last June, as well as their protests. Unfortunately, their demands are still valid.
On March 6, the Union of Actors of the National Theater Singlus submitted criminal complaint to the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime against Minister Nikola Selaković, Dragoslav Bokan and Acting Director of the National Theater Dragoljub Bajić, accusing them of harming the collective, abuse of official position, which primarily refers to the decision of the Ministry of Culture and the Theater Management to close the building for two months on October 3, even though they did not have a decision from the MUP, and for the collapse of the material condition and reputation of the house.
In the history of the National Theater, it is not known that any other criminal charges were filed against the head of the theater apart from this one.
This April, the actors went public invited Prime Minister Matsut to engage in the resolution of their requests.
Of course, none of the mentioned responded to them.
Closing the building
Two days after the start of the season, and a few hours before the beginning of the warning strike of the acting union "Singlus" of the National Theater in Belgrade on October 3 due to the Rulebook prohibiting the expression of political opinion from the stage, the building of the National Theater was closed at the request of Minister Selaković and acting manager Bajić. It was said that it was fire-safe, although there was no decision by the MUP to close the building.
The minister said that money must be found immediately for people's safety. How much money was set aside, what was done, and whether the building is now safe, has never been known.
The building was closed for two months. Because of this, the premiere date of the ballet has been moved Don Quixote, and the performance of the ballet was cancelled A bagel in which world star Sergei Polunin was supposed to be a guest.
Unrealized plans
Two plays that were planned in Drama were not realized. They are Romeo and Juliet directed by the Bulgarian director Javor Gardev, i The Second Book of Migrations directed by Boris Liješević and dramatized by Fedor Šili.
According to the knowledge of the employees, the guest from Bulgaria postponed cooperation with the National Theater until 2027 in the hope that he would then be able to work with another Administration, and the official explanation that "Vreme" received at the time referred to the postponement of the premiere of the ballet Don Quixote which caused the postponement of the drama premiere. However, everything would have been fine if Minister Selaković and Dragoslav Bokan had not closed the building.
The decision not to work The second book of Migrations, Boris Liješević and Fedor Šili explained to our portal as follows: "This period will be remembered as a great crisis of the National Theater, and the perpetrators of that crisis as a national shame. The National Theater has produced fantastic results in previous years. Excellent young actresses and actors were accepted, exceptional performances took place, and extraordinary successes were achieved. The Second Book of Migrations it was meant as a continuation and crown of that period. And now everything was destroyed overnight. Unfortunately, it is not an atmosphere in which work is possible. The administration that insults and belittles the actors and the previous administration is not the address to communicate with."
Material damage
There is no official information on what kind of financial damage the National Theater suffered because it was closed, but it would be easy to calculate the sum of the unsold tickets during those two months, the fee paid to Sergei Polunin, then the fee to Jose Martinez the choreographer Don Quixote, the cost of moving performances to other stages in order to maintain the appearance that the National Theater is working, and so on.
It is believed that the sum would not be less than 20 million dinars.
It was an extremely expensive attempt to achieve what the Discipline Ordinance, punishments and threats had failed to achieve.
Photo: Marija JankovićDarko Tomovic
Actor Darko Tomović, president of the Singlus trade union, he told "Vreme" that "it's just a material loss. And what about the reputation of the house? People don't know if someone will close the building again tomorrow, and there is also the rumor that our warning strikes are actually a work stoppage, which is not true. We are not stopping work, but quite the opposite: we demand to work. We demanded to work for those two months. It is extremely important for us that people know that warning strikes do not mean the cancellation of the show."
Pressures, cancellations
Since Dragoslav Bokan has been running the National Theater, there have been countless of them, and he himself said on regime television that if necessary, he would change the entire Drama ensemble, but he would establish peace.
Photo: ArchiveProtest in front of the National Theater building
One of his first moves in this direction was the Rulebook on Work Discipline, which he expanded with a point according to which anyone who "in performing the work of the Theater, publicly, verbally, with symbols and gestures, expresses his political or other commitment that is not related to the performance of the Theater's work, then calls for activities that have a political character or are not related to the performance of the Theater's work, or points out symbols or features the highlighting of which is prohibited by law."
Of course it didn't help. Just as the subsequent provisions according to which the security may not allow anyone to express a political position on the stage did not help either. Direct threats to individuals are most pronounced in the management of the Opera - they are also not.
The Singlus union submitted a request to the Constitutional Court to review the constitutionality of the aforementioned Rulebook.
Zoran Stefanović, the newly elected artistic director of Drama, sent a public letter to Darko Tomović and informed him that "the use of the stage of the National Theater in Belgrade for propaganda or anything else that is not an integral and approved part of the performance as a work of art will not be tolerated."
A new systematization was made, according to which some jobs were abolished, and some were open but not artistic. Although there are 11 vacancies for actors in Drama, they are not filled with multi-year lump sums. Among them is Vanja Milačić, who has been on a flat-rate contract for 16 years.
The young actor was invited to an interview with Zoran Stefanović. He said that he felt like he was in front of an investigative body and that the conversation lasted 2,5 hours.
Opera's debutante, dramatic mezzo-soprano Sanja Anastasia told the media about the problems she faces at work and was fired. Everyone in the theater is saying that Ljubica Vraneš, the artistic director of the Opera, actually had personal reasons to remove her colleague from the ensemble.
The list of what happened at the National Theater during "Bokan's year", as they call the past season in the jargon, is endless. All shame to shame. But, of course, everything is in vain.
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