Competition results which were announced this year, and not only this year, by the Ministry of Culture and the Secretariat for Culture of Belgrade indicate that according to them actors should not receive awards. The behavior of the National Theater seems to join them in this.
Yesterday we wrote that the Ministry of Culture refused to finance the "Pavle Vuisić" award, which was received by Tanja Bošković last year, and is awarded by the Association of Film Actors of Serbia.
However, this case is not the only one.
What will Dobrica's ring do to the actors?
At the Competition for Theater Activity, the Ministry rejected the Association of Dramatic Artists of Serbia (UDUS), which applied for the awards "Dobričin prsten", "Ljubinka Bobić", "Bojan Stupica" and "Miloš Žutić". The same result was obtained at the City Competition.
The "Dobričin prsten" award is given for overall creativity, "Stupica" is the highest award for directing, "Miloš Žutić" is the award for the best acting achievement, and the "Ljubinka Bobić" award is awarded biennially for the best role in a comedy.
Reason
The Commission of the Ministry of Culture gave the same reason for all four "no's": "The applicant's documentation is in order and arrived within the required deadline. The Commission believes that the project has a certain impact on the cultural life of the community, but that there are projects in this contest that, in terms of content quality, are more aligned with the goal of the contest, so the project was not proposed for co-financing."
In the conditions of the contest, the general goal of the contest is indicated: improved intensive, continuous and coordinated development of theater art (creation, production and interpretation).
Acting, we will agree, is an interpretative art, and the award for interpretation confirms the continuity of quality. This means that the goal of the competition has been achieved, and that the reason why the Commission rejected UDUS is not justified.
UDUS received zero dinars
The "Dobričin prsten" award includes a copy of the great actor's ring and a monograph about the winner published by UDUS. The last monograph in the "Dobričin prsten" edition, about Boris Isaković, was published in 2023.
For the implementation of the following, for monographs by Anita Mančić and Bogdan Diklić who received the "Ring of Goodwill" for 2023 and 2024, the Ministry did not want to help UDUS.
"This year, we received zero dinars from both the Ministry of Culture and the City Secretariat for Culture for all our projects," Pavle Pekić, president of UDUS, told Vreme.
Photo: RTV VojvodinaPavle Pekić
He emphasizes that, apart from the prizes, all the projects of their members were rejected at the competition for theatrical activity.
"However, we manage. We published a monograph on Egon Savin, the first laureate of the award Dejan Mijač which is awarded for the director's opus, and which we award with Sterija's theater. We also managed to publish a monograph Lords of the Ring Tatjane Nježić about the first 35 laureates of that award. The Actors' Organization of Serbia helped us in that."
Pavle Pekić expects that the monograph on Anita Mančić will be completed by October, and the monograph on Bogdan Diklić by the end of the year.
"The Association of Dramatic Actors is the oldest artistic association in Serbia, it is 107 years old, and neither Nikola Selaković nor Jelena Medaković will destroy it," says Pavle Pekić.
He reminds that they were rejected at the City competition this year for the first time since that competition existed.
Forgetful National Theatre
The National Theater in Belgrade has three acting awards. "Žanka Stokić" is awarded to actresses for outstanding contribution to film, theater and television art, "Raša Plaović" is the award for the best acting performance on all Belgrade stages, and "Petar Banićević" is awarded to the best actor under 35 years of age.
In 2019, the "Žanka Stokić" award became biennial. Since then, it was awarded to Tanja Bošković in 2021 and then to Neli Mihajlović only in 2025. In the meantime, the National Theater denied that the award was cancelled, and shifted the responsibility for the delay to "Večernje Novosti", with which it jointly awards it, "Novosti" transferred it to Narodno, and so on for more than two years.
The "Raša Plaović" award is presented in November, on the occasion of the National Theater Day. It was last awarded in 2024 to Radovan Vujović for the previous season. He is still the last winner.
At the National Theater Day ceremony last November, the new winner of the "Raša Plaović" award was not announced. Also, to date, the competition for proposals for a new winner has not been announced.
In April of last year, the National Theater announced a competition for the "Petar Banićević" award. Candidate registration was until May 8 of last year, but it is still not known whether the jury met, whether it chose someone, whom, whether the competition was suspended, whether the award was canceled...
Photo: National TheatreAleksandar Vuckovic
In June 2024, the National Theater boasted that the actor Aleksandar Vučković was the winner of the "Petar Banićević" award for 2023, for the roles of Mihajl Medaković in Slobodan Selenić's play "Fathers and Fathers" dramatized by Kata Đarmati and directed by Veljko Mićunović, as well as Costa in the "Hilarious Tragedy" by Dušan Kovačević, directed by Jagoš Marković. After that, they did not advertise.
The only conclusion after the enumerated facts is the assessment from the beginning of the text.
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