Corporate fairy tale, new play Atelier 212, borrows lines from the Darden brothers' film Two days, one night, from 2014. When we hear that someone is putting on a play inspired by a movie, the first thought is that it's an attempt to make money at the expense of a well-known title. However, this is not about that - the movie Two days, one night not a big hit (although it was nominated for the Palme d'Or in Cannes in several categories). Second, the authors of the text performances, director Veljko Mićunović and playwright Slobodan Obradović, did start from the same plot as the Darden brothers, but they created an autonomous work in a different medium, with a different message and a different style.
The story of the film and the play is as follows: a woman (married, mother of two children) who is being treated for depression wants to go back to work. The management does not want that, but leaves the decision to the employees - they can choose whether they want a salary bonus or for the colleague to return to work. The employees voted for the bonus and, as a result, she loses her job. At the instigation of her husband, the main character works with the administration to have the vote repeated. She goes from one colleague to another trying to convince them to allow her to return to work. The film focuses on the personal drama of the main character, who feels ashamed of her illness and finds it very difficult to ask colleagues for support and understanding. Her husband, who loves her and who is aware that without her salary, they cannot pay off the loan, that is, they will lose their house, encourages her to do so. So, in the foreground is a personal and family drama, and through the conversations of the heroine and her colleagues, we gradually unravel the economic decline of the working people of Western Europe.
On the same plot, Veljko Mićunović and his collaborators created a work that is different in meaning and style - the goal is to show the mechanisms by which the system destroys man and turns the human community into a group of lonely individuals who are easily manipulated. The action was transferred to our social context, to the call center of a delivery company (these companies are recognized in our country as one of the most visible centers of precarious work). The characters of male and female colleagues were given more space - in the play we get to know the personal, social and social drama of different types of people who can become victims of the corporate system. Why do we say type and not character? Because the system makes people into comic characters who play in a tragic story. That's why everyone except the main character, whose name is Sandra (Jovana Gavrilović), is named by the social role they play in the system (Husband - Filip Hajduković, Boss - Bojan Žirović) or by a characteristic that defines them (Existence - Hana Selimović, Scared - Natalija Stepanović, Forgotten - Ljiljana Dragutinović, Corporate - Dejan Dedić, Aggressive - Uroš Jakovljević, Indignant - Milica Stefanović). That typology of the character was clearly implemented through acting. Each actor defines his character with a clear facial expression and gesture, and each of those characters is at the same time distant to us (because he deliberately plays with distance) and very close because in each of them we recognize a "case" from real life. The goal is not to identify with the characters, but to say: Yes, it's really like that! I know of a similar case!
A clear idea of how to unmask the corporate system with theatrical means is visible in all aspects of the play. Marija Marković Milojev's costume is contemporary and reflects the characteristics of the hero and his social function. The scenography (Branko Hojnik) was reduced to a sign in order to make it clear how the "system" shapes the space in which employees gather and work: minimalism, modernity and branding are insisted on, and essentially employees are kept in miserable, even humiliating conditions without any privacy and enough space for themselves. In that space, people are lost in the way that you feel lost and powerless when you persistently try to call a service, and the machine in the call center "transfers" you here and there, with a kind but synthetic voice, until the "line breaks". A significant and amusing "detail" of the scenography is a washing machine that turns a drum in which colorful laundry tumbles, just as human destinies are tumbled and squeezed in a corporate machine.
But despite the fact that the play talks about serious problems, the authors of the text, the director and the actors did not make the mistake of "talking" about a difficult topic in a difficult way. On the contrary! The play is defiantly light and full of humor that helps us not to be depressed, but to look the truth in the eye. The most memorable scene in the play is the party at the corporation. Techno music that abuses the ears blares (selected by Veljko Mićunović), the cake is cut and candles are blown. They're all supposed to be a happy, relaxed community, but they're basically a scared and tight-knit herd who only do what the boss says - funny and creepy at the same time. And then the dance begins. In fairy tales, the dance is the moment when the prince and the princess come together. U Corporate fairy tale dancing is dancing to techno music - a futile attempt by a lonely individual to give himself at least a little breather. And it is good that this kind of play has a "happy ending" - in order to change the system, we must first convince ourselves that it is possible, and it is possible. That's why, the next time the "system" offers us to "choose", we should seriously consider whether there really is a choice or if guilt is being imposed on us so that we accept being passive victims or, even worse, sacrificing our fellow man for some petty, momentary and essentially irrelevant gain.
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