The counterpoint to the intimate drama of Nadezhda and her father are two subplots in two families where the father is absent. In all three levels of the story, we follow how a present or absent father affects his underage children. A counterpoint to the main dramatic story is the "invisible" but "present" social drama surrounding the death of the patriarch. So, we have the "little death" of the "ordinary" father and opposite it the "big death" of the "father of the nation"
As part of Belef, the premiere of the drama was performed on the "Raša Plaović" Stage of the National Theater It's not death, bicycle. (to steal it from you) by Biljana Srbljanović directed by Andrej Nosov. A small number of our plays in theaters in Serbia experience a second performance, which is valuable because it shows whether the play has the ability to live in different theatrical and social contexts. When the piece It's not death, bicycle. performed for the first time here on the JDP's Big Stage (in 2011), it was an event that had been announced for days and from which much was expected. In agreement with the JDP, the daily newspaper "Danas" published a book with a dramatic text by Biljana Srbljanović, which was provided with a copy of the newspaper. However, director Slobodan Unkovski's staging received almost uniformly negative reviews, while the dramatic text was praised. The play was not selected for Sterija's theater, which was a serious slap in the face to the respectable theater company, but Sterija's theater showed a performance from Schauspielhaus Bochum. However, neither is that set piece It's not death, bicycle. (to steal it from you) was not overly successful. In 2012, the award for the best drama went to the then quite young and unknown author Olga Dimitrijević for the text. Workers die singing. The play was produced by the Hartefakt Fund, founded by Andrej Nosov and Biljana Srbljanović. A lot has changed from 2011/2 to today, so the logical question is how does this text "sound" today?
The first good move by the director Andrej Nosov and the producer is that the play is performed on the "Raša Plaović" camera stage. It's not death, bicycle. is a piece of complex structure, but chambered form. There are eight characters, but all scenes take place between two, possibly three characters. The theme of the piece is intimate – facing death, which we do not know what it brings to the dying person, but we know that it means permanent loss for loved ones. In the main plot, we follow the relationship of the grown-up daughter Nadezhda towards the aged and infirm family tyrant. The father is old, seriously ill and dying, and the daughter is trying to take care of him and place him in a state hospital. He practices yoga and in this way demonstrates the fragments of his former power and authority, while she struggles to assert herself as a responsible and adult person and, in relation to her father, to step out of the role of a child. The counterpoint to the intimate drama of Nadezhda and her father are two subplots in two families where the father is absent. In all three levels of the story, we follow how a present or absent father affects his underage children.
The counterpoint to the main dramatic story is the "invisible" but "present" social drama surrounding the death of the patriarch. So, we have the "little death" of the "ordinary" father and opposite it the "big death" of the "father of the nation". Then, opposite the father-daughter relationship are two families from which the fathers are absent. We realize that the constant father-daughter charades seem almost sympathetic against the toxic relationships in families with absent fathers. As a counterpoint to all of them is the character of Ensign Jokić (Nenad Stojmenović), who says for himself that there is no one before him and no one after him, and in a way he is a metaphor for death itself as the absence of loved ones and the absence of identity. Through the dramatic story of three families, two deaths and one hospital, Biljana Srbljanović analyzes a series of social phenomena typical of modern Serbia: the problem of adult but immature children and elderly parents who mistreat their "children" even in their old age. Then the fate of the powerless individual in the encounter with a cold and disinterested institution that should be dedicated to his care. Politicians who engage in media manipulation under the guise of concern for the public interest, the so-called businessmen and shady types. Violence at school as an echo of the overall violent society. The incompetence of those who should be professionally qualified for the work they are doing. The dysfunctionality of the modern family. The scenes are short, and the lines are fast, almost short. The author uses didascalia to comment on the scenes in the form of a storyteller. The drama has a fragmentary structure, and individual scenes are connected by the "overflow" of motifs (eg waiting in the first three scenes). The character of Nadezhda is a kind of alter-ego of the writer who appears under that name in several plays. Even today when it is read, It's not death, bicycle. it seems complex and engaged in an indirect way because the personal experience of loss is primary in relation to the criticism of the social context in which it occurs.
Set designer Zorana Petrov created a unique and well-organized stage space, which is very good because it allows you to quickly move from scene to scene. On the left, in relation to the audience, is the cold and uncomfortable waiting area of the state hospital. To the right of the audience is the area where there is a kitchen and a dining table. Depending on the position of the table in space, we know that we are in one or another family of absent fathers. The direction consistently and scrupulously follows the piece. What the director has added is a certain shift towards hyperrealism - onions and eggs are fried in the kitchen, real blueberries are eaten... Hyperrealism on stage (a real flagpole, a real telephone box, etc.) can seem strange. Since It's not death, bicycle. it talks about death and that there are strange moments in this connection, it's a shame that the scenographer and the director didn't go all the way. If real onions are really being fried on stage, why don't the chairs in the waiting room and the kitchen elements look like they were "plucked" from some real space and brought to the stage? Instead, the waiting room and kitchen look realistic, but it's clearly a stage set. The costume (Marija Marković Milojev and Petra Fotez) was correct, although it did not always allow us to immediately recognize the character's character. The exception was the Tate costume where we really felt like it was the character's skin. The costume of Tata, played by Branko Vidaković, looked as if a modest pensioner put on his best suit to go to a doctor whom he does not like, but fears and respects. That suit of his seems to have come out of the fundus, it's tight, his stomach is falling out, he obviously wore it once, when his body looked different, but it's still his best suit. Bane Vidaković played very well the writer's suggestion from the didascalia in which she says that the father is sitting with great difficulty.
The way Bane slouches and speaks unequivocally indicate the father's struggle to maintain his former stance and his body's inability to maintain that stance. The only thing missing were the occasional outbursts of genuine verbal aggression (the play says that the father was a terrible tyrant). Such moments in Banet Vidaković's play would help Vanja Ejdus to play out some of the former fear that the daughter felt (and still feels) from her father. Vanja Eidus plays a caring daughter and an unfeminine wife. She is a woman who has kept something childish in her, but tries to hide it and not allow her father to "provoke" her. It is not entirely clear why the politician's son, the psychiatrist Aleksa (Peter Strugar) is riding roller skates - probably to show his infantility and immaturity in relation to the domineering mother whose attention he wants to attract. In particular, it is not clear why the actress Nina Nešković (Debela) is twerking in the drinking scene. Fat as a figure is an infantile child in the body of a young woman. Superior twerking, on the contrary, suggests a fully conscious sexuality that a woman manipulates in a targeted and successful manner. When you add to that the fact that the actress is dressed provocatively and is "dressing up", it is difficult to understand why Ropac (Miloš Đorđević), who is superficial and likes to seduce, does not pay attention to her but to Aleksandra (Suzana Lukić), who it does not betray the person as having any interest in the opposite sex or that they might be attractive. Miloš Đorđević played Ropac as a guy who tries to be funny and seductive, but he is, after all, a loser first and foremost. That's what we didn't get from his game. It should be said that the costume didn't suit the actor either - the robber looked "shoddy" in the suit and did not give the impression of a man who has a problem with money. Dragana Varagić, who in some other plays was excellent in the roles of caring but neurotic mothers, here it is as if she did not fully explain to herself who the Lady is and what kind of relationship she has with the only two characters with whom she has direct contact - her infantile son Aleksi (Petar Strugar) and the petty swindler Ropac (Miloš Đorđević). These incompleteness in relationships, as well as contradictory messages in the two subplots, gave the impression that in the second half of the play, the relationships between the characters no longer develop and that the plot stands still even though the scenes change. Nevertheless, Aleksa (Nenad Stojmenović) and Otac (Bane Vidaković) make a nice point at the end of the play and we leave the hall without much hesitation about what we watched.
After this setting It's not death, bicycle. (to steal it from you) we can conclude that in the past ten years the text has not lost its theatrical values even though the context has changed significantly. Many bad things have happened: politicians are even more manipulative, some children are even more aggressive, the church is more influential than ever in the previous 80 years... but as far as the "bike" is concerned, it can still ride.
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