Photo; Theater Art MuseumAfter 55 years and more than 200 recorded theater performances, RTS decided to redirect the budget intended for the preservation of theatrical heritage to a more commercial program. The Minister of Culture asks the management of RTS to continue their mission. "RTS recordings are an indescribable trace of theater history, they are a unique corrective to all theater authors, a textbook for students," says Nebojša Bradić.
The Minister of Culture and Information and Deputy Prime Minister, Maja Gojković, wrote to RTS Director Dragan Bujošević and the President of the Board of Directors, Branislav Klanšček, to continue filming theater performances.
"Theatrical materials, which are kept from being forgotten in this way, are important material for scientific and research work in the field of the history of theater art," Maja Gojković wrote, among other things, in the letter.
The letter from the Minister of Culture is actually a reaction to a series of newspaper articles by journalist Vukica Strugar in "Večernji novosti", initiated by RTS's decision to stop recording theater plays after 55 years.
Photo: National TheatreThe decision to perform Realm of Darkness The National Theater, which was recorded on December 26 last year, will be the last work of theater art that will be preserved for future generations, RTS leaders justify with a reduced budget, which caused the redirection of funds to more commercially profitable drama series.
"For now, we have no plans to film new plays," Marko Novaković told "Večernji novosti" the editor-in-chief of the RTS drama and domestic serial program editorial office, and stated that they had planned to film the Šopalović Traveling Theater shows, but that in previous years they were not due to the corona virus. in the opportunity to record a larger number of performances, and that the quality serial program that is their focus, "gathers the largest number of viewers, which is a very important segment of the functioning of RTS in recent years".
This statement is denied by the information about the direct television broadcast Olympus Jan Fabra, in October 2017, presented the 51st Bitef, which lasted 24 hours. It is known that at one point the performance was watched by 220.000 television viewers, as well as that the day before the start of the live broadcast Olympus, RTS 3 was the 41st channel in terms of viewership, and at the end of the broadcast it was in 14th place.
The director Nebojša Bradić, who initiated this venture, then the editor-in-chief of RTS's Arts Program, tells the "Vremena" portal that about the end of RTS's recording of theater performances "started to be talked about at the end of last year, but it sounded to everyone incredible and impossible, given that one of the basic missions of RTS is to preserve domestic creativity."
It is said that at that very time the festival "Comedy Days" in Jagodina, of which he is the artistic director and selector, was preparing to "write a letter to RTS with a proposal to film one of their performances, but we gave up."
"RTS is the only one that can not only be a guardian for the future, but can also show current viewers what theaters in other cities are doing. RTS recordings are an indescribable trace of theater history. They are a mirror for directors, actors, all authors of the play, they are a unique corrective. For students, they are a textbook without which they cannot study."
Bradić also says that RTS has opportunities like few others to record the performance in high quality, which makes it even more responsible to continue to collect and broadcast them.
"It is good that the Ministry of Culture reacted. Perhaps, if RTS really does not have a budget for theatrical tradition, the state will have some solution. "I think RTS will have to reconsider its decision after Minister Gojković's letter," says Nebojša Bradić.
The first live broadcast of a play in Yugoslavia was on December 28, 1958. It was a play Joakim Vujić Theater directed by Vladimir Petrić in Belgrade's "Atelje 212".
When a tape recorder was acquired for the first Non-Aligned Conference in 1961, performances began to be recorded. The oldest recordings in the RTS archive are from 1967. Yegor Bulychov Mate Milošević in the Yugoslav Drama with Milivoj Živanović in the lead role.
That same '67, it was also preserved Jelena Ćetković Ace Popović at the National Theater with Ksenija Jovanović and Mija Aleksić, directed by Bora Grigorović. It is also significant because it shows what a fantastic theater actor Mija Aleksić was. The third, oldest recording is Arsenic and old lace Atelier 212 directed by Milenko Maričić, with Rahela Ferrari and Vuka Dunđerović.
Since then, around two hundred performances have been recorded.
Vukica Strugar, the author of articles in "Večernji novosti" about this problem, reminds that "theatre, the most ephemeral of all arts, can only leave a mark in time by recording performances." A living word and a living man on stage, that elusive symbiosis, are lost once the play is removed from the repertoire. Photos, theater posters, reviews, interviews remain, but how Ljuba Tadić played The Defense of Socrates or Dirty hands, nobody today can even guess if there is no video."
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