Tanja Mandić Rigonat: Brutal Stalinist approach has taken a modern form

Considered as a director whose recognizable style, among other things, is characterized by introspection and a strong artistic volume. Sensibility, receptiveness that draws the viewer in, with deep respect. Her plays Mrs. Minister, Demons, Nora, Ivanov, Balkan Spy... are winning awards, performances are sold out. It is less known that she is also, as literary connoisseurs point out, a skilled poetess. She published three books of poetry, from the nineties until today, one for each decade, so, she says, those decades are also a part of them. The play Our Class, which she directed (National Theater Belgrade), was recognized by theater critics as one of the best in 2023. Based on the play by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, centered around a historical event (when the Poles burned the Jews on July 10, 1941 in the Polish village of Jedwabne), it focuses on a group of young people from the same class in school, of different nationalities, social status and religion, who have their own joys, sorrows, longings, affinities, crushes... none of whom have any idea how everything around them would change, including themselves, when the whirlwind of history touches down. In short, it is a theatrical study of the way in which social context grinds and changes a person, and in its theatrical fullness it created the environment for a young generation of actors to flourish.

She is also regarded as a creator well known for her social courage, who does not shy away from speaking her mind, and in her interview with NIN she talks about the theater, her views on the world, our time and setting...

As we heard, you wrote a play - The Love Life of Emma Bovary. You published several books of poetry, your dramatizations and adaptations are famous, but the question arises – what for, how, why did you start writing this play? To whom will you offer it?

The full title of the play is The Love Life of Emma Bovary or Emma, c'est moi, as Gustave Flaubert was reputed to have said. I am interested in the phenomenon of Bovarism. Inspired by the character of Emma Bovary, this term in psychology describes a state of dissatisfaction with life, a gap between what one would like and what is happening, between living in imagination and the reality. This passionate life in imagination and illusions ends with a suicidal bankruptcy, both emotionally and materially. Here, arsenic falls down like snow throughout the play.

Last year in theater was marked, in the best sense of the word, by your play Our Class, which, among other things, examines how the context (the winds of history) shapes a person, especially a young one. It is praised for its artistic strength, but also for its relevance to the present moment. What turns a man into a beast?

For me personally, last year was also marked by the play The Secret Life of Adrian Mole at the Boško Buha Theater, and the question of evil is one of the biggest and most important questions throughout the history of philosophy, art, and religion. War is the greatest evil. And still, it is always there. It is also present in peace. Dostoevsky's idea that evil will appear disguised as good is prophetic. In the modern multiplied reality, the forms of evil are also multiplied. Today, you can destroy a man's life in peace, take away his ability to work, cancel him, sometimes with a feeling of great moral superiority and correctness.

Our Class is not a story about the past, a chronicle of a crime committed long ago, a documentary record of how the Poles in the village of Jedwabne burned alive their Jewish neighbors, women, children, young and old. It is a wondering about the nature of evil, about the factors that psychologically, religiously, politically contribute to the development of evil... Today, we see a genocide taking place in Palestine before the eyes of the whole world, genocide by definition, mildly qualified as excessive response to the crimes of Hamas. Yes, the crimes of Hamas are gruesome. The response to them cannot be thousands upon thousands of dead children and civilians. It cannot? Apparently it can.

So?

Horrors happen in the 21st century just like they did in the 20th century. They are accompanied by powerful propaganda. The narratives are strictly defined. What the wars in Ukraine and Palestine have in common – besides death, destruction, suffering of civilians – is the creation of a black-and-white image, the labeling, and perfidious imposition of self-censorship. The idea of freedom of thought and speech is viciously brought into question. The brutal Stalinist approach in the worst sense has taken a modern form. Those who really want to think things through should not support that black-and-white picture book, but add colors and nuances to the story of today's world. The color is reality and truth, and the black-and-white is propaganda, inventing a reality that does not exist.

PROMO / Marija Janković

What caught your attention when it comes to social, political events and developments?

The theft of the election, the mental breakdown that happened to many who believed in the change of government. Primarily in Belgrade. I supported Proglas (the Proclamation). On the election night, I felt waves of anger and sadness. And now I feel as if the election took place in a past life, a long time ago, and that now everything is going back to the way it was. Before the election, the opposition did not do everything it could to overthrow this government at the polls. It did not live up to the historical moment and the huge desire for change, which evidently exists in the citizens. And it has existed for a long time as a kind of emotional blackmail: it is not nice, it is not polite to question the moves of the opposition. A critical statement on the subject of the opposition automatically classifies you as a supporter of the current government, or more precisely, of A. Vučić. It's all silly, oxymoronic. And this conversation of ours is not devoid of context and possible condemnation.

I am giving an interview to you for NIN first of all because I know and appreciate what you have done as a culture journalist over the past 25 years. A large part of the old editorial staff of NIN has left, and their departure is a brave, principled gesture worthy of respect. But again, I think that some people who have come now, you and Mr. Timofejev, you are giving me the possibility to believe that NIN is not dead and that NIN's Award will survive as well. I feel the need for something that has existed for 70 years to survive. Because this is the time of disappearance and erasure. We see what the government is doing to the city. NIN has gone through various stages in its history. It is good that there is competition and that the old editorial staff creates a good new weekly newspaper. I want to read Vuk Cvijić wherever he is, as well as some other journalists. We need more serious and analytical texts, not snoid journalism.

Snoid journalism?

Snoids are creatures from Robert Crumb's comics. "I'm Snoid and I live in an asshole," says Crumb. And snoid media are those who live in the digestive tract of every government or its owner. Neither is in the public interest.

Who do you trust?

I don’t idolize anyone. I believe in the achievement of an ordinary man, an honest, brave man from various professions, I believe in the activism of citizens all over Serbia at the local level, in the initiative Kreni – Promeni (Start – Change), in solidarity. I follow what Savo Manojlović says about stolen elections, Kosovo, Rio Tinto and strategies for change. Two years ago, the operation to stop Rio Tinto was successfully carried out.

Aren't we facing the return of Rio Tinto, and the fact that this matter has not been even closely resolved?

Massive propaganda campaign will be launched, and it already is, to convince us that lithium is actually ginseng, the elixir of health, youth, progress, wealth and beauty. Although we know very well that it is not. The election was stolen. The opposition is looking for support from abroad. And that same foreign factor from which support for the development of democracy is sought, lobbies in various ways for the lithium story. This whole situation is a trap.

In Portugal, the government fell because of the corruption scandal related to Rio Tinto. And we will actually end up listening to how the extraction of lithium from jadarite by means of sulfuric acid is healing for the nature and man, a measure of progress and modernity, not economic occupation. When Kreni – Promeni says that Serbia is not for sale, I wonder how much of it is already gone. These are the dangerous times of imperial politics, the opposite of democracy, the time of cancelling, propaganda, totalitarianism in both subtle and crude forms. Everything is as in a crooked mirror or placed upside down.

What is your next professional step?

In May, I should start working on Mirandolina at the Tivat Culture Center. There are still some talks underway, and it is too early to talk about it, but what I will definitely do is work on Who Killed My Father, by Édouard Louis. It is the writer’s autobiographical story, the story of a son about his father, who was injured at the factory where he worked. When he was thirty-five, the load hanging on the cables fell on his back and disabled him. After the accident, he received a disability pension from the French state for several years, until that same state decided one day that he could go back to work, as broken and ill as he was, and clean the streets so he wouldn’t be a social parasite. Ruth Gilmore, an American intellectual, says that racism is the exposure of certain populations to early death. This definition applies to all phenomena of the social oppression. The writer lists the names of French politicians whom he accuses of making statements, laws, and regulations that were passed in someone's interest, and who "killed his father."

Édouard Louis says that, for a certain part of the population, politics is a matter of aesthetics (I like, I don't like this or that politician), while for another part of the population, politics is a matter of life and death. Look at what has happened here with the world of work, with those who live from their work, the working class. Miners died in the mine - no one is either guilty or responsible; no one is responsible for accidents in factories; factory workers get poisoned, and ordered to go back to work the next day because, apparently, it’s safe, and they get poisoned again; a young man in Kruševac, 18 years old, is killed at his place of work, and he doesn’t even get a minute of silence from the local authorities, his fellow citizens, but only from those in the opposition. Today, even a minute of silence is no longer a minute of silence before the fact of a person's departure, death, but rather an announcement of evil in the people. If that is not evil in its essential form, the evil of subservience, the evil of fear, I do not know what is.