Where the Stress Falls (33 page)
Read Where the Stress Falls Online
Authors: Susan Sontag
Nothing to be done. /
Ništa ne može da se uradi.
Ništa ne može da se uradi.
—opening line of
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
I
WENT TO
Sarajevo in mid-July 1993 to stage a production of
Waiting for Godot
not so much because I’d always wanted to direct Beckett’s play (although I had) as because it gave me a practical reason to return to Sarajevo and stay for a month or more. I had spent two weeks there in April, and had come to care intensely about the battered city and what it stands for; some of its citizens had become friends. But I couldn’t again be just a witness: that is, meet and visit, tremble with fear, feel brave, feel depressed, have heartbreaking conversations, grow ever more indignant, lose weight. If I went back, it would be to pitch in and do something.
WENT TO
Sarajevo in mid-July 1993 to stage a production of
Waiting for Godot
not so much because I’d always wanted to direct Beckett’s play (although I had) as because it gave me a practical reason to return to Sarajevo and stay for a month or more. I had spent two weeks there in April, and had come to care intensely about the battered city and what it stands for; some of its citizens had become friends. But I couldn’t again be just a witness: that is, meet and visit, tremble with fear, feel brave, feel depressed, have heartbreaking conversations, grow ever more indignant, lose weight. If I went back, it would be to pitch in and do something.
No longer can a writer consider that the imperative task is to bring the news to the outside world. The news is out. Many excellent foreign journalists (most of them in favor of intervention, as I am) have been reporting the lies and the slaughter since the beginning of the siege, while the decision of the western European powers and the United States not to intervene remains firm, thereby giving the victory to Serb fascism. I was not under the illusion that going to Sarajevo to direct a
play would make me useful in the way I could be if I were a doctor or a water systems engineer. It would be a small contribution. But it was the only one of the three things I do—write, make films, and direct in the theatre—which yields something that would exist only in Sarajevo, that would be made and consumed there.
play would make me useful in the way I could be if I were a doctor or a water systems engineer. It would be a small contribution. But it was the only one of the three things I do—write, make films, and direct in the theatre—which yields something that would exist only in Sarajevo, that would be made and consumed there.
In April I’d met a young Sarajevo-born theatre director, Haris Pašovi
, who had left the city after he finished school and made his considerable reputation working mainly in Serbia. When the Serbs started the war in April 1992, Pašovi
went abroad, but in the fall, while working on a spectacle called
Sarajevo
in Antwerp, he decided that he could no longer remain in safe exile, and at the end of the year managed to crawl back past UN patrols and under Serb gunfire into the freezing, besieged city. Pašovi
invited me to see his
Grad
(City), a collage, with music, of declamations, partly drawn from texts by Constantine Cavafy, Zbigniew Herbert, and Sylvia Plath, using a dozen actors; he’d put it together in eight days. Now he was preparing a far more ambitious production, Euripides’
Alcestis,
after which one of his students (Pašovi
teaches at the still-functioning Academy of Drama) would be directing Sophocles’
Ajax
. One day Pašovi
asked me if I was interested in coming back in a few months to direct a play.
, who had left the city after he finished school and made his considerable reputation working mainly in Serbia. When the Serbs started the war in April 1992, Pašoviwent abroad, but in the fall, while working on a spectacle calledSarajevo
in Antwerp, he decided that he could no longer remain in safe exile, and at the end of the year managed to crawl back past UN patrols and under Serb gunfire into the freezing, besieged city. Pašovi
invited me to see hisGrad
(City), a collage, with music, of declamations, partly drawn from texts by Constantine Cavafy, Zbigniew Herbert, and Sylvia Plath, using a dozen actors; he’d put it together in eight days. Now he was preparing a far more ambitious production, Euripides’
Alcestis,
after which one of his students (Pašovi
teaches at the still-functioning Academy of Drama) would be directing Sophocles’Ajax
. One day Pašovi
asked me if I was interested in coming back in a few months to direct a play.More than interested, I told him.
Before I could add, “But let me think for a while about what I might want to do,” he went on, “What play?” And bravado suggested to me in an instant what I might not have seen had I taken longer to reflect: there was one obvious play for me to direct. Beckett’s play, written over forty years ago, seems written for, and about, Sarajevo.
HAVING OFTEN BEEN ASKED
since my return from Sarajevo if I worked with professional actors, I’ve come to understand that many people find it surprising that theatre goes on at all in the besieged city. In fact, of the five theatres in Sarajevo before the war, two are still, sporadically, in use: Chamber Theatre 55 (Kamerni Teater 55), where in April I’d seen a charmless production of
Hair
as well as Pašovi
’s
Grad
, and the Youth Theatre (Pozorište Mladih), where I decided to stage
Godot
. These are both small houses. The large house, closed
since the beginning of the war, is the National Theatre, which presented opera and the Sarajevo Ballet as well as plays. In front of the handsome ochre building (only lightly damaged by shelling), there is still a poster from early April 1992 announcing a new production of
Rigoletto,
which never opened. Most of the singers and musicians and ballet dancers left the city soon after the Serbs attacked, it being easier for them to find work abroad, while many of the actors stayed, and want nothing more than to work.
since my return from Sarajevo if I worked with professional actors, I’ve come to understand that many people find it surprising that theatre goes on at all in the besieged city. In fact, of the five theatres in Sarajevo before the war, two are still, sporadically, in use: Chamber Theatre 55 (Kamerni Teater 55), where in April I’d seen a charmless production of
Hair
as well as Pašovi
’sGrad
, and the Youth Theatre (Pozorište Mladih), where I decided to stage
Godot
. These are both small houses. The large house, closed
since the beginning of the war, is the National Theatre, which presented opera and the Sarajevo Ballet as well as plays. In front of the handsome ochre building (only lightly damaged by shelling), there is still a poster from early April 1992 announcing a new production of
Rigoletto,
which never opened. Most of the singers and musicians and ballet dancers left the city soon after the Serbs attacked, it being easier for them to find work abroad, while many of the actors stayed, and want nothing more than to work.
Another question I’m often asked is: who goes to see a production of
Waiting for Godot?
Who indeed if not the same people who would go to see
Waiting for Godot
if there were not a siege on? Images of today’s shattered city must make it hard to grasp that Sarajevo was once an extremely lively and attractive provincial capital, with a cultural life comparable to that of other middle-sized old European cities; that includes an audience for theatre. As elsewhere in Central Europe, theatre in Sarajevo was largely repertory: masterpieces from the past and the most admired twentieth-century plays. Just as talented actors still live in Sarajevo, so do members of this cultivated audience. The difference is that actors and spectators alike can be murdered or maimed by a sniper’s bullet or a mortar shell on their way to and from the theatre; but then, that can happen to people in Sarajevo in their living rooms, while they sleep in their bedrooms, when they fetch something from their kitchens, as they go out their front doors.
Waiting for Godot?
Who indeed if not the same people who would go to see
Waiting for Godot
if there were not a siege on? Images of today’s shattered city must make it hard to grasp that Sarajevo was once an extremely lively and attractive provincial capital, with a cultural life comparable to that of other middle-sized old European cities; that includes an audience for theatre. As elsewhere in Central Europe, theatre in Sarajevo was largely repertory: masterpieces from the past and the most admired twentieth-century plays. Just as talented actors still live in Sarajevo, so do members of this cultivated audience. The difference is that actors and spectators alike can be murdered or maimed by a sniper’s bullet or a mortar shell on their way to and from the theatre; but then, that can happen to people in Sarajevo in their living rooms, while they sleep in their bedrooms, when they fetch something from their kitchens, as they go out their front doors.
BUT ISN’T THIS PLAY
rather pessimistic? I’ve been asked. Meaning, wasn’t it depressing for an audience in Sarajevo; meaning, wasn’t it pretentious or insensitive to stage
Godot
there?—as if the representation of despair were redundant when people really are in despair; as if what people want to see in such a situation would be, say,
The Odd Couple
. The condescending, philistine question makes me realize that those who ask it don’t understand at all what it’s like in Sarajevo now, any more than they really care about literature and theatre. It’s not true that what everyone wants is entertainment that offers them an escape from their own reality. In Sarajevo, as anywhere else, there are more than a few people who feel strengthened and consoled by having their
sense of reality affirmed and transfigured by art. This is not to say that people in Sarajevo don’t miss being entertained. The dramaturge of the National Theatre, who began sitting in on the rehearsals of
Godot
after the first week, and who had studied at Columbia University, asked me before I left to bring a few copies of
Vogue
and
Vanity Fair
when I return later this month: she longed to be reminded of all the things that had gone out of her life. Certainly there are more Sarajevans who would rather see a Harrison Ford movie or attend a Guns N Roses concert than watch
Waiting for Godot.
That was true before the war, too. It is, if anything, a little less true now.
rather pessimistic? I’ve been asked. Meaning, wasn’t it depressing for an audience in Sarajevo; meaning, wasn’t it pretentious or insensitive to stage
Godot
there?—as if the representation of despair were redundant when people really are in despair; as if what people want to see in such a situation would be, say,
The Odd Couple
. The condescending, philistine question makes me realize that those who ask it don’t understand at all what it’s like in Sarajevo now, any more than they really care about literature and theatre. It’s not true that what everyone wants is entertainment that offers them an escape from their own reality. In Sarajevo, as anywhere else, there are more than a few people who feel strengthened and consoled by having their
sense of reality affirmed and transfigured by art. This is not to say that people in Sarajevo don’t miss being entertained. The dramaturge of the National Theatre, who began sitting in on the rehearsals of
Godot
after the first week, and who had studied at Columbia University, asked me before I left to bring a few copies of
Vogue
and
Vanity Fair
when I return later this month: she longed to be reminded of all the things that had gone out of her life. Certainly there are more Sarajevans who would rather see a Harrison Ford movie or attend a Guns N Roses concert than watch
Waiting for Godot.
That was true before the war, too. It is, if anything, a little less true now.
And if one considers what plays were produced in Sarajevo before the siege began—as opposed to the movies shown, almost entirely the big Hollywood successes (the small cinematheque was on the verge of closing just before the war for lack of an audience, I was told)—there was nothing odd or gloomy for the public in the choice of
Waiting for Godot.
The other productions currently in rehearsal or performance are
Alcestis
(about the inevitability of death and the meaning of sacrifice), Ajax (about a warrior’s madness and suicide), and In Agony, a play by the Croatian Miroslav Krleža, who is, with the Bosnian Ivo Andri
, one of the two internationally celebrated writers of the first half of the century from the former Yugoslavia (the play’s title speaks for itself). Compared with these,
Waiting for Godot
may have been the “lightest” entertainment of all.
Waiting for Godot.
The other productions currently in rehearsal or performance are
Alcestis
(about the inevitability of death and the meaning of sacrifice), Ajax (about a warrior’s madness and suicide), and In Agony, a play by the Croatian Miroslav Krleža, who is, with the Bosnian Ivo Andri
, one of the two internationally celebrated writers of the first half of the century from the former Yugoslavia (the play’s title speaks for itself). Compared with these,Waiting for Godot
may have been the “lightest” entertainment of all.
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