Download A shot at a blank heart by Teofil Pančić

1 October 2015
A shot at a blank heart
By Teofil Pančić
Exceptionally good play by Dukovski, flawlessly directed by Popovski, in the company of highly spirited
ensemble of the SNT, without a weak point: if it were any better, it would not be good at all.
Theatre seasons in some way start with Bitef, but this play was performed a few days before the start of the
festival, being a lot better than the majority of what we have seen in the festival’s mainstream programme...
Premiere of the play “The Walking Ghost” (or Prometheus’ Pathway) by Dejan Dukovski, directed by
Aleksandar Popovski, was held at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad (coproduction with the Centre for
Development of Visual Culture).
Lookie, lookie here, Jagger and Richards of the Macedonian drama and theatre, exclusively performing in our
alleyway? Pun aside, it has been proven several times that these two understand each other perfectly, or that
Popovski, as a very few others, has the key to the safe entrance of the frequently complicated worlds of Dejan
Dukovski’s heroes, the writer who appears to be bored by writing “conventional” theatre plays, and even more
bored to deal in academic new avant-garde-isms, or, let no evil hear, some “post-drama” mambo-jumbo, one
who instead all of this rather creates strange dramatic melange of impulsive semantic energy, yet sometimes
so complexly structured that a less skilled – or simply-less experienced director easily loses his path, taking
the entire play into a desolate environment...
Anyway, The Walking Ghost – although a bit surprising- is one of the more “disciplined” version of Dukovski,
different from the dishevelled freak image that we got used to - this is a play with centralised storyline that
he congruously follows, one might say-“with heads and tails”, but this conditional change has been achieved
within very well recognised poetics of the playful citizen of Skoplje, who, in the nineties, introduced to postYU dramaturgy a new, potent, rare up to today, yet precious self-comprehension of the Balkans’ own barrel
of gunpowder-then and now: satisfactorily distant from self-colonising self-contempt of being “insufficiently
European” Balkan, but also from auto exotic self-adoration of the coded Balkan “second-rate” syndrome,
accepted as a quasi-cultural excuse for any type of irresponsibility towards oneself and others.
“The Walking Ghosts’s” main character, Aleksandar, called Mara, is a dramaturge, even Shakespearelogist,
meaning that he is engaged in “an unprofitable profession”, as his banker had nicely put it, explaining thatnothing personal, no hard feelings! – the bank will have to repossess his house. The Banker is however, also
a split personality, serving the system he deeply despises: recognising a rebel in Mara, he gives him a pistol,
with which the latter will-in Hamlet-like search for the Guilty-waste various bad guys, more and more highly
positioned cogs in the mechanism of system-organised robbery of which he himself is a victim, but not being
able to reach either the heart of the System, or the top of the Pyramid: the question remains-is that shape really
a pyramid, and does the System have a heart or a centre, can it be simply destroyed, or is it so abstract and
comprehensive thus becoming invulnerable, independent from the faith of its executors…
A question disturbing enough, but there is a worse one: even if we manage to achieve the desired goal “in
creation of a better world” for our children, what would it mean to the very child who basically loses his father
in the process? There is no good answer, and this is Mara’s tragedy, although he tries his best to reject this
temptation as well.
This is, of course, only a mere arrow that I have tossed through the framework of the play, and around it
swarms an exquisite gallery of characters who are in fact the play’s juicy flesh: around Mara (a trusty Nenad
Pećinar) is his devastated family, parents (Dušan Jakišić and Gordana Đurđević Dimić) who grieve for the lost
better and more humane life, apathetic wife (Jovana Stipić) who loves him and yet loses him, abandoned dopehead daughter (Danica Grubački, a noted entry!) who, through being numb from constant laughter-inducing
marijuana inhalation fends off the cruelty of the world, bemused brother (Strahinja Bojović)... On the other
hand, there are the underground and above-the ground ruffians, servants of the corrupt cartel – which is not
an aberration of the system, but the system itself – and the accompanying menagerie, from the on-call sugar
baby (flawlessly perfect Višnja Obradović) to the priest (Igor Pavlović), who is not any better, just like the
institution he represents, than the sugar baby, only better protected...
Popovski has followed – as it is customary for a premiere, and afterwards-whatever may happen –the plot
without any major interventions, but he has also done everything possible to make the characters alive: this
resulted in a strong, powerful, performance which from beginning to the end “works” like a Swiss alarm clock,
with the ensemble without weak spots. However, the pillar role in this play is a magnificent Radoje Čupić,
brilliant in the roles of several villains and a few miniatures, one better than the other; it is really wonderful to
watch an extraordinary actor managed by a director who is capable and knows his stuff!
What else is there to say? Minimised yet functional scenography which actors manage without any effort,
costumes that are designed for the play and not just designed, music as well... The Walking Ghost is a humorous,
playful and essentially serious theatre, appreciated by the spectators who are fed up with the “traditional” and
“post-neo” etc., affectation, the one that deeply concerns us and which builds and calls on its flawless and
unquestionable “trade”, and in the end really creates something that is called high, powerful artistic expression,
a true theatrical experience. All this based on one of the best, and by many factors the most mature script by
Dejan Dukovski, a serious dramatic thinker covered by the self-protective masque of a funky rock and roll
anarchist.