AFTERWORD

Co-production of the National Theater in Niš, the National Library of Budva and Beoart

Nebojša Romčević (Belgrade, 1962), playwright, screenwriter and theater expert. Full professor at FDA in Belgrade.

He is the author of numerous research papers and a participant in scientific meetings in the country and abroad.

He is a three-time winner of the Steria Award – once for theatrology and twice for the dramatic text. He also won the award for the best screenplay in Novi Sad, Montpellier and Lucerne.

His plays have been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Catalan, Slovenian…

He is the author of the scripts for several TV series and the films Cordon, On the beautiful blue Danube, The smell of rain in the Balkans.

The most important dramas: Forces in the Air, Winter Castle, Graveyard, Light Piece, Terra incognita (New York, East Side Story), Cursed Kowalski, Karolina Neuber, Guilty, Paradox, Ship of Love, Gossip, PR.

Spasoje Ž. Milovanović (Kruševac, 1971).

Graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. He is defending his doctoral thesis at the same faculty. He works in the theater as a playwright, dramatist, director, theater critic and theater researcher. He worked as the Director of Drama at the National Theater in Belgrade, dramaturge of the Kruševac Theatre, editor-in-chief of CEA Kruševac, editor-in-chief of TV “Plus”. He is currently the General Manager of the National Theater in Niš. He is an associate professor at the Academy of Arts of the History of World Drama and Theater and History of Serbian Drama and Theater courses. He is a professor of theory and history of performing and audio-visual arts at the First Niš High School “Stevan Sremac”. Founder, director and co-selector of the Theater and Drama Festival of the Balkan cultural space “Theatre at the Crossroads”.

As a theater creator, he signed 108 titles in the country and abroad. He is the winner of more than 200 individual or collective awards for the author’s text, dramaturgy, direction or as part of the play as a whole.

He is the president of the Association of Professional Theaters of Serbia and the vice president of the international theater network “7+”. He is a member of the Association of Dramatic Artists of Serbia, the International Association of Theater Critics and Theatologists, the Association of Playwrights of Serbia, the Association of Writers of Serbia, PEN Canada, Edmonton Arts Council, Canada, Rotary International.

Founder and director of TRD “Creation process”, Edmonton, Canada.

Author of 7 monographs and scientific books, 3 collections of poetry. His poetry has been translated into English, Spanish, Bulgarian, Romanian and Swedish.

He is an authorized court expert for dramatic art, specialized in film and TV directing.

He is the winner of the Golden Badge of the Serbian Cultural Association for his exceptional contribution to the culture of Serbia and the holder of the honorary title of Ambassador of the Theater of Alberta, Canada.

A WORD FROM THE WRITER

Writing about the lives of famous, or unrecognized, heroes and victims who have their place in the mythology we call history is, as it were, a certain recipe for a boring eulogy about some “great man” (whom we embellished with a few charming flaws to make him believable), or another story about the collision of an exceptional individual with a miserable bazaar that will never have an understanding of exceptionalism, no less boring. Because, you meet with an already ready-made idea of ​​a person, as it were, with a model in which his life has been poured. Then there is another, equally boring question: was he/she like that, were the historical facts taken into account and why not in the right way, did you betray the historical truth – which, by the way, does not exist , like none other – where you fall victim to history maniacs, specialized in historical trivia from “Politics’s entertainment”, because this is their five minutes, when they will prove that life was unfair to them, and he rewarded you, a scoundrel, with the opportunity to (ignorantly) write about that.

The information I found about Bogoboj Rucović was equally uninteresting and led to the “misunderstood genius” side. And then I opted for the only healthy solution: write as you like, enjoy the process and cry over the result. Historical truths do not exist, they are only projections of meaning from the present into a meaningless past, but that is why there is an artistic truth, which is proven by the reaction of the audience.

The whole history is a big gossip about the past and those who brought us to where we are. That’s why I didn’t even introduce Bogoboj to the stage in this play, because the traces of him were left by others, benevolent or malicious, always subjective, always talking about themselves on the occasion of others. Thus, this piece is another piece of gossip about Bogoboj Rucović, a Budva actor who regretted his life choices on the Belgrade stage. You won’t find out anything about Bogoboj, as you won’t find out in any other artistic opportunity. You may just see that public opinion has always been toxic, malignant, and easily manipulated.

Nebojša Romčević

A WORD FROM THE DIRECTOR

GRATITUDE TO THE AUDIENCE

(from the playwright-director’s note)

The performance Afterword, by the National Theater in Niš, Beoart from Belgrade and the Budva National Library, was created as an adaptation of the play Gossip by Nebojsa Romčević. Adaptation refers both to compression and reinterpretation of certain scenes and to playing with the post-fiction. Relying on Romčević’s genre playfulness of the story of Bogoboj Rucović, i.e. echoes of his life and work, “because life consists of a series of scenes of different genres”, Afterword tries to combine fable with reality, without hiding that we are in the theater here and now. Just as tradition teaches us – conclusions are drawn from the story and the audience is thanked.

Spasoje Ž. Milovanović