WHEREOF/FORE THEATRE?

Yes, whereof is theatre?
About today. About us.
Wherefore theatre at all?
Because of today. Because of the now.
When it seems that the people, that godly crowd, knows everything, because they have learned all of relevance, back yesterday, a long time ago, and all can be learned, with ease and simplicity. One click away, as it were, whatever that means, however it works. One click away, like one life away.
A tiny web of benefits has caught all the bright minds of the world, so that even the intelligent, unsurpassed, ironic Socrates can, must, and should be excluded. And when you exclude Socrates, the one synonymous with wisdom, who is left to save our world or at least explain why our world must collapse?
Sages and artists are redundant. Perhaps only a sideshow performer, like Hanswurst, is required.
So, wherefore theatre?
What should theatre talk about?
Why talk at all?
Why, therefore, us?
The ``two-hour lifetime`` of theatre art leaves vestiges, imprints in the human spirit, it knows that despite cautious prophylaxis, it infects it with ideas, although the incubation is sometimes greatly prolonged.
So Meyerhold says.
He is one of us, the one who believed that theatre must be the last act of reason, because theatre has always been a place where prevailing societal norms are questioned. It keeps endeavoring still, but the agora is desolate and silent.
Everyone is silent, as if asleep.
Societal anesthesia dispossesses theatre of defiant smiles and rebellious words. But the traces exist and, barely discernible, covered in sludge, they lead to shrouded places where the power of artistic expression rejects compromise. Instead, speak, teach, and whatever happens, happens, whatever fate has in store for us, whatever the gods see fit...
All the performances in the 2024 Joakimfest repertoire speak loudly, shamelessly, fearlessly, telling a story – one which is sometimes painful and sad, bitter and ironic, burdened by tradition, meant to remind us, but also keep us alert, ready - in this world where ground is being pulled from underneath our feet.
We should then first ask ourselves why we do this, the question also posed by the authors of the performance Atau-kere (meaning: the last drink a person consumes before dying) from the Karaganda Regional Kazakh Drama Theatre. The piece Under Construction, by the Glej Theatre from Ljubljana, Slovenia, talks about the usurpation of dreams, desires and passions, about a stolen life and the imposed rules of the game. The right side in a problematic historical time, when worlds are collapsing and people become wolves, is determined by a deep-seated sense of justice and humanity, an honorable trait of the main heroine of the performance Women Anthem, produced by the Istrian National Theatre in Pula, the Croatian National Theatre in Mostar and the Association for the Promotion of Culture “Intermezzo” from Sarajevo. Eugene Ionesco has been telling us for decades about the absurdity of life, and the actors of the performance The Bald Singer, produced by the Cultural Centre Tivat remind us of this with a unique stage and linguistic exhibition. Indebted to sound literature, but also to the generation of our fathers, whose illusions about a just, solidary, better world have disappeared in the untraversable swamp of the totalitarian and autistic one-party system, echoes in the performance Fathers and Forefathers, produced by the National Theatre in Belgrade, while the mire of modernity, and above all the unwillingness of the individual to face their own demons, critically analyzes their own social position and honestly reconsiders their life priorities, is shown in the performance Gideon's Knot, by Belgrade Drama Theatre.
There, topics without answers - why we live, why we live thusly, why we give in, endure, suffer, why we do nothing, why we don’t improve ourselves, and, of course, the world around us, why we lose courage in the final hour, when all is lost, why we lack consistency...
A thousand why?
That is what the contemporary theatre in Kragujevac is asking.
That's what theatre is about. The now.
I think so.
That someone sees and listens,
For tomorrow to be
tomorrow...