Literatura in cenzura - Društvo za primerjalno književnost - ZRC SAZU

Aleksandra Jovićević:Censorship and Ingenious Dramatic Strategies in Yugoslav Theatrelitical climate gradually became more tolerant after Tito’s death in 1980.However, they did not enjoy the success of Brešan’s early plays. By themid-80s a more direct theatrical discourse made the mask of neo-mythologyobsolete.A dissident communistThe Serbian author Aleksandar Popović could also be seen as a dissidentplaywright although he never considered himself one, simply becausehe was never arrested or officially banned. Nevertheless, seven outof Popović’s forty plays were banned under various circumstances and atvarious times. Popović was a staunch leftist all his life, an unorthodox andeven maverick communist, but also a populist. As a young man, he spentthree years on the prison island of Goli Otok (literally, “Barren Island”),supposedly for pro-Stalinist sympathies. Subsequently he was placedunder surveillance, investigated, and often taken to the police station for“informal conversations”, in which the police tried to warn, corrupt, andfrighten him. Several times he went through what he called a “civic death”,deprived of a passport and a place to live, blacklisted, outlawed, excludedfrom the repertories, and avoided by friends. However, he never consideredleaving the country because he wanted, as he used to say, to share thecommon fate of his people. Popović was so prolific that he became themost produced playwright in Yugoslavia and he received many prizes forhis work. In contrast to Ivo Brešan, whose plays were translated and performedabroad, Popović employed a complicated language of puns andlocally relevant surrealist allusions that were unsuited for translation, andso he received no recognition abroad.Popović’s poetic plays, sometimes written in verse, deal with the fateof unimportant people at the periphery of cities and the margins of society,mixing everyday humour with the grotesque, farce, and poetry. As acommunist and anti-Titoist, Popović could not, however, avoid being politicallycritical. This is particularly true of his seven banned plays, in whichvarious political metaphors are inscribed. Razvojni put Bore šnajdera (TheDevelopment of Bora the Tailor), Popović’s most popular farce about adictator, was removed from the repertory of Atelier 212 after three performancesin 1967, presumably because the main characters resembledTito and his wife Jovanka in many ways. A small scandal occurred at theopening because the female protagonist, actress Maja Čučković, woreJovanka’s hairstyle. The production was promptly terminated, withoutpublic reaction, after a phone call from a politician.243