SEX, DRUGS, VIOLENCE AND LAUGHTER

Dogs and Drugs, directed by Andraš Urban, Deže Kostolanji, Suboticaotica

By: Vanja Nikolić

As most of the performances of the Deže Kostolanji Theatre in Subotica, Dogs and Drugs brings a different theatre experience to the audience. It shows, in always different forms of theatre language, actors that go beyond themselves in each performance and this time a new form of experiment, which the director of this play and of the theatre, Andraš Urban, and his cast took on. All plays in this theatre derive from different processes of which actors and the director are a part of, trying to create more effective, stronger and innovative forms.

The starting point is never a classical drama text, but pre-motives foorm prose, a poem, theoretical texts, certain problems and topics. This time there were three directors –contributors: Jelena Bogavac from Belgrade explored the topic of violence with emphasis on domestic violence, Zoltan Puškaš from Novi Sad worked on sexual commitment and discrimination and Peter Ferenc from Subotica explored drug addiction. Each director made a play of thier own and Andraš Urban connected them into one play, with his own comment on each of the topics. In this process, the actors were the core, the connection and the basic elements. Their dedication and discipline are already well known and constantly present in a way that they have become an example to other theatres in the region. Apart from the seamlessly done acting tasks which they always fulfill as a norm, Marta Bereš, Arpad Mesaroš, Gabor Mesaroš, Kinga Mezei, Imre-Elek Mikeš and Zoltan Pletl, came across some new challenges in Dogs and Drugs.

Taking three plays as the basis, Urban mixes and crosses them. He puts on short and effective scenes, constantly replacing them at almost impossible and crazy speed. The scenes are connected only by their topic, which means that the actors play a new part in a new way in each of them, using different means and styles. These shortcuts are so successfully and, at the same time, so discreetly done, changing costumes on stage, pulling down all illusions and literally jumping from one role into the other very fast, insensibly and effectively. An extra level of meaning is the fact that all the characters embodied on the stage are named as the actors, which creates a special deflection from the stories. It is impossible to single out any of the actors, because they make a whole that breathes as one and whose parts are inseparable and because each of the actors has an remarkable solo element in which it is difficult to decide who was the best.

The director’s task seems even more demanding, serious and challenging. It seems that Urban accepted creating this play with all the risks and that is what highlights the visibility and the importance of the process and not of the final product. The text of the play created from documentary material, confessions and contemplations of the actors and of the three directors themselves, creates a mix that speaks of all the plagues of modern society. Traditional system of values and those propagated by criminals and delinquents, about family and morality as the pillars of society that are crumbling down, abused women, drug addicts… The play talks about our reality and gathers all elements from it. Due to this type of approach, Andraš Urban uses the opportunity to play with realism. That is why he uses the slogan Realism liberates.

The project deals with well known topics, those that we hear about every day, which the director uses to give a personal comment embodied in the moment of the performance when the actors approach the audience and tell them We are doing this because we care about you. With this they comment on many that deal with these topics and use their actuality as a means of profit and to gain popularity. This is why Urban does not exploit the topics by giving them the pathetic treatment, he does not encourage the verbal element of the stories at all, but emphasises the visual and the auditory aspect. All three topics concern the human body through which they speak in convulsions, jumping, discharge of faeces, kicking, tying up, crawling, touching, playing… On the stage, we see recitals, pantomime, cabaret, slapstick, vaudeville, but also performance and drama as means to create natural, ironic and baffling comments on reality, all at the same time.

All this provides the desired effect, which is laughter. At first, the topics were approached very seriously but once the seriousness was overcome, the actors and the director started to laugh at what hurts the most. Laughter is justified with these topics, since it liberates from pathetic disclosure. Also, it makes the audience feel comfortable, they can go on, sitting in their seats and enjoying the pain, without them being aware of it. The viewer is sometimes confused– they know they should not laugh, for these topics are usually a matter for serious discussion, but realises that maybe there is another way to perceive them. Laughter in this play is shameful, educational or healing and serves to help us to except the topics, to understand them, but also to observe them from a distance. Laughter is a product of ironic situations: an abused man hidden in a safe house is more abused by his friends who avoid him, parents proclaim their son a drug addict because of their own lack of knowledge, the bullies preach love, but only heterosexual love… Apart from these, there are stereotypical situations of drug addiction, confessions of raping, paedophilia, travesty that achieve a new dimension through their characters and stories and run away from what has already been seen. And this continues in each of over twenty scenes.

With all the characteristics that are marked as positive aspects of the play, we can not claim to have a positive impression throughout. Dogs and Drugs has not superseded most of the other productions of the Deže Kostolanji Theatre. On the other hand, director Andraš Urban presented something new – the importance of the process and of the synthesis of several artistic procedures and styles in one play. That is why it is unnecessary to consider additional cuts and synthesis of several topics and scenes or that a better unity and connection could have been achieved. In this case, this would be a work of one director and not an attempt to combine three artistic procedures in one, which has been successfully done, with relatively clear marks of style and individual work of each author.