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Based on the fragments from Shakespeare's tragedies and the study of Jan Kott Shakespeare Our Contemporary Circus History About the show 
In his antological, and now quite classical analysis of William Shakespeare's historical chronicles, Jan Kott recognized the functioning of a ruthless and unrelenting principle which he called The Great Mechanism of History. This principle implies, as it is well known, that historical movement boils down to a vicious, infernal circle in which every ascent to power begins as a righteous struggle against tyranny, and it necessarily ends in new tyranny. The inner necessity of that process is in the fact that a pretender to power starts almost unconsciously to make the same atrocities he rebelled against and which made him start fighting earlier, so as soon as he comes on the top of the ladder of power, a new avenger comes after him and he pushes him into an abyss. Interpreted like this, Shakespeare's concept of history is highly pessimistic because it rejects every possible transcendency and teleology of historical movement, and it is shown as a completely absurd and closed chain of violence.  It seems that today, even more than about 40 years ago when Kott's study was being born, this kind of understanding of history has its confermation in current events, in a world where even the last utopias, ideals, common interests have disappeared. Sonja Vukićević also shares that kind of perception of the world and history and she transforms it, with her artistic imagination, into a powerful and metaphoric vision a vision of a circus. Kott's absurd moving in the circle of crimes becomes, in Sonja Vukićević's vision, a grotesque circus manege, in which ruthlessly and without mercy but apparently so happily human bodies and souls are being displayed, humiliated and tortured. Besides general dissacralisation and emphasis of its grotesque nature, this reduction of history on a circus has one more important aspect: it points out the current craving for (ab)use of political and historical events by the media, the voyeur enjoyment with popcorn and ice cream over historical cataclysms which happen calmly in front of our eyes thanks to television.  Every circus consists of acts. In Sonja Vukićević's performance Circus History the acts too come from Shakespeare's plays: every circus act very original and amazing in its choreographic scheme is accompanied by texts from Shakespeare's historical chronicles and tragedies or by Kott's comments. However, those texts are not given as classical dramatic situations, with built characters, relations, conflicts; in each circus act performs only one actor who recites Shakespeare's "pure thoughts", as the author calls them thoughts on history, power, wars, crime, guilt... The actors do not represent actual characters, they only recite refined Shakespeare's thoughts while performing circus skills, and therefore some of their individual characteristics like age, sex and appearance stop being important in that way, the words of Richard III can be spoken by a woman, and those of King Lear by a young man; according to Sonja Vukićević, a thought isn't related to sex. The selection and compilation of texts from every single play are, therefore, made on the basis of extremely free associations, but there is a certain gradation in the sequence of the plays, in their mutual linking.  It starts with Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's early tragedy, naive and exaggerated in the illustration of bestial and absurd crimes. It continues with Othello, in which crime is already serious and organized, but it stays within the sphere of private matter, it is motivated by the basest instincts and makes a limited range. It is followed by Macbeth in which crime is already elevated to the level of state project, and Richard III where we also have an organized state crime but, in its ingenious monstrosity, loses its basic function and assumes almost abstract, aesthetic shape it turns into an act that is self-contained and pleasant in itself. Then comes King Lear in which piled up crimes do not only have effect within the sphere of private and public life, but they also start up forces of nature, they get an adequate echo in the overall ribellion of the nature. The tragedy Hamlet comes last, but not because it should, as it is assumed, represent some kind of a culmination in the illustration of history's bloody trail: on the contrary, Sonja Vukićević finds in Hamlet a small, but important chance for the birth of a new, more righteous man and world. There is no escape from the Mechanism of History, it grinds sistematically and hopelessly; however, the Circus of History stops its manege and it opens one wing of its tent, letting the light to at least peep inside. Ivan Medenica Festivals and awards |
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