The Artistic Director of the Drama Department of the National Theatre in Belgrade Assumed Public Rule on Epiphany, at the Commemoration of Branislav Nušić

The former Artistic Director of the Drama Department of the National Theatre, Molina Udovički Fotez, has retired after one of the most successful periods in the history of Serbia’s principal theatre. • The position of director has been taken over by Zoran Stefanović, also a dramaturge, as well as a producer, culturologist, and international cultural activist

As part of the planned changes at the National Theatre in Belgrade, the former Artistic Director of the Drama Department, Molina Udovički Fotez, retired after a period during which the national theatre experienced some of its greatest artistic triumphs in history, measured by the number of awards, audience attendance, and critical reception.

She is succeeded by Zoran Stefanović, born in 1969, also a playwright and screenwriter translated into several languages, a producer, publisher, culturologist, historian and art theorist, and one of the world’s pioneers of digital culture. He is a degree holder in dramaturgy and is a doctoral candidate in the theory of art, culture, and media. Furthermore, he is the president of the Association of Serbian Playwrights and of the “Project Rastko” International Cultural Network.

Stefanović somewhat differs from previous Drama Directors of the National Theatre in this era, due to his international experience as a producer, manager, and scholar. Since the mid-1990s, he has held around ten major regional and international positions, including during emergencies and reforms. He is one of the most prolific figures in Serbian culture and art of the post-Yugoslav period and has left an international mark in around dozen cultural and artistic disciplines, as well as in several niches of the humanities. He is the recipient of around fifty national and international awards and honours, including some of the main ones for dramatic arts: the Golden Medal of Belgrade for Screenplay, the “Josip Kulundžić” Award, the “Branislav Nušić” Award, the “Miodrag Đukić” Award, “The Vigil of Jakov Orfelin,” and others.

Stefanović started his new role on Epiphany, January 19, on the death anniversary of Branislav Nušić, the director of the National Theatre, and also the first president of the Association of Yugoslav Dramatic Authors, which existed from 1929 until the early 1950s, when Tito’s regime abolished the Association, only for it to be re-established in 1976 as the Association of Serbian Playwrights (UDPS). By tradition, the president of UDPS and the artistic director of the National Theatre jointly lay wreaths at the New Cemetery and at the Nušić’s memorial beside the National Theatre. This year, instead of two people, it will be one and the same person.

For decades, Stefanović’s activities have been closely linked with the National Theatre, especially in the fields of culture and science. Also, in cooperation with the National Theatre, since 2008 he has been a publisher and producer who, through the “Project Rastko” portal, presented digital editions of “Pozorišne novine” to Serbian and Slavic studies researchers, translators, the diaspora, and the widest public worldwide, as well as plays in English written by Dušan Kovačević, Bora Stanković, Vida Ognjenović, Veljko Radović, Siniša Kovačević, and Nebojša Romčević, and selected plays by Željko Hubač in Serbian, English, German, and Bulgarian. •

Statement by Zoran Stefanović: “A Comfortable Chair in the House of Wonders”

The new Artistic Director of the Drama Department of the National Theatre in Belgrade, Zoran Stefanović, in his first statement since assuming his new role, stated the following to the National Theatre’s marketing department:

“When you enter the National Theatre in Belgrade, a house almost 160 years old, like Carroll’s Alice or McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, you first grow smaller and then become joyful before the magnificent sight and the wonders that this space, together with its people, creates every day, in not very easy circumstances. I am thinking of the Ballet and the Opera as well, not only the Drama, because in my native region of Rađevina and Jadar, and in the whole Podrinje area, we do not have opera and ballet houses of this size and world level. It reassures me that, in these turbulent historical times, General Manager Dragoljub Bajić offered the position of Artistic Director of the Drama Department of the National Theatre, which symbolically is one of the key posts in Serbian culture, to a man who does not resemble the expected photo-robot. That man, my humble self, joins the staff in an ordinary and unquestionable way, according to the regular plan, for an indefinite term; he is not a member of any party, not part of theatre lobbies in Serbia, and for decades has been a sharp but objective critic of many aspects of the state’s cultural strategy. I therefore understand this choice literally: as proof of the trust of the management and the employer, the state of Serbia, in the inner powers of renewal in culture and art, because through me they are blessing not merely a manager, but a man from the artistic and cultural profession, who will, from within the collective and together with the collective, lead the house into a new phase and contribute to the necessary reform of Serbian and related cultures. This is the proof of the state’s self-awareness at an extremely challenging moment in world geopolitics, where culture very much counts. Besides, it is a comfortable chair, because my colleague Molina Udovički Fotez has made the future easier for all of us, leaving us a stable and triumphant period, with all kinds of successes. But where the audience sees a clear repertoire policy, which we will further perfect in the years to come, and where we see truly powerful ensembles and the entire collective, there the professional sees deeper, which guarantees future survival. That is the legacy of clear standards and values on the cultural, aesthetic, poetic, and ethical levels. And there is nothing there that ordinary management or a bit of crisis management cannot solve, provided that higher powers have left wisdom both to the collective and to the people as the employer through the state. It is easy to safeguard such a house. And just as gossip about a person and the person are not the same, the same applies to institutions: in the National Theatre these days you have just as many beautiful wonders as, for example, in the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, and if you are in doubt as to why the media do not show this sufficiently, you can easily resolve it by coming to the theatre. We joyfully await both citizens and the faithful public at the National Theatre. You are all ours, just make sure to get your tickets in time. We continue to offer wonders.”

Biography of Zoran Stefanović

Based on data from the manuscript of the book by Dr. Jelena Perić

Education

He was born in 1969 in Loznica, Serbia. He attended the Valjevo Grammar School (major in Languages and Social Studies) and the Loznica Grammar School (major in journalism). On his first attempt, he was admitted to the Department of Dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts of the University of Arts in Belgrade, where he graduated in 1994 in Dramaturgy under Prof. Slobodan Selenić and in Screenwriting under Prof. Živojin Pavlović. He is a doctoral candidate, nearing the defense of his PhD dissertation in the field of the theory of art, culture, and media. He completed postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts and at the Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Arts in Belgrade.

As a scholarship holder of the U.S. government, he went on a study visit to the United States in 1990, where he studied the American model of stage production, cultural management, Hollywood screenwriting, and local theatre dramaturgy. As a result, through textbooks and projects at the Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Arts, he introduced into domestic practice and popularized the new wave of American screenwriting and dramaturgy pedagogy and theory, especially the period from Syd Field to Robert McKee.

He continued his education through courses and modules, including distance-learning programmes in the field of dramatic arts: the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Jordan Peterson Academy, etc. He speaks and writes English fluently and has working knowledge of all Slavic and major Romance languages.

Dramatic and Theatrical Work

He is the author of around ten full-length plays translated into several languages and about twenty major film and television screenplays, half of which have been made as documentaries and are among the most frequently broadcast and most-watched works of contemporary Serbian television documentary production (“The Lives of Kosta Hakman”, etc.), while in fiction production two films and a TV series are currently in preparation.

His plays and screenplays have been written about by Slobodan Selenić, Vladimir Stamenković, Milorad Pavić, Radomir Putnik, Dubravka Knežević, Ilija Bakić, Boško Suvajdžić, Sofija Trenčovska, Mimoza Rajl, Dejan Ajdačić, and dozens of other scholars and critics from several countries.

His play Slavic Orpheus: A Ritual Case (1992) combined anthropological theatre with science fiction and Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty. In some surveys it is regarded as the symbolic beginning of post-Yugoslav dramaturgy and theatre in Macedonia and Serbia, thanks to which the author has been considered as one of the key Serbian and Slavic dramatists of the era, as in the Italian De Agostini encyclopedia. The production by the Strumica Theatre entered the official selection of the Belgrade International Theatre Festival (BITEF) in 1992, and thus the author Stefanović, then twenty-two, and director Trenčovski, at twenty-one, were the youngest authors in the history of the festival (the guest performance did not take place due to United Nations sanctions against Yugoslavia). The Radio Belgrade radio drama version was nominated for the Prix Europa in Berlin.

His plays differ in genre and style. The Island Story, the first-ever story about Corto Maltese written specifically for the theatre, tells of a failed communist revolution and was performed in Valjevo shortly before the Eighth Session of the League of Communists of Serbia in 1987. A Weekend with Marija Broz: A Playlet for the Stillborn depicts Serbia in late Titoism as an open-type madhouse. The anthology two-hander, The Tale of the Cosmic Egg, is a mystical response to Samuel Beckett, told through anti-Beckettian means. The Prince Will Not Return bears the subtitle “a play with thesis, with singing and sword-fighting for youth” about Serbian divisions in the time of Rastko Nemanjić. A Waltz for Olga: A Folk Tale and a Bloody Entertainment depicts the last days of the Romanov imperial family and explains the hidden essence of tragic Slavic history.

As a publisher, editor, and compiler, Stefanović has participated in the publication of over 600 plays in several European, American, and Asian countries, which has resulted in dozens of premieres. In the Serbian language, this took place within the printed and digital project One Hundred Plays by the End of the Century (Književna reč magazine, 1994–2000), the digital library Contemporary Serbian Drama on Project Rastko (since 1997), the printed and digital series Contemporary Serbian Drama of the Association of Serbian Playwrights (since 1998), the reissues of “Dramska baština” by the Museum of Theatrical Arts of Serbia (1997), and now the major series of publications Koturn, which will begin in 2026. As a scholar, researcher, and encyclopedist, he has made a long-term contribution; he is currently working on the Biographical Dictionary of Serbian Drama as the first undertaking of its kind, and as an editor and publisher on an expanded edition of the Lexicon of Drama and Theatre by Raško V. Jovanović and Dejan Jaćimović.

As a compiler, editor, manager, member of editorial boards, or publisher in this decade, he has participated in the publication of collected or selected works of numerous Serbian doyens of culture and science. In the field of dramatic arts, this includes over one hundred volumes of the works of Branislav Nušić, avant-garde and neo-avant-garde dramatists, Dušan Stojanović, Petar Volk, Raško V. Jovanović, Radomir Putnik, Jovan Joca Jovanović, Milan Jelić, Bojana Andrić, Miloš Nikolić, Miladin Ševarlić, Božidar Zečević, Aleksandar Đaja, Stojan Srdić, Vladimir Đurić Đura, and others. Among foreign authors, these include, among others, Steven Pressfield and Nikita Mikhalkov.

He is one of the authors of reforms that introduce the culture of film, drama, theatre, artistic animation, and comics into the Serbian school system.

Digital Culture

Over nearly four decades of activity, Stefanović has produced an extensive international body of work in around dozen cultural and artistic disciplines, as well as in several niches of the humanities, but in global culture he is best known for being one of the world’s pioneers of cyber culture and the digitalization of culture.

He was the principal founder of the Pegasus BBS (since 1994), then of the electronic library and today the “Project Rastko” cultural network (1997), the separate magazine “Kibernetička rel” (in Književna reč, 1998), “Project Gutenberg Europe” and “Distributed Proofreaders Europe” (2004), and he is one of the initiators of Wikipedia in Serbian and related languages (2003), as well as several other major projects.

Social and Humanitarian Work

While still a grammar school student in the mid-1980s, he began engaging in social activism for democratic and national rights. In the autumn of 1990, as a student, he participated in the restoration of the democratic system in Serbia and the founding of the first political parties. He was active in protests for media freedoms at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in March 1991 and 1992. During the electoral crisis in Serbia in 1996/1997, he was one of the expert coordinators for the “Together” Coalition, when he implemented in practice one of the world’s first methodologies of political activism on the Internet, and he also helped establish part of the methodology for peaceful and nonviolent political activism in the streets.

He declined a position as a high-ranking official in the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after October 5, 2000, because after NATO’s aggression against the FRY he was engaged in humanitarian work and the protection of cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija (especially in the period 1999–2004).

He was the chief coordinator of the international action to acquire the seal of Prince Strojimir, the oldest proof of Serbian statehood from the 9th century, in cooperation between the expert and governmental sectors in 2006.

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