THE HUMOUR CENTRAL
Before World War II, actors and close friends Jovan Tanić and Aleksandar Aca Cvetković enjoyed great popularity for their numerous and significant roles at the National Theatre in Belgrade. Both critics and audiences were thrilled to see them perform, whether in Nušić’s comedies or Shakespeare’s tragedies. When Belgrade fell under occupation in 1941, Jovan and Aca decided to remain on stage, and in the summer of 1942, they founded a comedy theatre – “Humour Central”.
The eccentric Tanić and the reflective Cvetković found solace from the war on stage, in humour and comedy. The people needed laughter - between April and August of that year alone, their theatre saw as many as 150,000 visitors.
Nevertheless, all that time a weighty question was hovering over their heads: How does one continue performing on stage in the midst of such a horrible crisis and situation one’s country is in?
Their colleagues and friends, Žanka Stokić, Ljubinka Bobić, Mirko Milisavljević, and Nikola Popović, were faced with the same dilemma - to perform or not to perform?
A WORD FROM THE DIRECTOR
The cliché about history repeating itself has long ceased to be a cliché in these regions; it has become a pattern by which we live or survive. Is mentality the unchanging constant that drives us to seek leaders, dictatorships, oppression, uprisings, and betrayals among our own? Are these never-ending “interesting” times to blame, or are we?
In one such “interesting” time - toward the end of World War II - society was undergoing irreversible transformation, and everyone was searching for their place, seizing (often literally) opportunities to profit from the newly arising situation. Then, as now, yesterday’s principles, affiliation with a political organisation or a social group shifted overnight. After all, if history is written by the victors, one must stand on the winning side. Any deviation from basic morality is justified by a perpetual pragmatism - that’s the way of the world.
Amid these upheavals, it is inevitable that all that is deeply personal, long-buried, unforgiven, frustrating, petty, and miserable will rise to the surface. Old accounts are settled. People betray their closest ones; brother turns against brother, best friend against best friend, and in the theatre – an actor becomes another actor’s worst enemy.
Everyone’s righteousness is haughtily judged, while one’s own unquestionable uprightness is highlighted. While fervorously building something new, the old is ruthlessly cast aside. Those who do not listen to the war song (or those, like Cvetković and Tanić, who sing while others fight in a war), will be forced to hear the coming storm.
Many years have passed since Aca, Jovan, and the others were in this same building and walked these same hallways, just as we do now, trying to put the pieces of their story together. Who knows, perhaps in eighty years, someone will be putting the pieces of our own story together. But until then…
In similarly turbulent times, Ivo Andrić wrote: “Now that I have seen, heard, felt, and understood both, it is time to seek a third place. A secluded yet elevated place, where there is no shouting or singing, where the threads and conditions of life and death converge, where no one wishes or awaits anytnig, but where one sits with what one has found and already received, sits by the vast and unending river of life, of an entire life - in contemplation, without the desire or thought to grasp, halt, or seize it.”
Dedicated to Cvetković, Tanić, Žanka, Boba, and Mirko, who now sit peacefully in that “third place”, “with what has been found and already received”.
And to my mother, who has recently joined them.
A WORD FROM THE DRAMATURGE
“Humour Central” by Đorđe Kosić is intertwined through the memories of its two main characters and actors, Jovan Tanić and Aleksandar Cvetković. The structure of these memories carries an ambivalent chronological dimension, dictating the dynamic between the dramatic and the comedic within the play, thus reinforcing its symbolism while it poses a question - what should have been done in that moment?
The author leads us to viscerally feel how full-blooded these characters are, who were historical figures and who had to make a fearful choice - stage or darkness, a full stomach or war. Nevertheless, the author does not shy away from the truth and the controversial issue of artistic ethics, yet he also does not let us forget that many actors entertained the audience at “Humour Central” or the National Theatre during the war, but on November 27, 1944, Tanić and Cvetković were executed for it. Without trial - for their involvement in “Humour Central”, under the alleged accusation of collaboration with the occupying forces.
And so at last, our journey has ended!
Dreams, love, pain, and praise
Have all passed by, gone and faded.
A gloomy corner now remains
The “world that once a stage was”.
Only at night, in dreams, shadows appear,
Echoes of youth, like ghosts from a tale;
And pale, horrible masks of despair
Whirl in a frantic drunken jolly.
Jovan Tanić, Jubilee
The poem from the preface to the autobiography “About Her Who Doesn’t Return” – Olga Ilić
research work: Jefimija Sekulović
contributor: Rade Likić
