Theater Terrorist Back in Town

According to the story Ljubisa Ristic told, he was once banned from working within 150 kilometers of Belgrade . That was the time when Belgrade's power brokers felt that Ristic and his friend, writer and director Dusan Jovanovic, were arrogant "theater terrorists" who should be kept out of culture. That opinion was shared by politicians in the capitals of the other Yugoslav republics.

The leading director of his generation, son of a prominent general, fierce speaker at student riots in the summer of 1968, managed to direct theater plays across Yugoslavia. As a rule, they were always sporadic, the result of a moment of carelessness by the authorities or the result of determination by enthusiasts in the authorities to shake up Yugoslavia's deadened social reality with Ristic's K(azaliste) P(ozoriste) G(ledalisce) T(eatar) company - all words mean one thing: theater. Even then, Ristic says, KPGT faced a nationalist bureaucracy posing as guardians of socialism. The artistic results of the KPGT were exceptional performances and a team of actors from across the former Yugoslavia.

Because of the way the KPGT functions, Ristic uses purely military terminology. He says the KPGT then was a guerrilla force fighting to liberate territory (Ljubljana, Zagreb, Split, Kotor, Budva, Nis) and to preserve it in ways that do not demand great sacrifice. Then there was the redeployment to new liberated territories. Ristic's arrival in Subotica as director of the National Theater there is comparable to the formation of national liberation committees; the first form of authority in Yugoslavia during World War II.

He managed to survive in Subotica for 10 years despite pressure even at all stages of the breakup of Yugoslavia. In the meantime Ristic set up Godo, Avala and YU Fest, Kotor Art and Theater Town in Budva and managed to form a company that toured former Yugoslavia, went to the US, Australia, Mexico and Germany. He also became and stayed politically unsuitable.

Now, Ristic is back in Belgrade in triumph. His previous arrivals in Belgrade were the same but only to the theater public with no one else ready to meet his demands and needs. Bear in mind that this time he is carrying the shield of the Yugoslav United Left (JUL) as its president. In a country where everything is possible, he joined the side that some expected him to join.

Where else would he go given political reality now as a man who never hid his pro-Yugoslav feelings. Who would a principled Leftist join, as a critic of socialist dogma, bureaucracy and nationalism if not the movement that urges all those values. On the other hand, a post might have been reserved for Ristic as a neutral intellectual although he never was neutral.

Witnesses said Ristic now only has to pick up his mobile phone and someone will see things get done. They said he got an unbelievable number of tankers to fill in the artificial lake he made in a sugar plant in Belgrade for his YU Fest; he got the support of the plant manager and enough manpower to clear away the garbage that has been accumulating in the plant for years and he's drafting plans to turn the plant into a huge cultural center.

Anyone who went to see the YU Fest could see Ristic cleaning up the plant with broom in hand or explaining hydrostatic principles to anyone who was skeptical about the artificial lake.

Belgrade Mayor Nebojsa Covic visited YU Fest and was left confused by Ristic's energy. Covic asked how he expects to heat huge halls in winter and Ristic just pointed to the Jugopetrol facilities next door. Quite possibly Jugopetrol director and Serbian Parliament Speaker, Dragan Tomic, and many other businessmen don't know that their companies are part of Ristic's plans. In any case, everything has a price and both sides know that. The good thing is that this time the transactions are benefiting theater.