Frljic Speaks Out, BDP Pulls 'Black Gold' From Bitef

While he was in Vilnius, taking a bow at the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre for the premiere of “Madame Bovary,” Croatian director Oliver Frljic had no idea he had become, without his consent, the lead character in a very different production back in Belgrade. Its title could have been: how an institution uses the name of an artist who publicly opposes it. On Friday evening, September 18, that other production reached its ending, though not the one anyone had announced in advance. Only hours after Frljic’s interview with the daily Danas, Belgrade Drama Theatre (BDP) canceled the Bitef performance of his play “Black Gold,” along with the two regular shows scheduled for September 19 and 20.

“Black Gold,” written by Dejan Dukovski and directed by Frljic, was produced by BDP and entered the competition program of the 59th Bitef back in the June selection proposed by dramaturge Spasoje Z. Miladinovic. It was one of seven titles chosen. The other six pulled out as soon as the program was announced:

• the German company Gob Squad
• Portugal’s Teatro Praga
• the Slovenian National Theatre in Nova Gorica
• the Italian company Motus
• Lebanese artist Ali Chahrour
• the Montenegrin National Theatre
• Argentine author Marina Otero

Left standing alone, “Black Gold” was carried over from the original selection into the new one, published just before the festival opened. Frljic says he was never asked about it. He only found out his play had been included, by his own account, in early July, and only from an article in Danas, which is when he first objected publicly.

Frljic, a director the British Guardian has named among the four most exciting on the European continent, already holds two “Mira Trailovic” Grand Prix awards in Serbia, from 2013 and 2014, for “Zoran Djindjic” and “Aleksandra Zec,” both staged at that same Belgrade Drama Theatre. His career, from Croatia to Poland and Germany, has been shadowed by bans and institutional pressure, and that history explains why his name, even without his consent, carries weight on the poster of a state festival.

Frljic himself explained what happened between him and the BDP management, the director whose name is on the play:

I found myself in a schizophrenic situation, placed as the author in a context I do not accept. Putting a play into a context its author finds unacceptable is certainly a form of violence, both against the author and against the work itself.

Behind that sentence sits a question our theater rarely asks so openly: who does a play belong to when its author and its producer disagree on where and before whom it may be performed? BDP answered with one gesture, by accepting a place in the official program. Frljic answered with the opposite, through the interview.

He did not leave his objection vague. He pointed to a specific reason:

Performing at a festival that, on political orders, tore down Milos Lolic’s program through the infamous Committee, on which, of all people, sits an employee of BDP itself, is nothing but the normalization of censorship.

That last point is not incidental. It links the “Black Gold” case to the earlier dispute over Milos Lolic’s program at Bitef, placing “Black Gold” in a pattern rather than treating it as an isolated incident. For Frljic, a festival that has already moved institutionally against one author once is not a place where his work should appear without his consent, no matter that the play still formally carries his name.

Instead of BDP’s stage, Frljic will still be present in Belgrade, just in another form. On Sunday, September 20, at the 60th NE:Bitef, a self-organized festival that its own participants describe as a rebellious counter-program running alongside the official one, his conversation with curator Anja Susa will be shown on video. We reported earlier that director Thomas Ostermeier and the group Pussy Riot will also appear at that same NE:Bitef. Frljic said that, had he been able to, he would have joined that stage in person too, the one he chooses for himself, rather than the one he was placed on without being asked.

None of the sources reviewed carry any explanation from BDP for the cancellations, not for the Bitef performance and not for the two regular dates that have no direct link to Bitef. That silence is, in this case, telling on its own: the institution that added the play to its program without notifying its author is the same one that pulled it with no public explanation. The only difference this time is that the decision came within hours, not months.