Sabac Theatre Workers Hold Sixth Warning Strike Today

Employees of the Sabac Theatre walk out today, Monday, November 9, at 11 am for their sixth consecutive warning strike, and the union has announced that Darko Sper, president of the Independence Branch Union of Culture, Arts and Media, will join them. At 6 pm, a solidarity rally titled “This Is Not a Play - This Is a Strike” takes place at the Centre for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD) at Bircaninova 2 in Belgrade.

The fifth strike was held yesterday, and the Independence union at the Sabac Theatre repeated its demands: the removal of management, an extraordinary audit of the theatre’s operations, and a new leadership appointed in agreement with the staff. The list was recently extended, and the union now also wants the members of the Managing Board and the Supervisory Board replaced.

What does the union want from the city?

First of all, an answer. The union again calls on Sabac Mayor Aleksandar Pajic to state officially how the city government intends to resolve the dysfunction of the institution, which employees say has lasted almost two years. If negotiations do not begin within the set deadline, the union has announced sharper measures of civil disobedience, within the law.

In its statement, the union also describes daily life inside the theatre. Employees, it says, never refused their duties, but most of them were not given any tasks, while a smaller group was overloaded at the same time. The staff suspect that the purpose of dividing work this way is to turn the collective against itself.

What did Zeljko Hubac say outside the theatre?

Playwright and director Zeljko Hubac of the Student List, who has backed the employees since the crisis began, attended the fifth strike. He recalled that the Sabac Theatre once staged up to five performances a week and said that, in his assessment, its repertoire has now collapsed. He proposed a concrete way out of the dispute:

“The only normal way forward is to dismiss the director and appoint an acting head in consultation with the ensemble.”

As he explained, someone from the ensemble would serve temporarily, and the city would then announce a public competition for the post. Hubac also stressed where he speaks from, and told the city authorities:

“I represent a list that stands for respect for the law. All I can do is appeal to the mayor and the people who run this city to stop acting this way. Nobody will feel defeated if you remove from the post of theatre director a person who herself said that she ‘knows nothing about theatre’ and showed that she truly knows nothing about it. That will be a victory for the actors and for art in Sabac.”

Hubac also spoke about the state of theatres across Serbia: a shortage of staff, a ban on hiring, inadequate technical conditions for production, and the judging of a play’s success mainly by financial and party criteria. He called the case of Jelena Ivetic political retaliation for holding a different opinion, and added that since her dismissal she has been unable to find work in Sabac, in any line of business. We did not find a response from the theatre’s management or the mayor to these claims in the published statements.

How did the crisis start, and what does the open letter say?

Jelena Ivetic, the programme organizer, was dismissed on February 7, 2025, after 16 years of work, through a change to the job classification that abolished her post. The dispute is before the court. The City Assembly of Sabac appointed director Aleksandra Delic on April 2, 2025.

Students and citizens of Sabac addressed her in an open letter stating that 15 productions were removed from the repertoire during 2026, that only four titles of the theatre’s own production were staged last season, and that the repertoire was filled by more than twenty private and guest productions. The festival “Theatre Spring,” they say, was not held. The letter also questions the appointment procedure: assembly records show that the previous Managing Board’s mandate ended on December 11, 2024, while the rationale for the nomination refers to its letter of January 16, 2025. The authors conclude:

“We believe that your resignation is a necessary step toward the recovery of the institution.”

Sabac is not the only city where such demands are heard. After the Student List won the snap parliamentary elections on October 25, the replacement of directors and board members is also being demanded at the National Theatre and Atelje 212, and many of those demands, as has been recorded, are not new.

What is happening in Belgrade?

The organizers present the CZKD rally as an expression of solidarity with the employees of the Sabac Theatre, and with colleagues from other theatres who, as they put it, are fighting the abuse of arts and cultural institutions. It is conceived as a space for meeting and conversation.

The venue was not chosen by chance. Members of the informal group “Sabac Theatre at the End” performed the play “This Is Not a Play” in the same space, which, according to its announcement, deals with the struggle for solidarity, dignity and integrity, and in recent years CZKD has hosted numerous meetings and support rallies for colleagues defending the theatre as an institution.