THE BEREAVED FAMILY
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Branislav Nušic
(1864-1938)
THE BEREAVED FAMILY
Comedy in three acts
(1934)
Première on 2nd November 2008
Madlenianum Large Stage
Directing, adaptation and selection of music: Jug Radivojevic
Set design: Dejan Pantelic
Costume designer: Jelena Stokuca
Stage movement: Pjer Rajkovic
Light design: Srcan Jovanovic
NUŠIC AS A HOLIDAY
„My humor, by inciting laughter with people, alleviates the cruelty of life."
(Branislav Nušic)
Every appearance of Branislav Nušic at Serbian stages is marked with a red letter in theatre calendar. For Madlenianum, that date is 2nd November 2008, when a play by Nušic will be performed for the first time at our stage. The Bereaved Family, a late Nušic’s comedy, with unforgettable characters of Agaton Arsic, Proka Puric, Trifun, will bow to the audience and remind them that the ambitions to seize a heritage, money, estate – are everlasting. By the words of the director, Jug Radivojevic, a word is about the genuine „Nušic“ type of understanding of this everlasting play. The whole action is dislocated from the deceased’s home to the graveyard, and in the new dramatization the acts were given humorous designations: The First Act – funeral, The Second Act – the seven-day commemoration, The Third Act – 40-day commemoration. The director of the play humorously commented the new version of The Bereaved Family: „It happens always and everywhere, and in our performance the action takes place in autumn in 1934“. An exceptional team of affirmed comic actors will cause roars of laughter and picture at the stage an image of our characters. Agaton Arsic will be interpreted by Miodrag Mima Karadžic, who presents himself to the audience of Madlenianum for the first time. Dragan Vujic Vujke will play Proka Puric, Danica Maksimovic will be Simka, Viktor Savic will play dr Petrovic, Dubravka Mijatovic will play Sarka, Milan Kalinic will play Mica Stanimirovic... Branislav Nušic is never obsolete and he belongs to all times. New Madlenianum’s production of The Bereaved Family will show that Agaton Arsic still lives among us and that we should laugh at him at the stage and beware of him in real life.
ALKIBIJAD NUŠA, „BEN AKIBA“, BRANISLAV NUŠIC
Branislav Nušic was born on 8th October in 1864 in Belgrade as Alkibijad Nuša, to a Cincar merchant’s family, of the father corce and mother Ljubica. The family soon moved to Smederevo, where Nušic finished his elementary school and the first two years of the boarding school, but he graduated in Belgrade in 1882. When he was eighteen, he officially changed his name into Branislav Nušic and under that name he graduated from the Belgrade Law School in in 1884.
At the age of nineteen, in 1883, Nušic wrote his first comedy, Parliamentarian, which was commended and supported by the most eminent writers, but nevertheless remained in his desk drawer for thirteen years, and was not staged, because Aleksandar Obrenovic, the ruling prince, did not like it and claimed that it was „a mockery of the defenders of parliamentarism“. But Nušic continues to write and participates in turbulent historical events at the end of 19th century. In 1885 he completed his regular military service and, as a member of a regular military unit, took part in the Serbian-Bulgarian War. Revolted by the fact that none of the state officials was at the funeral of Mihailo Katanic, a hero from the Serbian-Bulgarian War, he wrote a satirical poem, Two Slaves (Dva raba), for the opposition newspaper of the time, Daily Newspaper, and for that he was sentenced to two years of prison. In the prison he wrote the comedy Protection. How did he get a permission to writec Nušic knew that the prison superintendent read his mail and therefore started to “write” letters to his cousin, a state minister. Thanks to his quick wit, he acquired a privileged treatment for himself and – a right to write.
When he left the prison – as if being one of his heroes – Nušic was awarded nothing less than a position of a consul, a service that he would perform for some ten years and during which he would stay in Bitola (where he married), Serez, Thessalonica, Skopje and Priština. In 1900, Nušic was appointed a secretary to the Ministry of Education, and soon thereafter he became a head dramaturg of the National Theatre in Belgrade. In 1904, he was appointed the manager of the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, but left this position a year later and moved to Belgrade, where he became active in journalism. He started to write under the pseudonym „Ben Akiba“.
He returned to Macedonia in 1912. First he lived in Bitola, then in Skopje, where he founded a theatre in 1913. During the First World War, Nušic retreated with the Serbian army all the way through Albania, and then recovered in Italy, Switzerland and France. In this world war, Nušic suffered the greatest family tragedy. His only son, Ban, was first heavily wounded, and when his wounds healed, he returned to the trench and got killed. Nušic never really got over his loss, and showed his feelings in his prose work The Nine-hundred-fifteenth – a tragedy of a nation. However, Nušic would not have been Nušic, if there were no anecdotes related to his sufferings in the First World War. When he saw that he had to retreat with the Serbian army, Nušic made a selection and threw away a number of his unfinished manuscripts and notes, and took with himself all the works that were finished, or sketched in details,. All the way to Priština, where the retreat was by railway, he carried with himself the manuscripts of almost fifteen kilograms weight. But, since the retreat from Priština to Prizren required walking, he was forced to make a new selection. The Suspect was among the rejected manuscripts. The drama was left with an Albanian who gave Nušic his word of honour („besa“) to safeguard the text. Although the Bulgarians attacked Priština during the war and burned everything, even all Nušic’s possessions, the Albanian kept his „besa“ and the text of The Suspect was saved.
After the First World War, Nušic was appointed the first head of the Art Department of the Ministry of Education. He remained at this position till 1923. Thereafter he became the manager of the National Theatre in Sarajevo, to return to Belgrade in 1927. In the last decade of his life, Branislav Nušic became an opponent again, and, as a member of the National Front, he spoke publicly against fascism. He was elected a full member of the Serbian Royal Academy on 10th February 1933. He died in Belgrade on 19th January 1938.
CASCADES OF LAUGHTER, BUT OF CRITICAL TYPE
The Bereaved Family (1934) is an extremely interesting comedy on a „bereaved“ group of people who expect an inheritance and have already started dividing the fortune that they have not got. In this work of comedy-writing terms the writer gave a gallery of characters of small minds who competed in lies and cynicism – headed by the masterly realized character of Agaton, who was the most dynamic personality among them, which meant with the most plastic features of hypocrisy and the lack of scruples, which a small but cunning mind could possibly have. Just in this Nušic’s comedy the dramatic and theatrical „imminent present time“ had its full effect, construed from simpler to more complex forms of sensual-concrete presentation. Namely, a group of people scatters as a group, persons individualize, enabling the character of Agaton to dominate ever more in a comical way, so that from a typical character of a certain social stratum and the said group he grows into a character who transforms and adjusts so cunningly that he loses the measures of his cunning mind and even himself is shocked with the exaggeration of his last combination! Our playwright masterly realized the dramaturgy of this comical play.
Verbal comics dominate in the first act. The second act has primarily been realized by situation comics, which reveal a gallery of characters and single out Agaton, who struggles to become „a leader“ of the bereaved family. The end of the second act is the pinnacle of that comics, since, paradoxically, individual interests lead the characters to a group, „family“ quarrel, in which words, as elements of hypocrisy and signs of interests, are reduced to the level of mere shouts. Finally, the third act begins with a revelation that the deceased has deceived them all: it would seem the group is united, but every individual has already taken and is taking off his face a mask, the mask of „the bereaved family“. Relatively calmly, with resignation, with bitter and vindictive, even sarcastic, words addressed to the deceased, every one of them reveals his/her real, morally corrupt face. Only Agaton tries to find new ways for his Proteus being, desiring to obtain inheritance, money and estate. Verbal and situation comics are now subordinated to the comics of character of Agaton’s person, of the group and the society. Traditional moral balance achieved by introduction of positive versus negative characters – a poor girl, the deceased’s illegitimate daughter, and a young lawyer, as a contrast to the group and Agaton – has not significantly disturbed this comical play. Fortunately, these positive persons are not meant to be in the comedy to lecture, or to show some ideal beings, but also to suffer them, to some extent, the sensuality of comical play. Traces of cruel life and shadows of tragic are lost in a vertiginous burlesque play, in humorous and lucidly ironic, even satirical relations and connotations, in cascades of thunderous laughter behind which is a vigorous well of critical, comic ethos.
THE LAST FAREWELL OF NUŠIC’S BEREAVED FAMILY
Branislav c. Nušic passed away in his home on the day of Epiphany, 19th January 1938. Although it was well known that the greatest Serbian comediographer had already been ill for a long time, the news of death surprised everyone. Nušic’s funeral was one of the most noteworthy public events in the cultural life of the capital between the two world wars. Nušic’s body was laid on a catafalque in the foyer of the National Theatre on 21st January, and the funeral was on 22nd January. Here are some of the statements that famous Nušic’s contemporaries made on the day of the funeral.
„Nušic has unforged in his comedy a precious metal for small coins, small and numerous, intended for many. Recognized and unrecognized by critics, and admitted to the Academy only at the age of seventy, Nušic was finally acknowledged not only as the most active name, but also as a necessity of the time. One of the satisfactions for Nušic should be the feeling of voidness after his death; voidness and care at the theatre, to which he injected camphor year after year.“ Milan Grol
„The reason for our citizens, for so many small people, to assemble around the coffin of Branislav Nušic, around the dead body of the writer of comedies, jokes, a creator of caricatures, a cheerful writer, an entertainer, to form a long and voluntary guard around his funeral, from the centre of the city to the distant cemetery – was not an ordinary curiosity of common people for solemn processions, or a wish to take part in a public act, or an attraction of a famous name, or even something that we could call ’thankfulness to laughter’... The true reason that summoned those long rows of Nušic’s fellow-citizens to the streets along which his dead body was carried was a different interpretation, a different meaning that Nušic’s laughter must have and had acquired at the same time when his life ended.“ Milan Predic
„Nušic was my parent. The parent of my repertoire. He has created me the way I am now, by the roles he has written for me. He was a great man, so great that for a long, long time from now on there will be no one to match him... Nušic has meant a huge deal for us, actors. We have loved him as a father and have cherished him as a child. He has worried about us as a father, has taken care to give us the best roles, and we, in return, have cherished and protected him. Nušic has left us today. But as long as theatre and actors exist, Nušic will be famous and among us he will always be alive.“ Žanka Stokic