Drazan Gunjaca - The Balkan Roulette
ABOUT THE PLAY
The
Balkan Roulette
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book on-line
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introduction
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editor's note
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review
Andrea Camilleri
Gianna Dallemulle Ausenak
Zoran Raicevic
Rastislav Durman
Francesca Pedinelli
Valentina A.Mmaka
Francesco Mazzetta
IL LABORATORIO DEL SEGNALIBRO
Luciano Dobrilovic
Francesco Tebeo
Prof. Laura Liberati
Vincenzo Lombino
Fabrizio Pizzuto
Marcello Tosi
I. Grguric
17. Tiziana Carpinelli
18. Daria Deghenghi
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"A tragic dialogue with no escape, like a duel to the death, on the absurdity of conflict and war."
It is difficult to treat themes regarding the war in the Balkans without struggling with a multitude of sensations and a burden of emotional meanings that make it difficult to tell the events. The author succeeds in it because his characters deal with the events and the consequences intrinsic to the madness of war "from within". Since the very beginning of the piece, in a confused and upside-down world, the confrontation with the new reality is an unbearable human drama, where the search for a rational solution appears to be an exhausting and impossible game.
Like all the other wars (mostly forgotten about – for example, does anyone care for the current genocide in Congo?), the war in the Balkans was also planned. Some rascals and criminals convinced the world that tribal hate was a Balkanic prerogative and that it was a threat to the security in the new millenium. It was therefore a pressing need to separate "those primitive peoples" with force, at any cost. First of all, it was necessary to prepare the scenery well (who doesn't remember the pseudo truths the Academy of Sciences in Belgrade proclaimed in 1986?), spread hatred for the "enemy", demonize him and convince everyone that the atrocities are indeed necessary, misinform and insist until the truth is deformed. The masses applaud, the masses are convinced, good, excellent, and now, act two, let's go and massacre, destroy, eradicate. Yes, it was all done very carefully. And yet, the scheme they used was neither new nor original. Just like the wars that are not holy, or for a good cause, but just dirty and catastrophic. Whatever people say, the wars are always about political and economic power, wars of ancient or emerging mobs, scrupulously programmed and "disguised", and they always have the same goal: domination, power, accumulating money, goods or territories, oil, methane, selling of weapons, with sometimes the supplement of schizophrenia for a "place in history" – all gigantic businesses, just as gigantic as the cheats, the robberies and the frauds. Freedom, independence, sacred ground my foot!!
These thoughts can be read through the lines of the text. Let us consider "Balkan Roulette". If everyday life goes along with the indifference of the great history, the life of an ordinary man breaths and thinks in its small world, in its microcosm, the only one he really cares about. And it is precisely here, in the individual sphere, that the author likes to introduce himself to try and explain the big picture: he speculates and plays with it until it tragically implodes. Gunjaca's detachment and aseptic observation are in reality only apparent: the humanity with which he accompanies his protagonists in their desperate struggle shows his sensibility, his sharing and his sympathy for the poor devils crucified by the usual gun dealers.
It's time to come on stage.
In a private flat in Pula. It is nearly midnight of a late September day. It is not any year, it's 1991: Yugoslavia is breaking apart and the war ceased to be just a hypothesis. Because of the situation, after years of friendship, two captains of the ex Yugoslav Army – Petar, a Serb, and Mario, a Croat – find themselves on opposite sides. They had a lot to drink and are now involved in a bizarre discussion about Petar's suicide. As a matter of fact, Petar wants to end his life and is telling his reasons to his friend in the hope that he will help him. This decision seems definitely absurd, exaggerated, but Petar suffered a double tragedy: all in one go, as he says, he lost his family and his state. His wife who is Croat, out of opportunism or clairvoyance (does it matter?), left him and took the kids with her. His world broke to pieces, his very life exploded in his hands. Can a man live without his own life? who do you become, who are you if they rob you of your identity, he asks himself in anguish. Is there a way out? Yes, his friend tells him, if you give up on yourself and your ideals, if you pass the sponge over what has been you life, if you abjure everything you firmly believed in, if you start wearing blinkers, if you sacrifice…"What should I sacrifice? Myself as a Serb, an officer and a man, or myself as a Serb, a father and a man? Can't you see? In any case I have to sacrifice myself as a man. And if I lose the human part of me, what do I need the rest for? (…) What do they (the children) do with a father who doesn't know who he is, who doesn't know where he belongs? If I stay in Croatia, I won't be able to take them to Serbia, in my hometown. If I go to Serbia, I won't be able to come here and visit because I'll be an aggressor. Do you understand? And I can't live both without my hometown and without my children."An accusation and an ethical message appear through the dialogue between the two officials, dealing with themes touching the great and small events in the past and present of the Balkans, those countries where the national anthem is more important than a full stomach… There are introspective moments full of intentionally exaggerated tension, partly ironic to underline the mentality of the environment the characters belong to, mixed with apparently trivial dialogues which suddenly light up with true suffering. It is not the intention of the author to start a process but to reach the truth step by step through exposition and analysis of a more than bitter reality.
The coming on stage of other minor characters (sergeant Jovica of the military police, a Serb, and Safet, a military policeman, a Bosnian Muslim) gives the drama a farcical connotation, thus reproposing the conventional role of ordinary people who matter less than nothing in this shameless game of who's in charge.
The circle is about to close. Neither Mario's affection, nor his appeals to think make Petar give up his tragic intention. Petar negates his belonging to a world he cannot understand any more and he escapes in the only way he judges to be possible. After a last blatant listening to the Yugoslav and Croatian anthems, the man blows his brains out.
A very respectable piece, carried out wonderfully owing also to the profound knowledge the author has of the theme. Besides the main idea of a disaster on a human level as a consequence of the war, there is also a firm will to make things clear, interrogate the consciences without approaching philosophy, something Gunjaca deals with thoroughly, with hard work and a good sense for theatre.
With the wish to see the curtain rise on "Balkan Roulette" soon.
The drama "Balkan Roulette" is written in a mature and clear way, daringly going deep into the human tissue of the main characters as well as victims in the violent Yugoslav drama. The falling apart of society had to lead to a distruction of human relationships as well as of the individuals being part of such relationships. The plot is logical, the relations are clear.
"Balkan Roulette", as far as genre is concerned, is more of a tragedy than a drama, a tragedy even following the antique poetics. Gunjaca's text deals with the circumstances in which the second Yugoslavia came apart, i.e., something which is still not only history, something more like dying coals than ashes, wounds that are still more like a scab than a scar, not seen as a document on a little man in the function of a victim of high political interests, nor an essay on Serbo-Croatian, Croato-Serbian or both Serbian and Croatian ways to try and recover in such adverse times from not overcome childhood's diseases of the national and state-building collectiveness. In other words, this drama is not only a document or only an essay – it is all that but only in its background. The center of the stage is occupied by the archetype of a man who has been deprived of the values on which he constructed his life. In what is happening to Petar, Mario, Jovica, Safet, Ante, Ivan and Milojica, we can get glimpses of the tragedy of all honorable soldiers whose suffering is not a defeat but the impossibility to follow their oath. It is not only the suffering of the soldiers but the suffering of all those people who have been forced away from their daily lives in which they believed and to which they gave their best with the best of intentions. The same bitterness was felt by the British centurion left on the banks of the Thames, when the legions had definitely withdrawn to Rome and the Czech engineer who had dedicated his whole life to the development of Slovakian ironworks only to wake up one day in that same Slovakia as a national minority.In the first few pages of "Balkan Roulette" we get the impression that it is a drama made for reading or a novel in a dialogical form – the dramatic charge in the exposition is internal, the scene is static, the replies are relatively long. With the introduction of new characters the situation completely changes, the internal dramatic charge of the characters turns into action which moves into full swing to reach the near-insane rhythm of the rondo towards the end. Such a rondo is, as a technique, recognizable in Gunjaca's novels (so that we can speak of a certain kind of rhythm as a constant in Gunjaca's style). After the climax of the action there is calm, we get the impression that the symmetry of the composition is surgically clean, the plot takes a parabolic course to the ordinate from which it all started, and then comes the culmination again, a big emotional bang and emptiness.What distinguishes "Balkan Roulette" from the antique tragedy is the lack of an elevated tone (what we have here is pure naturalism) and an elevated language (the language in the drama is rudimentary, completely in the function of the characters who grew up and were formed in the barracks), and the fact that the hero does not have to face the gods but history, therefore, to each his own.I recommend this drama for reading, playing and watching.
The end of September 1991, in an apartment building in Pula, the war is out there. The atmosphere of the old, glorious Tito's nation is still in the air; the land of traditions where one shoots from the terrace to celebrate the birth of a son, even when people are dying outside, even when this means putting one's own life at risk. "We are people, simply people", and this is the only thing that matters in the end. And when "this tribal phase is over, people will become people again, no matter of their nationality", says the Croat Mario, a captain in the Jugoslav National Army, who decides to get rid of the uniform to avoid being called an invader.
Now that the mutual enemy is no longer there, they can only become each other's enemy, Serbs and Croats, blood-brothers separated by a flag, a national anthem, a poet, because "after the tenth victim you care about, the war becomes your own, wherever you are". And if these are the rules of the game, then Petar, also a captain of the JNA, chooses not to play. He abandons the uniform to reject a war that is not his, but that nevertheless succeeded in dividing him from his family, him being a Serb and his wife a Croat who fled with their children; children who may be Serbian like the father or maybe Croatian like the mother.
In this play the atmosphere is subordinate to the anxiety of the oncoming death, at times overcome by the entrance of new characters and new dramas. It is a world of tears, just like in the splendid image of Petar and Mario crying together, singing their "old" anthem, where the reason of everything is explained in the tragic epilogue, in the "liberation" that comes with the shot in the temple. There is no room for regrets in the Balkan roulette, a tragic game in which you don't face death holding a revolver, like in the Russian roulette, but a gun, where each shot is the end of all things.
Maybe, as in Petar's case, it can be a new heroic beginning. Call it a tragedy or a black comedy, this last piece by Drazan Gunjaca, a 45-year-old lawyer with the "vice" of writing, is a desperate cry against war and hatred. The themes are very topical and the author feels them his own, thus managing to take the reader to a passionate trip in the private world of two men like many others. With the difference that they are in the right place but in the wrong time, as citizens of a "powder-magazine" called the Balkans where the fuse of a new conflict is always ready to be lit.
This drama is also instructive for those who did not experience war but only its reflections. And for those who think that there are good things in war, too. It is a well written book, intelligent and permeated with peace, which alone make it worth reading.
A drama about the war in the Balkans; the characters by Drazan Gunjaca make us think, through their minimal but incisive dialogue, about the reasons of the conflict, the ethnic affiliation, the simple people thrown into the evil of the war in their painful and irreparable existences. Balkan Roulette alludes to a variant of the Russian roulette, with one significant difference. While in the Russian variant (with a revolver) there is space for a margin of error, in the Balkan variant (with a pistol) there is no way out. Death is the result of a perverse "game", inappropriate and unavoidable for those who see their own values give way under the weight of memories torn by the war, just like in the story about PETAR, one of the main characters.
( Il Mucchio Selvaggio, 25-31 March 2003)Balkan Roulette by Drazan Gunjaca would be a farce if it were not a tragedy: in Pula, in an autumn night in 1991, two captains of the ex-Yugoslav army, Petar – a Serb and Mario – a Croat, are discussing their situation. Petar is especially desperate, both because he was a respectable member of the state military moments ago, and has suddenly become part of an invading army, and because his Croat wife left him taking their children with her. The only friend he's got left in what used to be his homeland and is now only a country, is his old colleague Mario who is not buying the new nationalistic ideologies. He took off his uniform and is trying to find a shelter from the storm. Petar, on the other hand, is too devastated by the disintegration of the values he believed in, by the breakup of his family, and since he is not able to find a refuge from pain in the healthy cynicism of rationality, he abandons himself to the "Balkan roulette", a version of the Russian roulette played with an automatic gun instead of a revolver, a roulette in which you just can't "lose". One by one, other characters get involved in the dramatic events. They are all soldiers/policemen forced by Petar to face the dissolution of the Balkans and, each one in his own way, realize the absurd fatalism with which they now accept things they abhorred only moments ago. In the end, though, the real abyss for the ordinary man, Petar, is not so much the metamorphosis of ideologies and uniforms, as it is the fact that those ideologies and those uniforms invest the souls of the people and not even the deepest emotions can win such changes. This short play should serve as a warning to those who instigate separations and regionalisms, and should be read by all our members of the Lega Nord party in the hope that it will make at least some of them come to their senses
The Balkan Roulette, that has already been crowned at the literary contest "Il viaggio infinito 2003 - The Never-ending journey 2003", is a drama, which tragicomically describes the events that preceded the Balkan war the 1991, through gestures and words of seven officers from the ex federal army, which find themselves on the opposite sides during the fratricidal war.
Written as a theatrical work, The Balkan Roulette reminds of the antique classic tragedy, but it is different because of its aggressive dialogues and the kind of enemy that is faced: the history.
It is a work on the absurdity of war, which realistically praise the love for the others.
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The Balkan Roulette is a one-act play with subject matter deeply rooted in the Greek tragedy, but in a terribly contemporary social, human and political context: the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. Its author is Drazan Gunjaca, who personally went through this absurd tragedy, especially that of his characters: military officers whose mission and oath have lost any meaning, because they serve in an army which from the defender of a multiethnic country and inherent ideals has turned into an attacker of its own peoples which, following the dissolution of the federal state, have declared themselves sovereign and independent. Only a few years before the tragedy broke out, Drazan had left the Yugoslav Army to start a private law firm in Pula with the lawyer's diploma he had acquired in the meantime. This play was written after the Balkan Farewells (2001), a novel which was immediately translated and successfully published in Germany, Australia, USA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Yugoslavia. In the Italian translation the Balkan Roulette was published in January 2003 by the publishing house Fara Editore, with an introduction by Srdja Orbanic, a brilliant and courageous intellectual, a member of the Italian community in Croatia, who also translated the play together with Danilo Skomercic.Peter, army captain, enters his flat in Pula and finds it empty: his wife Ana, a Croat, has run away to Dalmatia together with their children. By now Slovenia and Croatia have already declared independence, the Army is retreating from Slovenia after a failed invasion. Croatia is in for a big trouble. Peter, who is a Serb, continues to serve in the federal navy stationed in Croatia. Extremely desperate, contemplating a suicide, he calls his friend Mario, also YU Army captain, but a Croat who has just quitted the Army. Mario tries to make his friend change his mind, but there comes Jovica, MP sergeant, accompanied by a young Muslim MP who plans to escape to Bosnia. The two of them are ordered to arrest Peter, because this morning at the garrison he was shouting insults at the army, the Yugoslav peoples, and finally the Admiral himself. Peter, beside himself, forces sergeant Jovica at gunpoint to fire shots in the air from the balcony in celebration of his grandson's birth. Before long, two officers of the newly formed Croatian police, Ante and Ivan, knock on the door to see who has fired. They, too, are disarmed by Peter and Mario. Jovica gets sick, Ivan gives him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and then runs to the toiler to vomit. A doctor and a medical arrive on call, and take Jovica away, assisted by the Croatian policemen. Peter gives the Muslim guy his civilian clothes and money to help him escape to Bosnia inconspicuous. Peter and Mario are alone again...
A good translation by Orbanic/Skomercic succeeds in conjuring the vivid language of the original, the peculiar and expressive lingo of the characters, which fits so well into their reality: well-educated graduates from military academies, who quote prominent poets and writers, who are knowledgeable in politics, philosophy and ideology, whose talks in always energized and nervous, charged with curses and vulgarities, but vulgarities not just intended to impress, not an end in itself. They are a part of authentic naturalism, a mimic of the human and social nature of the characters depicted with photographic precision. The play is imbued with occasional meta-language, meta-literature, meta-theater. For example: "Sorry, but you two, you and Peter, come to me like some rather strange plants" . "We are, indeed. Always blossoming when no need to". This work is a pleasure to read, but, above all, perfect for putting on the stage.
In a flat in a little town, somewhere on the fringe of the Balkan powder keg, characters get rid of all the elements constituting the collective tragedy of the peoples living in that peninsula, and do it with so much energy, so much moral passion that they imperceptibly cross the geographic and other boundaries dividing them, and strike those intimate and universal notes of a song about the human lot. What else is there to say but wish this play a recognition it deserves - and a proper production.
The drama is short and simple; it seems that there were set on scene people and situations that we have already known (maybe during the military service). The linguistic pathos is great, the evoked events are detailed and subtle. This is the "drama" about a nation, about a war that lacerates, annihilates limbs mind and spirit, leaving the people to sink into the abyss of destruction. Captain Peter was abandoned by his family because "it is necessary to get rid of the Serbs once for all, no matter if they are husbands or fathers". He reminds us of Vercingetorix who "got rid" of his wives and children in the middle of the Gallic battles. Mario, the Croatian captain, emphasizes: "It was all gone with the wind". We lost our values and ideals that made us live and struggle for. What do we have? The absurdity, the paradox of fratricide. The tragedy that the two captain had experienced, especially Peter who doesn't distinguish the Serbian bred from the Croatian one, is the same tragedy that involved their soldiers, the whole nation pauperized from its civil and human rights, lost in a cry for help that has never been answered.
Member of the High Commission for International Reading of the Edizioni Universum
(Premio internazionale PREMIO LIBRO D’ORO 2004, Italy)“Balkan Roulette” by Drazan Gunjaca is a theater curtain raised over the difficulty of living, mounted in the impervious history of the mixed Slavic people.
Incisive and full of implications is the opening of the preface written by Mr. sc. Srdja Orbanic: “Godot has arrived”.
As opposed to Samuel Becket’s drama where the characters Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for a mysterious and obscure Godot, the waiting always procrastinated sine die, this markedly theatrical book presents us the captains Petar and Mario, one a Serb and the other a Croat, who experiment the development of a programmed tragedy ending in suicide.
Among many capital questions, what was said above is confirmed by the main character’s phrase: “Should I shoot myself in uniform or in civilian clothes?”
There are also lucid argumentations made by Petar on the modalities to adopt at the moment of the extreme gesture.
As can be seen in the development of the drama, a series of direct and indirect causes lead to the dramatic choice, and if they do not completely justify it, they contribute to the comprehension of the context.
A tangle of thoughts, passions, with a well determined historical background: hour, midnight; month, September; year, 1991; place, Pula. The unity of time, place and action creates the close dialogue between the two friends; it captures the viewer (or the reader) stirring his emotions and leaving him no escape, just like it was in the 5th cent. B.C. with Aeschylus’ tragedies (there are all the characteristics of an antique tragedy).
The suicide theme is not new in any period’s literature making it a sort of cultural breeding ground.
I believe the privilege could be assigned to a meaningful work by Giacomo Leopardi: “The Dialogue between Plotinus and Porphyrius”, one of his “Operette morali”. The final act gets its impulse from the words directed to Porphyrius: “Let us live my Porphyrius and comfort each other /.../ so to complete this fatigue of living in the best of ways”… “And when death comes it won’t hurt /.../ the thought will delight…/ us that since we are dead”… / (friends and companions) “many will remember us and will still love us…”
Nevertheless, it has to be noted that the nature of Leopardi’s writing is theoretical and pedagogical, while what is specific to theatre is an emblematic upsetting of life itself; here enters interpretation and creativity; the tension between the words and representation is uninterrupted.
Since there is no canonical Prologue, we enter the action in medias res.
After about thirty five pages of a kind of pressing contradictory dialogue, when it seems that some room is about to be made for psychological relaxation, Drazan Gunjaca does not allow any rest. The section is only apparently “farcical” flowing in a tragic bed. That sort of intermezzo (pp. 55-60) when several minor characters alternate convulsively on the hypothetical scene, each clearly defined as far as military rank is considered, has the role of preparing every detail useful for the katabasis.
Even the surrounding objects, like the telephone, are stained by Petar’s blood. The curtain is drawn on his friend’s tears, while the author surprises the viewers: Mario’s voice, the voice of the co-protagonist intensifies the silence of a body that is by now almost immaterial. In a near future, coming from unfathomable areas, Petar’s silence will be able to communicate the Truth. Gunjaca shows a subtle and consummate artistic skill; illustrative is the fact that the difference between the Russian and the “Balkan” roulette is stated in the last lines.
Mario, bewildered, asks: “What is a Balkan roulette?”, and the other replies: “It’s like the Russian, only it’s played with this gun here in my hand.”
I would like to take a moment and analyze the fundamental elements of the drama.
A dominant note is the protest against war that “has been spilling blood on Earth since the beginning of time”. For as much as the cry against the war is sounding, so poor are those holding the power, ready to change sides, surrounded by followers, repressed or worse, whose only goal is to show off their position of vassals.
Petar, the protagonist, like I already said, is torn apart by the sudden departure of his wife Ana, a Croat, who took their children with her to Dalmatia. He is in a state of fibrillation, tormented as a father (such a topical theme) by the possibility of losing his children’s respect and seeing them grow up without love.
The fate of a family is intertwined with that of a State.
Being a Serb, he traditionally believes in the latter, as well as in the concept of homeland; all he can see now are cleansings and the evil of nationalism, and is thus brought to an identity crisis.
Voices from the outside, small episodes, rouse the awareness of the army’s breakdown and a state of complete chaos: all situations alternately experienced by Slavic nations over many centuries. There are sequences of epochs passing by, both in the socio-political and the ideological context. There are several references to Josip Broz Tito, fragments of World War I and II.
Petar, drunk by now, wants his faithful friend to stay with him, while he desperately seeks the roots or cultural heritage they might have in common. It is not by chance that the author mentions the poet Kranjcevic, belonging to the realist-psychological school, and Njegos, the prince of Montenegro with his popular poems.
We discover that Petar, in his deep solitude, has been touched by faith: it is confirmed by the reference to the Bible, whose reading could have brought him closer together with his beloved wife Ana.
The faith in Him who looks in people’s hearts and sees no difference between a Serb and a Croat.
The closeness with his friend Mario, exhausted in seeing his efforts fail, reaches the peak in a powerful moment when the brothers, the friends, sing and listen to their respective national anthems.
A creative piece of writing that moves the readers: maintains a high register of values, not undermined by the colorful language which fits into the atmosphere. The contrasting tonalities, metaphorically speaking, reflect the kind of light as can be seen in Caravaggio’s paintings, rendered precious not by a clear source of light as in Flemish paintings, but coming from the inside of the characters painted with a skillful use of color.
http://www.faraeditore.it/html/recensioni/rouletteimpatto.html.
Everything starts with an association made on purpose between the narrated story and <Waiting for Godot>, as if the protagonists of Gunjaca's drama were meant to take the place of their precedents Vladimir and Estragon. When Godot finally arrives on a night in September 1991, the story can begin. Alone in a room with a brimful ashtray, half a bottle of cognac and their guns, the two friends start to talk about war and about what man is now, shaped by the blood spilt for the country.
It is the death of ideals and aims, because the war has taken both away.
It is in this way that the story begins to unfold, with Petar who cursed all the politics and the army, both the Serbs and the Croats; who was abandoned by his wife and children with no explanation. Petar lost everything and has therefore nothing left to lose. He stopped believing in the state and refuses to live in the same country now as a stranger, an enemy or an invader, but at the same time he cannot accept life in another place. Petar has decided to kill himself.
The dialogue between the two friends is so well organized and harmonious that it almost becomes a monologue, as if they were one person with a personality conflict, trying to decide whether part of it should survive.
The drama of the situation (both outside and inside) is accentuated by irony, as if laughter were the only thing the war hasn't got at yet. An irony that made me think of Mordecai Richler even if, this being a theatrical work, it is much easier to trace in it that tragicomic quality typical of Pirandello. However, the blows Gunjaca inflicts on politics and the mentality of the people are too direct and severe to be compared to the Sicilian writer, even though the author uses Pirandello to achieve irony on one occasion, but in a way that lets us see all the pain and suffering behind the remark:
ANTE: Thanks. Excuse me but you two, Petar and you are really weird characters.
PETAR: Yes, we are. We always find the author when we would be better off without him.
And the whole piece reaches its climax in 7 lines:
PETAR: Have you ever played Russian roulette?
MARIO: I'm not crazy. With my kind of luck, I'd manage to blow my brains out even if the gun wasn't loaded.
PETAR: What about the Balkan roulette?
MARIO: What's a Balkan roulette?
PETAR: It's like the Russian, only it's played with the gun here in my hand.
MARIO: Are you nuts? First of all, the Russian roulette is a complete madness, and it's played with a revolver, not a pistol. A pistol kills you for sure, there's no alternative.
PETAR: That's what I'm telling you, Balkan roulette, no alternative.
In the end, I'd like to add that they have decided in Belgrade to make a movie based on Balkan Roulette: although, as you may have realized by now, I think that it is an exceptional theatre play, I strongly doubt that it can be made into a successful movie. It is not impossible, but since the drama is based on a kind of monologue, it will be very difficult to keep the viewers interested. There's no rule saying that an interesting book will make an interesting movie: it depends on the director.
Anyway, I hope that the movie will be good and (if the God of commerce will help us) that we'll see it in Italy.
Here are some links that refer to the book and/or movie:
www.drazangunjaca.net/balkanskirastanci/ITA_site/ITA_index.htmwww.montage.co.yu/_sgg/m2_1.htm
I'll spare you the infinite number of important awards given to the book, nobody cares about awards anyway, the thing that matters is Art and I can assure you that it is Art we are dealing with here.
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Once upon a time there was Waiting for Godot, an apparent disillusion, because the man that is introduced by Drazan Gunjaca is much worse: he acctually came! He came, severe and tough as only he can be. Peter and Mario, a Croatian and a Serbian, both capetans of JNA (Yugoslavian National Army), friends, enemy or whatever, one night in 1991, while they are staying in an appartement, they have nothing to wait for anymore...
Mr.sc. Srda Orbanic writes: "This drama proves that is better waiting for Godot than to meet him!"
Drazan Gunjaca creates, in my opinion, an insane game of concentric circles; the madness is justified by the madness, the Theatre of the Absurd is not what it used to be, because the land is the only possible absurd.
Drazan survived a war and he told its features inside the pages of this play which after a certian point becomes claustrofobic, as it was trapped in an egg-shell. We are all prottected by a (meagre) consolation: the sense has already been lost, not by Vladimir and Estragon, but by Godot himself, although the impotence is not a consolation at all.
I was deeply involved by every single page. The plot continually ends towards its impossible opening, (perhaps there's nothing outside the room, and that's the secret of the theatre), but, why there are no borders where the irony ends and the tragedy begins?
You must read Drazan Gunjaca, gentlemen, find Balkan Roulette and read it! The rules of Balkan Roulette are very simple, but... if we have already knew them?
Corriere Romagna, 21.03.2004
Balkan Roulette - Premio Nuove Lettere to Drazan Gunjaca
www.vigata.orgDrazan Gunjaca has already received numerous prestigious awards like Premio Viaggio Infinito 2003 for theatre (among the members of the jury Barbieri Squarotti, Cardini, Mercurio), and his Balkan Roulette, published by the editor Fara Editore in Rimini, will today in Napoli receive the first award in the cathegory "published book" of the 13th award Nuove Lettere organized by the Accademia Letteraria Europea di Nuove Scienze (European Literary Academy of New Sciences). Andrea Camilleri defined it "a tragic dialogue with no way out, like a duel with death and the absurdity of conflict and war". In this last part of the well received trilogy on the war in the Balkans, after Half-wat to Heaven and Balkan Farewells (translated and published in numerous countries), the Croatian writer wanted to make an allusion to death as a result of a perverse game which pushes simple people into a painful and unrepairable existence, like that of Petar, one of the main characters, who sees all his values collapse under the burden of memories torn by the war. "Ideals? Some make them, others judge them and others still die for them", as we could read recently in his Confessions of an old poet published on "Faranews". "Will there ever come a generation that will not feel the burden of somebody else's memories? A generation that will listen only to its own memories? Never. And not only here. With other people's memories we are killing the future."
November 2, 2004)
excerpt Hopelessness, roulette, garrison language
Dealing with themes reagrding the Balkans, the time in which "destiny has no patience for normal people", as well as with "peoples of which none has the exclusive right to suffering", Drazan Gunjaca gave back to the Serbo-Croatian war that dimension that was its own from the start - the dimension of the absurd. Gunjaca's plays Balkan Roulette and Balkan Acquerelle, published in a single volume symbolically entitled Godot has arrived, tell us about disasters, disorientation and the absurdity of life, as well as of the even greater absurdity of death. The impossibility to find answer to the questions raised, a way out which would preserve human dignity, the impossibility to accept a new order of things become a reality where not even death is a solution, because in a war, not even the dead can remain uncommitted.
17. Tiziana Carpinelli, IL PICCOLO, Trst, Italia,
04.03.2006.
Drazan Gunjaca's text adapted for theatre by Gianfranco Sodomaco and presented at the Miela theatre
Souls divided by the "Balkan roulette"
Both theses are legitimate considering that they bring forth a history that does not care about individuals but lets itself be played by indifferent political giants, like a dangerous game of chess. The giants knowing nothing of the lives of those that depend on their moves. Petar's desperation finds a counterpoint in Mario's cynical detachment, giving vent to a tiring monologue that would go on forever, till dawn when the sun might drive away those suicidal tendencies and lead to a different epilogue. However, the outside world imposes itself in all its inevitability with two policemen knocking at the door and coming into the apartment.
The play produced by the cultural association "La Macchina del testo" (Text Machine) in cooperation with Cooperative Bonawentura, slowly leads the public through the whole first act in order to reach a powerful dramatic quality in the second part, where the grotesque gives an even clearer picture of the cruelty of the war. Until the climax when the inevitable has already happened and Mario picks up the ringing phone to find Petar's wife on the other side: "Oh fu.. Ana? Is that you? Sorry! I didn't expect you. What am I doing here? Where is Petar? Oh, Ana, you're a couple of minutes late. Only a couple of minutes you'll have time to think about for the rest of your life. Just like he said it would be. Want to hear him? Too late. No, he didn't kill himself. Balkan roulette. You don't know what that is?! I didn't either, until a minute ago."
And all until a gun with no barrel shoots its only shot. Killing every ideal.
18. Daria Deghenghi (La voce del popolo, 11.05.2006.)
“BALKAN ROULETTE” ON STAGE IN PULA AT THE ISTRIAN NATIONAL THEATRE
THE DRAMA OF A LAND WHERE THE NATIONAL ANTHEM IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN A FULL STOMACH
Pula - Two officers of the ex Yugoslav Army, one Serbian and the other Croatian, on the verge of the disaster that marked the end of a country and an epoch, with a bottle of whisky… Tuesday evening, at the Istrian National Theatre, Janko Petrovec and Mauro Tancovich played the roles of Petar and Mario, the two main characters of “Balkan Roulette”, a play written by Drazan Gunjaca, translated in Italian by Srdja Orbanic and Danilo Scomersich, first performed in Trieste, Italy, at the “Miela” theatre two months ago. The show was produced in cooperation with “La Macchina del Testo” and “Cooperativa Bonawentura”, directed by Gianfranco Sodomaco and replayed in Pula as a result of the cooperation of “Gerald Art Studio”, “Arena Art Festival” and supported by the Municipality, the Region and the Tourist offices of the city and region. The audience was not numerous but attentive and participating, awarding the actors with a long and sincere applause. Besides Tancovich and Petrovec, we saw Riccardo Beltrame, Daniel Favento, Adriano Lucatello, Sergio Maggio and Fabio Musco. Angela Giassi is responsible for the stage design and costumes while Michele Somberaz Sotte was on the lights. The music was that of Goran Bregovic.
The play follows the fate of two characters of different nationality who had, up to that moment, shared ideals, dreams, their country, their nation and before all, mostly lies. They find themselves suddenly stripped of their past, cannot find their way in the present and have no perspective for the future. The Serb is on the edge between life and death, between his survival instinct (weak) and the growing appeal of suicide. His wife and kids are gone, the country is falling apart, the army has become a war machine and he is an “invader”, even if “he hasn’t so much as moved a finger”… “It was in our genes: the country is first, the family second, and only then comes honour and all the rest”, but nothing remains of the inviolable sequence of priorities, not even paternity: “When will Serbs in Croatia be fathers and husbands again?” this is the question of the utmost desolation. “You see, I am really a coward. I don’t even have the courage to shoot myself in this desert on the 4th floor…” Nothing is gained with the consolations of the cynic and pragmatic Croat who renounced his uniform and is trying to adapt to the situation: “Our army does not exist any more, we have to save our heroic heads mate…” because, if we think better, “the states are born and die at the expenses of fools like you” and because “the only way to remain a man is to take off the uniform of the soldier”. The Serb insists, will the Russians and the Americans tolerate? Not only will they tolerate, “they will sell us their second hand weapons…” What about human rights? “Do you want to die for just words?”
The Croatian continues: the Balkans, where the national anthem is worth much more than a full stomach; where everybody is threatened, you only have to work out your turn. The question is, however, another: why do people make war, and if “everything passes, how many of us will survive?” or better “How much is a flag worth once you’ve lost your son?” The Serb cannot calm down. All the questions will inevitably remain unanswered. The cynicism has no remedy for the ailments of the soul. The shot. A minute too late, the phone rings, it’s the wife. Too late. A life has been lost, and other lives wait in line.
