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Kokan Mladenović (1970) graduated from the Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Art Theater and Radio Direction Department in the class of Miroslav Belović and Nikola Jevtić, and has directed throughout Serbia and former Yugoslavia several score of marked and awarded productions since. He worked as artistic director of Belgrade’s Dadov theater, artistic director of the National Theater in Sombor and National Theater in Belgrade Drama Director and is the recipient of major theater awards. As many as three productions he directed are to be shown at this year’s Sterija Theater Festival in Novi Sad on May 26-June 4.
 Is there a 'revolution' indeed ongoing at Atelje 212 this season?
- Atelje 212 was founded with the aim of becoming revolutionary and daring. The events happening in it this season called Revolution are merely a natural continuation of a theater within which at the time Mira Trailović and Jovan Ćirilov established the Belgrade International Theater Festival - BITEF, a theater in which celebrated Hair was performed immediately after the first night on Broadway, a theater in which Beckett was a household name at the time the world was only learning what avant-garde is all about, a theater in which Ljubomir Muci Draškić with his production of Pere Ubu ridiculed the madness of power and with Radovan Treći (Radovan III) mocked the ubiquitous petty bourgeoisie outlook, a theater in which a big enough hole in the Berlin Wall was being drilled for the East to escape to the West and vice-versa. By doing ten or so productions that dwell on the phenomenon of revolution and power takeover this season we are trying to provide the answer to a disconcerting question – what has happened to us here since the revolution of October 5 that toppled the Milošević regime. Was this yet another misguided decade in our life, was, as our seniors are wont to say, "this what we were fighting for" and where are we going and why?
Proceeding from the revolutionary title of the Atelje 212 current season and regarding all the events surrounding the production of Hair, there have been comments among the public that you are rather a clever theater manager instead of revolutionary. Do you take this as a compliment or slander and are the two necessarily contradictory?
- What kind of a revolution is it if no one knows about it? A revolution is accompanied with a bang, governed by an earnest wish to effect and essential change. Will we have a larger audience if we hide our productions from the public? Can we afford to employ outdated models to market our productions and expect them to impact the reality of our environment rather than if we adopt essential change and come to understand the time we live in in which we are trying to make a difference? Theaters must struggle for their audiences, must cultivate and maintain them. After the break-up of former Yugoslavia -- which, like it or not, was a country with a higher quality culture policy than the country we live in today – came a time of systematic investing in primitivism, cheap entertainment and encouraging of mediocrity. Today, more than ever before, it matters that theaters be packed with audiences and that the audience feel the message coming from the stage in both form and content as relevant, intriguing, provocative and exciting. The production of Hair has obviously succeeded in instilling hope of change in a new generation of theatergoers, faith that rebellion was still an option. In a uniquely short time of just a few months, we have managed to have nearly ten thousand predominantly young people see the performance and jump to their feet to greet its closing number ‘Let the Sunshine In’. Marketing is there to tickle the interest of potential viewers of a theatrical production. But, no amount of marketing can manipulate one into enjoying theatrical rubbish as a tasty dish!
 Would you describe the situation in the theater in Serbia as daring and provocative or as sycophantic?
- The theater, as Shakespeare said, mirrors society. Our theater, as a rule, is a reflection of society in which it emerged, and this society, and we’re bound to agree on this, is disoriented as a result of transition-induced barrenness, rendered absurd by political trading and transformed into – to use banal metaphors – a Big Brother-watched farm. The theater can hardly be expected to remain immune to a society’s system of values that has taken a dive. Nevertheless, I’m confident that despite all the problems it faces our theater is better and bolder than the society it exists.
And while stories are going around about Kokan Mladenović the theater head, Mladenović the theater director is reaping success before packed audiences and theater festival judges (suffice it to mention in this context but the productions of Dundo Maroje and Hair) and his three productions are to appear in two programs of Sterija Theater Festival this year. What significance does this fact carry with you?
- I am foremost a theater director and also convinced that the stage is the most important feature of the theater. I firmly believe that everything else in the theater is subservient to this magic taking place on the stage that attracted people for several thousand years. My term as theater head I take to imply a four-year direction of a theater, its specific language and role in society. As for the my recent directing of Marin Držić’s Dundo Maroje on the stage of the theater in Kruševac, it is a representation of this brilliant Dubrovnik-set comedy with an entirely male cast just as it might be played by the inmates of the Kruševac Correctional Institution - collected from every quarter of our country and united by a desire to outgrow their amateurishness in acting and overcome the scanty means at their disposal to play this Renaissance pageantry. We’ve already discussed Hair, while the third production to be played at the Sterija Theater Festival is Maja Pelević’s Pomorandžina Kora (Orange Peel), a piece I directed with brilliant actors from the Novi Sad theater speaking about our impotence to resist the dictatorial demands put out to us by the age we live in.
 You have been engaged much in working in the theaters outside Belgrade and it was while there that you won major awards. How would you describe Serbia’s theaters beyond the capital?
- Belgrade is a city with an established market for actors and associates worthy of a respectable European metropolis. This makes possible to put together a fine team of actors but at the very moment that you do this it forces you to address such issues as that of overwhelmingly busy protagonists, shooting commitments, tours that threaten to turn producing a play into a situation difficult to manage. On the other hand, smaller cities such as Sombor or Kruševac, despite occasional fluctuations in their actors’ quality, provide for doing a theatrical production worthy of the art of theater. On the other hand, the theaters in the interior are paying a high price of being lulled into parochial standards and frequent management changes. Lack of work continuity and lack of autonomy in these theaters is something weighing down on the theaters throughout Serbia.
What are you doing at this time (as theater director), what are your plans and desires?
- Just recently I’ve finished work on Imre Madach’s The Tragedy of Man at the Novi Sad’s Ujvideki Szinhaz. This is one of the capital works of European literature and certainly the most prominent piece of writing in the Hungarian language. It is one of those plays, which, like Ibsen’s Peer Gynt endeavors to embrace the history of man’s life, including all its starry moments and stunning downfalls.
What may we expect by the end of the season from Atelje 212?
- Aleksandar Popović’s Pazarni Dan (Market Day) directed by Egon Savin, a play in which the author uses his specific language to expose our mentality’s delusions combined with historical sideways; then there’s Jose Pablo Feinmann’s Cuestiones con Ernest Che Guevara (Disputations with Che Guevara) directed by Dušan Petrović and Revolucija – Master Klas (Master Class – Revolution), a play in cooperation with Bacači Sjenki (Shadow Casters) theater from Zagreb.
You have announced a new theatrical event in Belgrade called Mucijevi Dani. Do tell us some more about this.
- Mucijevi Dani is a festival we are founding in honor of brilliant director and Atelje 212 theater head Ljubomir Muci Draškić. The festival has no competitive dimension, its purpose being to enable experience exchange, cooperation and creative associating among people of the theater from former Yugoslavia, mostly those from the cities in which Muci Draškić left a deep imprint as theater director. Thus, theaters from Zagreb, Sarajevo, Novi Sad, Sombor, Kruševac and, naturally, Atelje 212, will feature at this first festival year.
And finally, getting back to the beginning: Is it true that the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) would be your theater’s catchword in the next season, and why?
- Our theater’s next season will be held under the slogan nEXt YUGOSLAVIA. The EX being the realistic component and the NEXT – because I personally hope that this could be realistic. | 
