Jat Is a Metaphor for the Homeland

Novi Sad Arts Academy professor, Belgrade National Theatre Drama director, Serbian PEN centre president, postgraduate at the Sorbonne, in France, and at the University of Minnesota, in the US, director of hundreds of theatrical productions, television and radio programmes, writer, and the current ambassador of the Republic of Serbia to Denmark, Vida Ognjenović is above all someone with inexhaustible creative energy who has received numerous important awards and recognitions for her work, both at home and abroad.

By Zlatica Ivković
Photo by Milan Melka

The first ambient international theatre festival in Serbia, dubbed the Fortress Theatre Festival, was launched this summer in the city of Smederevo, on the Danube. The event was opened by the President of the Festival Board and our collocutor, Vida Ognjenović, who pointed out that one of the motives for initiating the festival could be found in the extraordinary surroundings of the medieval fortress, which provided an authentic theatrical background.

We asked Ms Ognjenović what kind of a future she sees for the Festival?

– The initial impressions of the festival confirm that the Fortress Theatre Festival was a good idea. It was greeted and seen with great sympathy and approval. So, judging from this successful ‘initiation’, there is reason for it to flourish unimpeded, even if there were several similar festivals in the region, which is not the case. So, the very fact that several hundred potential spectators were left outside the gates every evening – as there was only so much room – is bound to spur organisers to offer at least two performances of competing productions next year. Furthermore, the festival programme will include new items, such as workshops, meetings of theatre experts, dances, professional research classes to be conducted by renowned foreign and local pedagogues. We are also considering adding a musical section to the festival. Good ideas are not lacking, and work is already well under way for upcoming festivals.

Being a renowned writer and theatre director, you have adopted an approach to dramatic structure that is based on literature and which, using imagination, you translate into a world filled with visions, melancholy and sentiments. This is where fiction and reality, love and memory… ‘drama within drama’ intertwine. How did you come upon such an approach?

– How, you ask me? I can hardly answer that. A completed manuscript of a play on an author’s desk is but the first part of the job. It reaches its full conclusion when the curtain falls on the first night. In a way, the author bears this kind of future interaction in mind. But it would be wrong to think the play can successfully ensure a balance of this duality between the literary and the theatrical. To do that would be the easiest thing and merely a matter of skill. The harder way is to have the play explore and intensify to a maximum the mutual provocations between these two complex levels.

You once said that the gift of literary expression is perceived primarily in the "broadness of language". You attach special attention to language?

– Yes, I see language as the ultimate creative exploration of the world. This precious communication space affords an infinite number of combinations of words to name and express the existent and non-existent, the real and the unreal, being and non-being, and it is indeed a great advantage of humankind. In this context, a play poses a particular challenge, once again according to a certain dualism, as it represents both the written and verbal version of language. In the former, various elements pertaining to the characterisation of time, geography, environment, to individuals or groups are come by. The second frequently experiments with form. Thus, we have plays written in verse, or in different variations of rhythm. Yes, I do devote particular attention to language because this to me is the working material of the greatest importance.

Do your duties as ambassador permit you to set aside time for writing?

– Thinking about this – and I am often in the position to answer such questions, and not only to journalists – I am becoming increasingly convinced that so-called free, leisure, unoccupied time for writing is either illusory or, fortunately, a predominantly technical dimension of such work. Leisure is, to a certain measure, a favourable circumstance for creative work of this kind because it has a liberating effect regarding ‘constraints’, in that it precludes dissipating energy into a bottomless pit; however, it is not a pre-condition either for beginning or for ending. I say ‘fortunately’ because I have no illusions that writing is a matter of ideal conditions, of which available time is also a part. Writing is not a natural thing. It is a slightly crazy need for which time must be created in the same madcap way.

You arrived in Belgrade for the opening of the Fortress Theatre Festival and left the capital for Denmark flying by Jat. What are your impressions of flying with our national air company? Are you pleased with the quality of services Jat provides to its passengers?

– Ah, we have arrived at the point for a small advertising message. Well then… My first flight ever was onboard a cozy little JAT Douglas aircraft, and, if I remember correctly, it was on the Belgrade-Titograd line. That was a time when this distance was covered in a fantastic one-and-a-half hours and landing was greeted with loud applause and enthusiastic calls of ‘bravo’ to the captain and the crew. After so many flights, somewhere in my subconscious mind travelling by air is still synonymous with flying by Jat. It’s quite normal then that to this day I still feel quite natural, never giving a thought to flight safety, just as I never did that first time when the airplane danced on the wind like a walnut shell – and so I travel by habit and with a positive passenger experience and complete confidence.

Do you have any concrete suggestions as to how Jat could rein in available resources and with assistance from the government or in some other way restore its reputation as one of the most respectable air companies in Europe, a reputation it enjoyed for many years?

– I am not, as you know, an expert in this field, but having been a Jat passenger for many years, I believe that opening flights to overseas’ destinations (New York, Chicago, Toronto, Melbourne) would considerably help in the way of improved commercial result. In my view, flights to these cities, two or three times per week, would sell very well considering the nearly one-million strong diaspora on the North American continent alone. Also, affordable prices would make these flights much more appealing. I have seen this work with the Czech air company, as well as with Hungary’s Malev. But, Jat expert teams are certainly well aware of this and know how to address the issue.

You were also Serbia and Montenegro’s ambassador in Oslo, Norway, and currently you are Serbia’s ambassador to Denmark. Your contacts with Serbia’s diaspora must be frequent. Do you get the impression that in the minds of people Jat continues to figure as a symbol of their homeland or merely as a brand?

– Yes, Jat is indeed a metaphor for homeland for our emigrants. This is so, regardless of when they emigrated. At the time I was in Oslo, there was still no direct line so that sometime in around 2005, the possibility for restoring a direct line was discussed and explored. You cannot imagine with what kind of earnest interest people – primarily Serbian citizens, but Norwegians as well – followed developments of this Jat project. Our people were travelling mostly by train or bus (a three-and-a-half-hour ride) to Gothenburg and then boarded a Jat aircraft there.

The New Review, Jat’s in-flight magazine, celebrates its 35th anniversary next year. Its anniversary, 200th edition, will be issued in August, 2010. What is your view of the quality of Jat New Review, as compared with the in-flight magazines of other air companies?

– It gives me pleasure officially to say here for your magazine just how highly I regard its quality. The Jat Review, as we are used to calling your magazine, can withstand any comparative test with other good publications of this kind in the world. Thematically interesting, it is a magazine informative in the right way, with culture adequately represented and with excellent photography. And, what is especially praiseworthy – it is not drowned in advertisements. What can I say? While onboard I never miss the opportunity to read it from cover to cover, and if I’m unable to finish it over chatting with my fellow travellers or for some other reason, I always take a copy with me to read later.

In many past issues of Jat Review, apart from giving interviews, many of our leading authors such as Svetlana Velmar-Janković, Milorad Pavić, Dragan Velikić, Mihajlo Pantić, Radoslav Bratić… also had their texts published. You, too, made a contribution as a figure whose artistic opus has been presented to our readers. May we hope that sometime in the near future a text for the Review would be forthcoming from you, say a travelogue from Denmark?

– There is no reason for me not make that promise, having just showered such praises on your magazine. But, I’m afraid already next week I’d be getting editor’s questions as to when the text can be expected, how far from completion it is, how many pages it will have, what’s the title so that you can announce it and whether it will be ready for the next issue. At the same time, for my part, I would be thinking up different excuses, and for many of them you will say I’ve already used them the previous week. It’s best then that I promise to write a text for the August 2010 anniversary issue. Now, let’s both get to work.