Everything According to Merit |
"I had to deserve my right to rebel when I was in primary school. I was an excellent pupil, and since teachers could not reproach me, I felt I could confront them. It is the same today when I say that our finance minister in Vojislav Koštunica’s government is wrong and doesn’t understand the position of independent artists in Serbia." - Svetlana Bojković
By Radmila Stanković, Photo by Vukica Mikača |
At the end of last year she received an actor's favourite recognition – Dobrica’s Ring. It was handed to her on December 18, the day of her 58th birthday. In her short speech she thanked everyone, especially her two husbands, the two great artists who left marks in her life – actor Miloš Žutić and director Ljubimir Muci Draškić, neither of whom are living. Last year marked her great comeback in the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, once her home theatre where she began as Bojan’s baby, as actors were known when they came into the theatre from the Academy by director Bojan Stupica. She received positive crucial reviews, not to mention audience's joy, for her acting in Ostrovsky’s "The Forest", in which she worked together with director Egon Savin for the first time.
She is widely considered to number among the best Serbian actors of her generation and she is also the first winner of the "Žanka Stokić" Prize. She has brilliantly played dozens of roles on the stages of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, the National Theatre and Atelier 212, but she has never acted in a Shakespeare play. She says that she would have to have enormous confidence in a director to act in, let’s say, "Anthony and Cleopatra". Of the eighty or so roles she has gathered in her 35-year career before retiring two years ago, she has played in "Highs Seas", she was Elizabeth of England in Schiller’s drama "Mary Stewart", she played in Corneille’s "Le Cid", she was Hedda Gabler in Ibsen’s play of the same name, Belisa in Moliere’s "The Learned Women", Lady Windermere in Wild’s "Lady Windermere’s Fan", Masha in "Three Sisters"…
At the time we interviewed her she was preparing to travel to Banja Luka to prepare for Nušić’s play "Mrs. Minister", to be played in the local National Theatre and directed by Milaca Kralj, the daughter of her most frequent career partner and favourite colleague Petar Kralj. |
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It is generally known that Svetlana Bojković was an excellent pupil – those who know her say that even now she is very strict towards herself and towards others as well. Today she is happy that her daughter Katarina Žutić, from her first marriage to Miloš Žutić, has found her own way and that she is not recognized as the daughter of two great actors. Moreover, as Svetlana says, she has "formed personal integrity and does not accept compromises". Her own upbringing, she says, represented a stereotypical patriarchal upbringing during an era when female children were not allowed to find a boyfriend. She was not allowed to chose for herself but had to be found, to be chosen. The father in the family was presented to Svetlana as a protector. Before she became a mother, she swore she would raise her child different from her own upbringing. Later, she did so. She never drove her Kaja to be an excellent pupil, though she liked her to have better grades in the record book. She never limited her going out. Katarina freely brought her boyfriends home, spent summer holidays with them…She is convinced that it has paid off and that her daughter learned many things before her mother did. |
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- I had a great number of inhibitions in my life. I still have them now as a result of my upbringing, when I was expected to be passive in a boy-girl relationship and that any initiative should come from a man. Though I am absolutely aware that those are tempi passatti, even now I carry in myself the remnants of that upbringing, which understands that a man is the one to provide initiative for everything. I was brought at a time when a man asked, "When are we going to see each other tomorrow?" That sentence has never been uttered by my lips.
How did Miloš Žutić, your first love from the amateur theatre Dadov, fit into the picture?
- When I fell in love with him he was already employed. He was a protector, ten years older, and on his initiative I soon married him. Maybe I should have dated him longer, but as I was a student, my time for going out was limited. I had to appear at the door by eleven, at the latest. During my youth, girls were very happy to spend summer holidays with their boyfriends. To let myself free and be with the man I loved, the only solution was marriage. |
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You have never stopped feeling sort of guilty because of your divorce with Miloš. Is that also a consequence of your upbringing?
- My upbringing and my view of intimacy. Marriage and divorce are, in their essence, deeply intimate matters for people who are serious and not superficial or imposters. Seen from the outside, I shocked my parents with the fact that I decided to divorce, just as it was an emotional shock for Miša and myself. To me, it was very painful, though it had to happen. There is something bad in divorce. Someone with whom you shared everything, let’s say from table to bed, abruptly becomes a stranger. It is terrible. Still, it is better than living with a permanent mark that could wake up in one of the partners at any time.
However, if you look at the good side of that upbringing, there remains the mutual respect of partners, which Miša and I kept until the divorce. Maybe I am a bit old-fashioned, but I like the fact that a woman's chores remain my job. Of course, I am not a feminist at all. I like to quote Duško Radović, that a man should first of all be a man. So, masculinity is the thing that attracts me to a man, but I have to admit that this phenomenom has become rare nowadays. The male-female relation has changed. |
Scene from "Sabrane priče" D. Margulis | |
Two years have passed since Muci Draškić died. How do you live now that you are alone?
– It is a very hard for me to think about. I don’t have that distance when Muci is concerned. I still push that away somewhere. Everything that has happened I place in an almost philosophical field: all of life is learning, even pain and loss. And I am trying to be a good student. |
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Although you’ve travelled around the world, and last summer you cruised the Volga River, you’ve said that you view Belgrade as your circle of life?
- It comes from my claim that space resides inside a person and not in a physical space. I can illustrate that by the fact that Karl May never left his study but managed to write his novel "Winnetou", one of the most wonderful adventure books for children. On the other hand, I believe that my travels enrich my inner space. Travelling and flying on a plane is something that stirs me from my daily routine and put things in perspective. When I experience problems, sadness or crisis, moving into a new space makes them relative.
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You belong to those rare actresses who used their travels to see new theatre productions and not to get stuck inside shops selling clothes and shoes?
- In the 1950s Belgrade made connections to the world, and later the Belgrade International Theatre Festival, known in the world as BITEF, found its place in the world. Laurence Olivier and Vivien Lee acted here, and I watched Paul Scofield and Diana Rigg, the young Julie Christie who played in "King Lear" and "The Comedy of Errors". As a young girl I listened to Mario del Monaco in Belgrade, who sang in the operas "Carmen" and "Jesters" at the National Theatre, while I listened to Arthur Rubinstein, David Eustrach, and Yehudi Menuhin at Kolarac. Wherever I’m in the world, especially in England, I take the opportunity to go to a theatre. I’ve watched Ingrid Bergman in London, Ralph Richardson…and last time, a year ago, I saw Judy Dench in Shakespeare’s "All’s Well That Ends Well" and again Diana Rigg – after several decades – in Tenesee Williams’ play "Suddenly Last Summer". Bond’s one-time girl is nearly seventy today, but she’s a brilliant actress. I also saw "Henry IV" with Ian McLaughlin and Francesca Annis. I love watching high quality musicals because I’m fascinated with the wonderful technology in "The Beauty and the Beast" and "Lion King" in New York and London. I am not thrown into despair when I see something beautiful like that, and there is nothing similar here. In fact, it encourages me that there is something better and better. |
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At one time you went to see the then president of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević. You asked him to replace Minister of Culture Miodrag Đukić, which later happened. You are an uncompromising advocate for the rights of independent artists, a fact that has brought you into conflict with the present Minster of Finance Mlađan Dinkić, towards whom you are very openly critical. Where does this need to publicly confront any injustice laid upon artists come from?
- First of all, I must tell you that I have never been a member of any political party and that I’ve always been a freelancer. That is probably the reason why I’m an actress – as a permanent way of seeking truth and purity of attitude. Wishing to put everything in order, to make it more righteous, more humane, I cannot help but notice what is wrong and I need to continuously point it out. I think this is my positive character regardless of how other people interpret it. On the other hand, maybe I inherited this because my maternal grandfather was a lawyer, and before that a judge. His rebellious nature and stinging tongue got him expelled to Macedonia during the time of Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Later he believed in the leftists’ ideas, took part in organized protests on March 27, 1941 but when he found out who was behind them he turned his back on his communist comrades who then threw him in jail after World War Two. He served a two-year sentence in Zabela. Nowadays these things cannot get anyone sent to jail, but you can be killed if you’re in their circle. Sometimes when I go to market or a shop people approach me and thank me for speaking out publicly. That used to happen to me while I was in primary school. Even back then I stood up for the rights of pupils and I always believed that I deserved that right because was the best pupil and teachers couldn’t reproach me for anything. It’s the same today. Though, I have joked recently that I would be better off playing the role of Raka who is always crying out "Down with the Government" instead of playing Živka Popović in "Mrs. Minister". |
With Petar Kralj in "Bračna igra" E. Olby | | |
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