Social Stages World Bank Examines Theater’s Role in European and Central Asian Societies by Carolyn Cosmos Bold and raw, the DAH Theatre troupe’s Washington premiere of “Inner Mandala” was a one-time lecture and performance theater event offered at the World Bank in June. It depicted a time of darkness, violence and human suffering in Serbia as the former Yugoslavia collapsed under the weight of war. The production was part of broad-ranging series of lectures, films, performances and workshops that are being offered at the World Bank through the end of July on the theme of theater and society. “Theatre in Europe and Central Asia: Mirror of Society or Agent of Change?” examines the role that theaters have historically played and continue to play in societies transitioning to a “more participatory governance, stronger community identity, and a greater voice for the disadvantaged and the poor,” according to press materials. The diverse series of cultural events, many of them open to the public, includes an exhibition featuring theatrical artifacts, as well as films, theatrical performances, workshops, and lectures with experts in such areas as stage design and playwriting. The exhibit highlights issues such as Vaclav Havel’s Velvet Revolution in Prague, political changes that emanated from the Polish city of Gdansk , how St. Petersburg is protecting Russia’s famed Mariinsky Theater, and how Armenia is guarding children from toxic pollutants. Other participating countries include Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and the Slovak Republic. In “Inner Mandala,” author and actress Maja Mitic discusses excerpts from Belgrade performances that she has taken part in starting in 1991. The piece offered an art forged through war and at the same time, provided a history of one theater’s efforts to address the experiences of a changing society. DAH relies heavily on so-called “experimental-theater” techniques that use multimedia presentations, symbolic imagery and associative links. In fact, “Inner Mandala” more closely resembled a visual collage and poetry reading than a traditional play, but these techniques added depth to the piece and provided, at times, the incantatory power of a rite. For example, in DAH’s use of the Helen Keller story, Mitic said her theater troupe saw “Helen Keller as a symbol. My country was like Helen Keller, deaf and blind.” In her performance, Mitic wrapped herself head to toe in a flowing robe that covered her face as she mimed a struggle to escape the robe, symbolic perhaps of Keller’s inner battle and political strife. Another member of DAH noted that the Keller case offered a chance to deal with “loss in general: the loss of senses, the loss of a country, the loss of perceiving reality in a generally accepted way,” and the “potential for new life.” Although the subject matter of “Inner Mandala” raised the specter of propaganda presented as art, the production itself—filled with dance, verse, homely images of ordinary life, and beautiful use of shadow and light—rose above mere propaganda. Mitic described the production, and similar DAH works, as “healing.” “Inner Mandala” depicts in collage fashion a universal quest to respond to evil and dislocation in a meaningful way, in this case through theater. In one sense the play is apolitical: A soldier represents all soldiers, and individuals are typically not identified as belonging to any particular nation or ethnic group. But the piece also protests specific sufferings of war. One DAH production, Mitic explained, “was created in Belgrade in 1999 while NATO was bombing nightly.” The actress described it as an effort to artistically capture “reality dissolving in front of us.” Another “Mandala” scene follows a silent film montage of ordinary people, middle class and prosperous, increasingly being accosted by soldiers and bodies on the streets. Mitic then kneels to smoke a cigarette and slowly makes a pot of tea on the stage, saying simply, “I wish I had been someone else.” Director Naum Panovski, commenting on the DAH Theatre presentation and similar works from Serbia, Croatia and Macedonia (including his own production of Goran Stefanovski’s play “Sarajevo”), described the productions as important “agents for change in society—work done on behalf of communities.” He told a World Bank audience in a recent lecture that this kind of theater “helps a society to grow” by mirroring it, as Shakespeare taught, although it is “sometimes a broken mirror, and not everybody likes the crooked image,” said Panovski, who is now a director of theater programs at Rhode Island College. “Theater has always been at the center of society,” Panovski pointed out, from the times of shamanistic rituals through Plato’s classical Greece and into the powerful anti-Nazi voice of Bertolt Brecht. DAH and similar works, he observed, can counter the splintering and centrifugal forces of nationalism and hatred of “the other.” “Sarajevo,” which Panovski directed in Dallas, shows how “at the death of Yugoslavia, people turned against each other and bridges were burned,” Panovski said. It asked the question, “How can we human beings live together without devastating wars? How do we build respect for the ‘other’?” Panovski noted that his play is somewhat similar to “Inner Mandala”: It has no identifiable characters and is composed of a nightmare dream sequence depicting the final three seconds of a young girl’s life. Hit by a sniper in Sarajevo and dying, she sees the beauty of the city as well as the horrors of war and the suffering of ordinary people. It is a “homage to the people of Sarajevo,” Panovski said, and “a prayer of hope” in the face of a time of “madness” that produced mass graves, children taken from schools and put into the trenches to fight, the destruction of repositories of culture and other atrocities. Yet theater and music persisted, he added, with musicians presenting concerts in the midst of debris and theater performances held when the bombings stopped. This kind of art “creates public dialogues and can be a strong agent for change,” Panovski said. It differs, however, from propaganda, in which an audience merely gets a “message.” According to the director, in art, a mere message is only part of the presentation and is embedded in a broader aesthetic that embraces complexities and the many facets of human life. “Theatre in Europe and Central Asia: Mirror of Society or Agent of Change?” runs through July 22 at the World Bank. For a complete schedule of events, please call (202) 458-0333 or visit www.worldbank.org/artprogram. Carolyn Cosmos is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.