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TO BE OR NOT TO BE – IT IS OUR QUESTION AS WELL

hakespeare's Hamlet is one of the most important cultural projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina this year. Talking to magazine DANI, Haris Pasovic speaks about this performance, the novelties in interpretation of Hamlet, his decision to set the play at the Ottoman instead of Danish court, about the "Muslim issue", "clash of civilisations", etc...

Interviewed by Senad Pecanin


DANI: Why did you decide to work on Hamlet?

PASOVIC: As early as when I was at the Academy – and I assume that it is the case with other directors as well - I knew that one day I would do Hamlet. It is such an important and exacting play that the moment you read it professionally for the first time, you become aware that one day you will do it. But, it is so grandiose, so complicated that it is awesome to do it – so that one postpones the idea of actually doing it indefinitely. I have lived with Hamlet ... like I lived with my parents. It is there, you take it for granted, every now and then you read it, think about it, you need it… And, just like we do not sit down to tell our parents that we love them, one does not approach Hamlet by taking it to direct and produce right away. Then, one day, I woke up and said to myself: "I want to do Hamlet".

DANI: And how did you come to the idea to set it in the Ottoman court?

PASOVIC: When I realised that the time had come to do Hamlet, the best play, the most complicated play that has ever been written, I felt an obligation and a responsibility towards that fact in our civilisation and did everything I could to get closer to the greatness of that story. On the other hand, the basic text the basic text is caught in a maze of multiple interpretations. We read the basic text, but there is also those 400 years of interpretation. I want to remind you that this play is, right after the Bible, the second book in the history of humanity in terms of bibliographical items, while Hamlet is the second personality after Jesus in terms of literature written about him. I felt tremendous responsibility towards the drama of a "fictitious character", who has occupied mankind for four centuries now. It is a story about power, about rebellion, about human essence in all its greatness and all its irrelevance. Since this play is so universal that every epoch has its own Hamlet, I decided to refer to an empire that was a super-power during a certain period of history – the Ottoman Empire. It became interesting to me to view the whole story from the perspective of a powerful empire that encompassed several dozens of different peoples, cultural identities, and from the perspective of the Muslim world. This context is now so important because the world is sensitive to the issue of Muslims, and it emerges as one of the key issues of our time. I was interested to find out how one of the most important stories ever told in the history of mankind functions from within a context that is so important today. Then I dealt with the history of the Ottoman Empire, read many books of which the most helpful was the History of Ottoman Civilisation and State, recently published by the Institute for Oriental studies in Sarajevo. It may sound paradoxical, but I think that if he were to write Hamlet today, Shakespeare would set it in the Ottoman court. I have discovered that the whole oriental context gave this story an additional touch of mysticism and poetry. We found in Shakespeare lines that could be the verses in the poetry of / that could just as well have been yirtten by the poet Omar Khayam. The structure of the Ottoman state is absolutely Shakespearian. That is something about which Shakespeare wrote in all his plays. I did not change the story, I have not changed anything in the story, I did not change the names, I only changed the titles; instead of king and queen, we use sultan and Valide-sultan, and where in the original there is a Christian religious reference, we have translated it into Islamic references. And, that is it. I saw that there was no place for forceful modernisation. We approached the Ottoman Empire with a critical consciousness of existing stereotypes in our society which either romanticise the Ottoman Turks to the point of kitsch, or, on the other hand, underestimate them as primitive.


DANI: I came to the premiere of your performance immediately after I had seen the footage of the horrible terrorist act in Sharm-El-Sheikh on TV. Your production of Hamlet, in the context of terrorism that frightens and shakes the world, acquires incredible topicality.

PASOVIC: What you have just said is horrible and true. I think that the Muslim world today is confronted with the "to be or not to be" question, and not in a metaphysical sense. The performance has two parallel, equally important layers. One that is specific and relates to the Muslim world, and the other, universal and relating to the whole of mankind. The problems that concern the Muslims are equally related to all the others – Christians, Confucians, Hindus, atheist, everyone… You’ve seen that, at one point, Hamlet changes shirts and puts on one with Arabic letters inscribed on it. This shirt is directly inspired from the real undershirt worn by Ottoman sultans when they went to battle. They had dovas, i.e. Koranic prayers inscribed on them. We have transposed it in the context of Hamlet. This undershirt is important to me since it is like the skin one discloses. Together with my costume designers from the Kao Pao Shu group, we have come to this solution with Hamlet wearing this undershirt with "to be or not to be" inscribed on it. And, actually, an important part of that monologue is written in Arabic on his undershirt. He is dressed in "to be or not to be". I think that every serious person today should be dressed in "to be or not to be".


DANI: How do you view the fact that there are more and more of those who, although they had fiercely disputed Huntington’s thesis of the clash of civilisations earlier, now shyly start to suspect that "there might be something in it"?

PASOVIC: I think that it is too easy an explanation. When a problem becomes such that it requires serious consideration, then very often one opts for the explanations that are at hand. And, unfortunately, the explanation of the so-called clash of civilisations is sexy enough, it gives an illusion of broad discourse in which one moves with ease. In that respect, the focus of our performance is the crime committed by Sultan Claudius against his brother, Sultan Hamlet. Everything in Hamlet is both political and private at the same time. And this is what is so valid today. And, now, this crime committed by Sultan Claudius – you saw it in the performance – starts as something that is not considered to be so terrible: God, such things do happen, the state must go on, Sultan Claudius is young, the other was too old, the old one did not know how to run the state anymore, the new one is much more pragmatic… But, on the other hand, his crime becomes an ever greater problem, both for him and for the state. And the whole conspiracy he has masterminded, involving people at the highest positions in the Ottoman Empire, is best seen in the scene of the prayer, when Sultan Claudius is kneeling on that mat, trying to get connected with the God, trying to heal his soul from that crime. However, he can’t pray, and this is where we see to what extent Shakespeare is universal. The prayer in our play is a Muslim prayer, but both Muslim and Christian prayers fail when it comes to the crime. There is no repentance, neither in this, nor in the other world when it comes to the crime. I think we need to view this in terms of fundamental human essence, and that is the crime is forbidden. In every sense – civilisational, cultural, religious, ethical, legal – crime is simply unacceptable. Knowing it, Hamlet does not rush into doing to revenge his father, an action which, given that this was the way justice was done in those times, is his duty. He does not rush into vengeance, not because he is coward, as it was often interpreted, but because he is an intelligent, serious man. Why would Hamlet take a sword and kill a man because a ghost appeared before him? He seeks proof so that he is truly convinced that it really happened. In this investigative procedure he undertakes, he starts to be perceived as a political enemy and becomes a threat to the state. He becomes a threat to a criminal regime, because he seeks truth and justice. Well, that is interesting for our world today! We have made great breakthroughs when it comes to interpreting Hamlet. The prince does not kill Claudius; the sultan himself drinks poison, which is a diversion from Shakespeare. The situation leads to the point when the criminal destroys himself. What "clash of civilisations" are we talking about, when we can see that one of the greatest Occidental stories functions perfectly and impeccably in an Oriental context, in a different religious context? If there were such a thing as a clash of civilisations, it would not be possible for Hamlet to function impeccably in a Muslim context. On the other hand, an expressly Muslim context such as the Ottoman Empire is in absolute concordance with the story of Hamlet, with the entire deepest question it raises. I think that art today, more than anything else, must warn people, must help them get rid of that political stereotype that is imposed upon us. I think that philosophy, art, science, the media, etc. have to start considering our reality with seriousness, they must show that there is not a single proof that this is about the clash of civilisations. Why would there be a clash of civilisations? Might it be a clash between civilisation and non-civilisation?

DANI: With your entire war and post-war commitment, you have been struggling for justice. Is your recent visit to Serbia, where your production of Rebellion in the National Theatre was played, part of some kind of "investigative procedure"?

PASOVIC: I felt that, after twelve years, I could go there with a reason and a motive and that I could have a serious dialogue with my friends and with the public. When I went there, I said that I would certainly not go there to say "you are guilty for the war", since that was not the reason of my visit. Who I am to give lectures to anyone? But I did not want to go and say "nothing has happened, who has made us quarrel?" That is not in line with my views and my entire commitment in the last twelve years. But, what I think and what I said there is that the crime came from there. I am deeply convinced that it is the thing that Serbia must face. But, on the other hand, in my play there are a lot of young people, and there I also met a lot of young people who were interested to see what we are doing. At one point, I felt that we, being forty, or more, have no right to transfer our disappointments, our frustrations to these young people who did not have the chance to get to know each other and then to decide whether they would love each other or not, whether they would work together…. I think that we have to communicate our stories to each other. We have one story to communicate to Serbia and Croatia. But, Serbia and Croatia need to communicate their stories to us as well. We are not the only ones who need to talk. We also need to listen. We have more patience now, we have more wisdom, maturity and responsibility to try to communicate all of it in a moderate way. Moderate - not in terms of facts, but in terms of an emotion. And that actually happened in Belgrade. I must say that it felt strange to go there after so many years; I lived in Belgrade, I made a career there and worked with phenomenal people. This is such an exciting play that people who came from Belgrade, Novi Sad, Subotica and elsewhere were very moved, they cried. An element of catharsis happened that enabled us to start some projects in which we communicate, both professionally and privately, in a positive sense. One of the institutions that supported Hamlet is the Assembly of the City of Belgrade. On the other hand, in Zagreb, their Mayor’s Office for Culture also supported it. It is an absolute precedent. What happened in Hamlet organisationally has not happened for twenty years now in the former Yugoslavia: at various levels state institutions from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia worked together, we had serious commercial sponsors from Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, we had great support from the British Council… This testifies to the power of Hamlet as a story, the power of the concept and the need to make a step forward. When I see my team, I see the people from eight countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, France, the UK and Spain, and when I see how wonderfully they work, what wealth opens up in their encounter, how seriously, wisely, and responsibly they are contemplating our time and our political context, as well as the world political context, how seriously and wisely they contemplate art, then I know that all that we have been doing here, in Sarajevo, both you and me, all our friends and all the citizens of this city during the war has a very deep meaning, and that we were right.


DANI: Talking to you in the last couple of days, I got the impression that for you Tuzla is a discovery.

PASOVIC: In the recent years I knew about Tuzla through the things done by the mayor, Jasmin Imamović. He has become visible as a person who has found a way to present his city and its dynamics which is modern and very different from any other city in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I have several actors from Tuzla thanks to whom I got to know about that atmosphere. But, I did not have friends or professional contacts so far, so that, for me, Tuzla was rather unknown. When I decided to do Hamlet, I decided at the same time that it would be an independent production. I can’t stand working with our institutions any more, because they are so retrograde and often unprofessional that I have no patience or will to expose myself to such a situation. It is easier for me to be both a producer and a director even though it is very tough since these are two separate jobs that demand the whole man for the whole day. I was ready to double my efforts, but to avoid any unnecessary drama and struggle. In an independent production I could have done it in Sarajevo or in any other town. But, I wanted the premiere not to be in Sarajevo. I think that we are unjust towards the rest of Bosnia, where from Sarajevo even the most distant town is only a four hours’ drive. Tuzla occurred to me first, simply because I know that Jasmin Imamović is open to new initiatives and everything that would make his city better and richer in terms of contents. When I called him on the phone, he immediately said that he was very interested and invited me to come and talk about it. Tuzla opened its door to me. They showed me the venues, both outdoor and indoor ones, these and those possibilities and options… I opted for the Bosnian Cultural Centre which offers excellent conditions and which has a brilliant manager, Salko Bukvarević, who understood very well the significance of this project. I saw an enthusiasm that I had not seen in Bosnia for years. And one gets taken by it all. The funds provided by the Municipality of Tuzla were not so important, nor were they decisive. Their enthusiasm for the project was decisive. We have opened a new organisational model, in which several participants invest small funds to make a project that no city could possibly make alone.