02. 10. 2011.

Turn on the lights!

       Mirna Rustemović

This year's MESS started in the dark, a faithful depiction of the state of culture in a country hosting a 51st edition of an international theatre festival. It would be difficult to establish such a festival today, because today galleries, museums, theatres are not opened... They are just being closed, budgets for culture are being slashed, young artists haven’t got opportunities to work ... The lamps that those in the audience turned on at the National Theatre to stop the darkness, show that there is still a desire for culture, and that they do not want to leave culture to wait in the dark. And so the festival began with a small, but still a switched-on light. A light that shines for culture in this city and country. It started with music, and with a conductor, with a worried mind full of different thoughts and nightmares ... The play “Sconcerto-teatro di musica” opened this year’s MESS Festival. The word “sconcerto” in Italian means restlessness, anxiety, confusion, disturbance...During the “concerto”, a “sconcerto” takes place in the conductor’s head. The same “sconcerto” happens in culture in this country. Despite this, it tries to survive, tries not to vanish from this city and country. The music plays on, it does not stop as long as the restlessness, the torrent of words in the conductor’s head exists, but it passes by him and by his thoughts. Life happens, and it walks right past us, and never stops. We can turn our heads from the world happening around us and enveloping us, and become strangers in it. This is what the conductor believes while he tries to hold a concert or take part in this same world, to perhaps try to change it, to get active, to see that that does not work, and then become a comedian in it.  Because it is better to be a comedian in this world than a stranger. A comedian may even bring a small change, because if we let the world be, it will just continue to run beside us and without us; however, it could be changed. At one point, the conductor tells us that the more we think, the less we decide, letting those who do not think reach the finish line.

Perhaps this is the reason we find culture in the state it is in today, and why we should begin to act as and become comedians in this world.