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Actors perform Shakespeare's Hamlet at the National Theatre in Sarajevo late September 14, 2005. The theatre was packed at the Sarajevo premiere of the play, in which Hamlet was shown as a Muslim prince at the Ottoman court, a reflection on the world after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York, according to the play director Haris Pasovic. The play was a multi-national effort, including artists from seven countries. PHOTO - REUTERS |
SARAJEVO - Hamlet has become a Muslim prince at the Ottoman court in an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy which its Bosnian director says reflects the world after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In possibly the biggest theatre co-production the war-torn Balkans region has seen in some 20 years, Haris Pasovic is seeking to put "Hamlet" into a 21st Century setting.
"One of the most important issues of the 21st century is the world's increased understanding of the Muslim issue following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York," Pasovic, himself a Bosnian Muslim, told Reuters in an interview last week. "I think the Muslim world today is facing the question: 'To be or not to be?', and I don't mean metaphysically," he said before the show's premiere late last Wednesday in Sarajevo. Sarajevo-born Pasovic was among the most prominent theatre directors in the then-Socialist Yugoslavia, living and working in Belgrade before Bosnia's 1992-95 war. But after the Bosnian capital was besieged by Bosnian Serb forces, he decided to return to his native city while almost everyone else was trying to leave for fear of being killed.
Actors from Bosnia, Croatia, France, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey took part in the co-production, the first time the ex-Yugoslav cities of Zagreb and Belgrade have jointly backed a project since Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s. Pasovic is renowned for his experimental approach to theatre. In 2002 he staged a post-modernist interpretation of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" in front of the bombed out parliament building in central Sarajevo.
This time he chose the Ottoman court for its resemblance to Shakespeare's Danish one. The play, set in obviously Eastern, though minimalist scenery, is visually striking with colourful costumes and mystical music performed live on stage. It was well received in Sarajevo, a traditionally multi-ethnic city dominated by moderate Muslims since the war. Just as Ottoman princes wore undershirts embroidered with Islamic prayers before they went into battle, Pasovic's Hamlet wears an undershirt on which the line "To be, or not to be -- that is the question" is printed in Arabic script. And so a story in a Christian setting, in which the hero questions the injustices of the world and his own personal tragedy, can just as well apply to Muslims. Reuters
