ASSOCIATION OF DIRECTORS IN BIH: WE CONSIDER STATEMENT OF EMBASSY OF RUSSIAN FEDERATION AS THREAT

SARAJEVO, MARCH 5 (ONASA) – The Association of Directors in Bosnia and Herzegovina has announced the reaction of the Russian Embassy to the play “Idiot” by the Sarajevo National Theater directed by Selma Spahić, and they state that they consider the announcement of the Embassy of the Russian Federation a threat.
Bizarre as it sounds, the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Bosnia and Herzegovina has published its review for the play “Idiot,” which was directed by Selma Spahić, a director and professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo, at the National Theater in Sarajevo, based on the motifs of the novel of the same name by Fyodor Mihajlovich Dostoyevsky. If the Russian embassy had stuck to theatrical criticism, this strange event would have been just an unusual move by an embassy official. But the Russian embassy decided to explain to our colleague what she can and can’t do in the theater; what kind of family she comes from; in which gender should the name of her profession be and whether she is allowed to talk about the bombed theater in Mariupol. On top of all that, our colleague was warned that she can only direct Dostoyevsky the way it is directed in Russia and the way it was directed in the Soviet Union. The problem is not only that the Russian embassy has forgotten that Danil Harms long ago wrote a short story, a masterpiece, “Old Woman” which is a parody of the novel “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky – says the announcement.
The problem is that the Russian embassy has forgotten that directors in this country, no matter how skinny or barefoot they are, can direct what they want and how they want. That in our country art is free. As art should be free in every country. Given that this intervention against our artists comes from a country from which artists flee, because dissidents end up in prison or end up poisoned or under strange circumstances.