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My theater is, I think, an ice cold theater. No empathy (warmth). The spectator FREEZES and then perhaps, as in a scientificexperiment,isfreeto examine them self as observers. This I believe can lead to aesthetic ecstasy, which is also, at its best, a kind of ice. Richard Foreman (2007: 130)

In 1958 I wrote the following: ‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thingisnotnecessarilyeithertrueorfalse;itcan bebothtrueandfalse.’I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them, but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false? Harold Pinter (2006)

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Thispaperhasgrownoutofmyreflectionson my directing/devising of the performance event The Trial of Harold Pinter [Sudjenje Haroldu Pinteru].1 In October 2006, I devised thissite-specific,multimediaperformanceasa promenade using as the main location the halls of ‘Zastava’ [The Flag] Arms Factory in Kragujevac. The piece explored the relation between place, performance, spectator and different visual and sound scapes created but also embodied within the site (Pearson 2010, Birch and Tompkins 2012). The Zastava factory, a landmark of Yugoslavia and socialism, belonged to the military industry and was bombed out by NATO forces in 1999. After its destruction, the factory was largely abandoned and, apart from a few small units, closed off. The performance event aimed to engage with the plurality of contexts surrounding the site, which such a rich location in meaning necessitated (Fischer-

Lichte 2008). The performance took place outside the main international theatre festival Joakim Interfest – held in the oldest theatre in Serbia,KnjaževačkoSrpskiTeatar.2 The title for this performance came from David Butler’s soundscape, The Trial of Harold Pinter, which juxtaposed Harold Pinter’s 2006 Nobel speech with one-line comments from the general public and Pinter’s characters. The performance also used recorded video projections of actual TV footage of NATO’s bombing of Kragujevac and the Zastava factory in 1999.

The Trial of Harold Pinter received the highest prize for culture and art in 2006 from Kragujevac City Council: St George’s Cross for best cultural event of the year.3 However, this performancewasnotpartoftheofficialfestivalselection;itwasannouncedonlyonthedayofperformance. In this way, The Trial of Harold Pinter was a guerilla one-off performance event. It was kept a secret from the festival audience, and it was not included in the festival promotion. It was only advertised the very evening of the performance as a free event, a street performance. The word spread around: Are you going to the trial of Harold Pinter? Would you like to go to see the trial of Harold Pinter? It started at midnight in front of the main theatre building, and the audience were then moved in buses through various points in thecity,finishingatthebombed-outfactory.Theaudience’sexperienceofconflictingrealityin post-war Serbia was at the heart of the project. I wasalsoinfluencedbytheworkattheCentre for Applied Theatre Research, in the drama department at the University of Manchester, where I was working at the time, and particularly by James Thomson’s In Place of

Freezing of Collective MemoryThe trial of Harold Pinter

A L E K S A N D A R S A S H A D U N D J E R O V I Ć

1 YouTube link to the performance: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg63L30OeiGrw 2TQSYFYAdQ

2 The theatre was established in 1835 in Kragujevac, Serbia. 2006 wasthefirstyearoftheJoakim Interfest inaugurating ‘small form’, 7–14 October. The festival aimed at bringing small and studio productions from the region of central Europe, although over the past eight years, the festival has involved performances from more than twenty countries, including the UK and Russia. The festival is competitive, themed and brings research and practice together in exploring contemporary professional practice. For more on the festival, see http://www.joakimvujic.com/inter_uk.php

3 http://www.mondo.rs/s36878/Zabava/Kultura/Plaketa_Svetog_Djordja_Haroldu_Pinteru.html

I SSN 1352-8165 p r in t /1469-9990 on l ine© 2013 TAYLOR & FRANCIS

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War, a project run from the Centre.4 As a large-scale UK Arts and Humanities Research Council project, it explored the relations betweenperformanceandwarinconflictzones,bringing together over 380 theatres, artists and their work.5 The project explored performance as a vehicle for therapy, how theatre performance can mediate, and therapeutically influence,evencure,war-affectedcommunities,medicate the collective social, psychological and cultural wounds caused by war. In the same period, I was researching Atanas Mockus and his use of theatrical acts to induce social change and affect collective behaviour in Bogota, Colombia, by initiating the concept of cultura ciudadana [civic culture]. Implemented through performance events, cultura ciudadana intended to help people understand their public actions andcollectivebehaviours(DundjerovićandNavarro Bateman 2006).

Richard Foreman’s deep freeze and ‘ice cold theatre’ are a great metaphor for the waymysite-specificperformancerelatedtospectators and to knowing and understanding oneself in the state of collective anxiety and trauma caused by war. It was a frozen site, both physically and emotionally, as a response to a violation that took place. The Trial of Harold Pinter displayed ephemeral, transient and transformable qualities, as a journey through time, inthelocationwheretimestoodstill- in a bombed out and largely abandoned Zastava factory.. I have been exploring in my research on Robert Lepage transformation of performance mise-en-scène and the process of creating spontaneous transient events by using RSVP scores, Lepage’s method of taking one performance as a resource to develop another (Dundjerović 2007).

P E R F O R M A N C E A S A S C I E N T I F I C

E X P E R I M E N T : F R E E Z I N G

The Trial of Harold Pinter was what Forman refers to as ‘an ice cold theatre’, without empathy. The freezing spectator makes his or her own self-observation in a very documentary way.Freezersandrefrigeratorsinscientific

experiments use liquidnitrogenat−196°C(−321°F,77°K)forsuccessfulpreservationofbiological structures, as at that temperature all biological activity virtually stops. Once the preserved material has become frozen, it is relatively safe from further damage and can be stored for up to 1,000 years. However, the danger is not in the length of the preservation but in the process of freezing and thawing – in transition between different states.Inscientificterms,cryobiology,research

freezing of living cells, known as cryopreservation, approaches the freezing of liquid water that is essential to the structure and function of living cells as being both lethal and preservative for long periods of time in a viable state. The same process of freezing can preserve or disrupt, can stop or accelerate some chemical reactions, and some organisms in nature respond to this successfully but others do not. However, there are fundamental mechanisms of howcellsrespondtothesolidificationofliquidwater. No interactions occur in aqueous systems at liquid nitrogen (N2) temperatures of –192°C, refrigeration commonly used for storage of biologically relevant material. At such low temperature, no life physically exists as there is insufficientthermalenergyforchemicalreactions to take place. Any chemical activity that might damage the cell material is effectively stopped.6 For me, Forman’s analogy works well as in performance presenting frozen state allows for self-observation of the problem and provides the possibility for recognition of the damage to ‘the material’ – of cells – or in performance context, of personal and group human conditions.

Forman’s idea of a spectator who freezes and is free to examine himself or herself as an observer, to see conditions that have led to the actual illness, as in a scientificexperiment,relates to the relation established with the audience during the performance event The Trial of Harold Pinter. In fact, once the performance hadfinished,theaudiencestayedforanotherfew hours in front of the bombed-out factory coming back to life after the experience of freezing. The presentation of a frozen state

4 See the Centre’s website: http://www.inplaceofwar.net

5 For further reading on the use of theatre in war, see: Thompson (2009), Thompson et al. (2009) and Thompson (2005).

6 Interestingly, the main danger is not in the duration thatacell isunder lowtemperaturesinstorage but rather the passage through the intermediate zone of temperature (from -15°C to 60°C) that a cell must experience twice – once during cooling and once during warming (Mazur 2013).

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allows for observation of the problem and the possibilitytorecognizethedamage toindividualandcollectivesocialfabric. Ina way, by re-creating an experience the audience had lived through and asking them to observe their own conditions – recognition – and come to terms with the violent circumstances helps the process of reconciliation with themselves.

It is relevant to look at experiences of a collective freeze response in order to analyse this performance event. Human response theoryrecognizesthatinadditiontoflightandfight,freezeisanacutestressresponsetoperceived threats., As Barlow’s description of the adaptive alarm model may suggest, in some threatening situation a freeze response takes place, known as freezing or tonic immobility, which may take over other competing actions. In these situations, a freeze tendency becomes the central response to the threat. Over time, anxiety disorders cause enormous suffering on individuals or communities, as once acquired, anxiety tends to be chronic. Barlow sees the nature of anxious apprehension as a unique

coherent cognitive-affective construct within a defensive motivational system. At the heart of this construct is a sense of uncontrollability focused largely on possible future threat, danger or other challenges that may have a negative outcome. Thus, this state could be characterized, roughly, as a state of helplessness because of a perceived inability to predict, control or obtain desired results or outcomes in certain upcoming situations or contexts. Accompanying this negative affective state is a strong physiological or somatic component…. This somatic state may be the physiological substrate of readiness, often described as vigilance or hypervigilance, which may underlie a state of preparation to counteract helplessness. (Barlow 2002: 14)

For the audience the performance event was familiar. They were initiated audience that knew the war context and the conditions they lived through, affected by them in a highly substantial way. Performance was relating to the collective experience of the audience who lived through more than three months of intensive NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, in which more than 5,000 people lost their lives or were

declared missing. The participatory, promenade, site-specificperformanceexperienceengagedthe audience’s memories with their own collective freeze response to ongoing decades of threatsofsanctionsandbombs,sinceflightandaggressiveness are likely to be ineffective.

T H E S I T E : Z A S T A V A [ T H E F L A G ]

M I L I T A R Y F A C T O R Y

In 1853 Serbian Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjević,withtheapprovalofNapoleonIII, commissioned Charles Loubry, the controller of a private French gun foundry, to set up an industrial complex called ‘Topolivnica’ [foundry] manufacturing cannon barrels. From 1880, the factory manufactured the full range of military equipment and in 1888 produced a rapid-firemilitaryrifleconsideredthebestintheworldatthat time. Before World War 2, the Zastava factory had 12,000 workers. It was among the biggest military factories in Europe. The Nazis destroyed it during the war, and in 1944, after the liberation when it reopened, only 670 workers came back to the factory again. From after the war, under President Tito, all the way until 1992 when its manufacturing and exports where seriously diminished because of UN sanctions on Yugoslavia, the Zastava factory was one of the main suppliers to the Yugoslav National Army and an exporter of all grades of military weapons to non-Allied countries. NATO’s 1999 bombing of Serbia destroyed facilities.7 Most of its work force made made unemployed, which is still the case until today. Unemployment causes a lot of tension in the community. A small section of the factory was rebuilt and transformed to work as a subcontractor for major international military brands such as Remington. However, the manufacturing focused on small arms for civilian and military use, with a licence to import given by the USA. The main factory complex was emptied out of any valuable equipment that was still re-usable and sold. Heavy private security was posted outside as workers (who made half of Kragujevac’s population) were regularly protesting closure and privatization of what they considered their factory.

7 Americans destroyed the main factory complex with four Patriot missiles in a direct hit, causing 60 million US dollars worth of damage.

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Noonehadenteredthefinalbombedoutfactorysitesince1999;thesiteoftheZastavafactory..The location was left in the same condition as after NATO bombs destroyed it. The place had been locked up and kept away from the public until we were given permission to enter the site and use it as a performance space.Moreover,culturalsignificanceofthelocation was multilayered and immense. The bombed-out site had been the biggest factory in the 1970s through the 1990s, ‘Crvena Zastava’ [RedFlag],trulytheindustrialflagshipofSocialist Yugoslavia, producing everything from refrigerators and televisions to cars (the Yugo) andfinallymilitaryweaponsandguns,suchasthe famous handgun CZ 99. Seven years after the bombing, whatever had been left of the factory complex was sold off in the process of privatization. These decisions left thousands of workers unemployed.

When we entered the site to try out the scores,wesawfloorscoveredinshatteredglass,machine parts thrown around by bomb blasts and even a worker’s boot. No one had been in the site since the bombing. The story, although neverconfirmed,wasthattherehadbeenworkers inside the factory the night when the bomb blasted.

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O B S E R V A T I O N S

From the start, the main objective of this project was to create a multimedia performance that could cross different art forms: live performance using visual projections (photographs and films)andaudioinstallationswitha recorded TVfilmthatusesliveperformance.Mypersonalobjective was to explore three aspects of an openandflexiblecreative process:

■■ Engaging an audience that had suffered a traumatic war event and helping them see through self-observation their past and present chronic anxiety.

■■ The collage of various media texts and relations between site, performance, spectator and different visual and sound scapes.

To engage with the transformation of performance mise en scène by using Lepage’s RSVP cyclical devising process (Dundjerovic 2007).

The starting point was in front of the theatre. The bus journey was part of the performance journey as another score. The environments were transformed – from festival, to bus, to bombed-out factory. With these transformations, the role of the audience also changed from festival theatre-goers, to blindfolded passengers (but also prisoners), to mountain people and to those in a waiting room for their own deaths. Transformation of mise en scène comes out of what the French director Roger Planchon referred to as ‘écriture scénique’ [stage writing] and Richard Schechner’s notion of performance text. The emphasis in mise en scène isnolongeronfixednarrative and character, but on the development of a performance text, the one embedded in a performance mise en scène. The concept of écriture scénique derived from discussions in the early 1960s about how to adapt and modernize a classical text for contemporary theatre. The director, as an author, would have to ‘rewrite’ the fixedclassicaltextthroughthemise en scène and create his or her own écriture scénique to render the text more contemporary. Planchon claims that from Brecht, he learned the concept of the ‘total responsibility’ of écriture scénique for the nature of the performance (Bradby and Sparks 1997: 41).

We can also see in this concept of stage writing one of a ‘spatial textuality’, comprising all the diverse ‘texts’ (visual, sound, verbal, digital, physical etc.) that the director and performers invite into the theatre space. The concept of spatial textuality takes Planchon’s écriture scénique even further. Rather than using one written text, Lepage is writing performance mise en scène through a collage of media texts – or, rather, textuality – which he has invited into the theatre space. In spatial textuality, a performance text becomes a collage of media and borrowed forms of art, relating to the theatre space as an installation space. An example of this is Métissage [Crossings], a multimedia installation at Quebec City’s Museum of Civilization, directed by Lepage in 2000.

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The plurality of media in performance mise en scène entails that the place is of great importance as a context for spectators and actors relation. You can, therefore, see the relation between a site and performance within Roland Barthes’s notion of theatricality, and in Pavis’s idea of performance mise en scène as something giving a meaning to the performers’ texts. For Barthes, theatricality depends on the language of theatre, which consists of all the elements used on stage as theatre signs, and he regards theatricality as ‘theatre-minus-text’, the mise en scène within the dramatic text. Barthes points out that, historically, an imaginative theatricality always accompanied the written texts of great theatre works (Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Brecht) (Barthes 1972: 26.). Thus, as Pavis also remarks, ‘Mise en scène tries to provide the dramatic text with a situation that will give meaning to the statements [énoncés] of the text.’ Mise en scène does not constitute an interpretation of the text, or an expression separate from the dramatic text, but is a ‘reading actualized’, the mise en scène giving it a possible collective reading (Pavis 1991: 30).Thetitleforthisperformancecamefrom David

Butler’ssoundscapeunderthesamename, The Trial of Harold Pinter. It was Pinter used as a material, subjectively processed that was a starting resource. In fact, Butler’s soundscape installation was the main performance ‘text’ around which we organized our project. The Trial of Harold Pinter was a new performance cycle that used the previous performance Playing Pinter as a starting resource. Playing Pinter was performed in April 2006 as a promenade piece at the Martin Harris Centre in the University of Manchester. Itplayedin theJohnThawStudioTheatre,asa site-specificperformance–usingthewholebuildingfor differentpartsof theperformanceevent. In Playing Pinter, drama students and professional actors worked together to stage Pinter’s three one-act plays – One for the Road, Party Time and Mountain Language. David Butler’s audio installation collage consisted of Pinter’s 2005 Nobel speech, which famously criticized the USA’s expansionist military interventions. The soundscape used comments about Pinter either

from the general public or Pinter’s characters. Pinter characters are ‘talking back’ to him, putting him on trial. Video installation was projecting an airport shopping arcade throughout the performance and a VIP airport lounge with highly sexualised female hostess who entertained the audience as they waited to be taken on a dream holiday. The idea for the performance event was simple. The audience is in a transit area, waiting toboardtheplane, animaginaryVIPloungeinanundisclosed airport. On the way to the gate they encounter horrors from Pinter’s play about state abuse and violence.

Before going to the festival, I decided to keep thekeyresourcesasfixedelements.Theywere:the soundscape from the acoustic installation by David Butler The Trial of Harold Pinter, the firstscenefromPinter’s1988one-actplayMountain Language, the VIP lounge installation with erotic hostess and her entertainment of the audience as they are waiting to board a flightto an exotic holiday resort, and the performing of Pinter’s anti-war poetry from War against Iraq. These elements were developed in another performance, Playing Pinter, that mixed and collaged of a number of Pinter’s texts.These fixed resources createda new

performancecyclewhen mixingwithflexibleresources discoveredonthelocationandwere hugely relevanttothelocalcontext,newflexibleresourcesthatareculturallyandartisticallyspecifictothelocationandarepartof the local audience’s known iconography. First,weneedtofinda location, as a site-specificperformancehostthatcansituateourscores,bothfixedandflexible.Thisbecameveryrelevant once we got a confirmationfromthecity authorities that we could use the bombed and abandoned Zastava military factory as the locationforourperformance.Second,tofindrelevant video material and photographs relating to the NATO bombing of the city and the factory. These were simultaneously projected on two opposite walls of the hall. The projections of NATO’s bombing of Serbia were created by RTK, a local TV station, from their archives. They were on a 5-minute loop on one side of the hall, where the VIP hostess was located. On the other side of

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the hall, there was a live projection of an actor who was simultaneously present on the stage. He was silently living in his space on a metal bed reading a newspaper and drinking his morning Turkish coffee, ‘resisting’ the violence through these ordinary actions. Third, the actors from Knjazevacko Srpski Teatar were only brought into the project seventy-two hours before performing in Mountain Language and the VIP lounge installation. Fourth, the audience’s experiences of past events served as interpretative connection for different segments of the performance. For example, the audience was blindfolded and transported in buses from the theatre building to the disused bombed factory, which was the main performance site, (see Figs 1a–c).

The performativity responded to popular events and images from Serbian iconography in the last two decades – civil unrest and protests, street anti-government demonstrations, war, refugees and imprisonment, collective punishment through imposed sanctions, bombing, selling of public properties to the highest private bidders in a forced capitalist commercialization of Serbia. The new scores became: waiting in front of the theatre, the bus journey, in front of the wall, the factory hall, Pinter’s soundscape, projections of the bombing, the erotic VIP hostess, live projections of the man (a worker) on a metal bed and soldiers controlling the audience. Some of these scores developed in a linear way, as with the journey from the theatre to the factory. Other scores such as the projections, the hostess, the soldiers and the soundscape took place at the same time, overlapping and affecting the audience simultaneously. Co-existence of the live and the digital (visual and audio) serve both to disorient the audience’s experience and understanding of theatrical time and to challenge the notion of temporal montage. The performance engaged the audience with existence outside of time (Dixon 2005).

The performance was not included in the officialfestivalprogramme(whichwascompetitive), and, more importantly, it was intentionally kept away from the ‘public eye’. From the start, the performance was supposed

to be an open event to take place sometime during the festival and somewhere in the city, using Pinter as a reference point but leaving all otherproductionelementsflexible.Ourrehearsal time of three days was used to write and montage the performance rather than to rehearse:finda performance space, prepare video material, translate English material into Serbian and work with the Serbian actors. In addition to the live performance, the project involvedfilmingoftheperformancebya local TV station that participated in co-organizing by providing archival footage of the bombing.8 Theprojectalsoinvolvedmixedcast performers.One performance artist and four drama students from Manchester, who acted and also worked as video camera and sound operators, came with me to Serbia. The other eight performers and fulltechnicalteamcamefromtheKnjaževačkoSrpski Teatar.

O R D E R O F E V E N T S I N

A P E R F O R M A N C E J O U R N E Y

1. Gathering. In front of the festival theatre building at midnight. The students from the drama department at the University of Manchester served as hosts mingling with the audience and asking them in English about the trail, when is it starting? where is it? As the performance was kept secret, no one knew the answers (apart from a few festival organizers).

2. Bus (Figs 1a, 1b and 1c). Two big city buses arrived escorted by police cars. Because the shortest route to the site involved going through the old town in opposite direction on the one-way street system, the police had to close off the route and escort the buses. The audience was asked to board the buses by another group of Manchester students working as the crew of an imaginary budget airline. They welcomed and greeted the audience and provided them with blindfolds astheyboardedtheflight.Theaudienceswere instructed to put on the blindfolds, and the crew demonstrated how to do this.

8 The performance was subsequently broadcast on TV on 12 and 19 November and 15 December, 2006.

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3. At the gates. The buses were stopped by actual security at the gates. The guards were asked to take part in the performance by not allowing the bus to go through until they had a clearance from the head of security. The buses were asked to divert. After a while, they were allowed to pass.

4. In front of a wall (Figs 1d and 1e). The only outside wall left in the factory was a reminder of the Tomahawk cruise missiles crashing into the factory. First scene from Pinter’s Mountain Language (Fig. 1d) was performed in front of the wall, with the same building being projected (Fig. 1e) inside the factory hall. The ‘soldiers’ performed by the actors from Serbian theatre, Manchester drama students and professional security guards. They received the audience coming from the bus relating

tothemasprisonersfromthefirstsceneofMountain Language. At the end of the scene, they are allowed to pass through to see their loved ones who are imprisoned in the halls behind the wall.

5. Insidethehall(figs1f,1gand1h).The soldiers escorted the audience into the factory hall. Inside, the audience encountered three scores. Video projections of live action of a silent man on a metal hospitalbed(fig.1g),recordedprojectionsin the opposite wall of the bombing together with the VIP hostess and audio installationofButler’ssoundscape(fig.1h). The hostess related to the audience as holidaymakers on an exclusive trip to a dream destination where all dreams come true. Her wordiness was sharply resisted by the man’s silence.

■■ Figure 1. The set of The Trial of Harold Pinter showing the flow of the performance: a) bus tour, b–c) blindfolded audience, d) audience in front of the Zastava factory, e) projected TV footage of the bombed-out factory, f) interior of the factory where the performance took place, g) worker on the metal bed participating in the performance, h) hostess of the performance with bombing TV projections in the background, i–l) audience interaction with the hostess during the performance.

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6. ReceptionVIPlounge(figs1i,1j,1kand 1l). Lesson on how to suck a lollypop (fig.1k)withPinter’santi-warpoetry.Threesimultaneous scores, but in different tempo-rhythm. The live projections were durational and lasted through the performance for about 55 minutes, recorded video was on a 10-minute loop and the VIP hostess had a few themes, which were developmental. Her score included working with the audience, and while she was not involved in the action she had a stylized salon chair and table with a champagne bottle and candlelight.

7. Dancewiththeaudience(fig.1l).Thiswasthe end of the performance. The end came with Pinter’s poem ‘The Bombs’, and on the last line the same air raid sirens as those used during the bombing went off, with the bombing as part of the soundscape. This sound turned into a waltz, and the actors engaged the audience in a dance.

T H E A U D I E N C E O B S E R V A T I O N

This project did not aim or work towards any particular concept or set production outcomes. We had only environments that we wanted the audience to be in, and wanted to expose them to the familiar iconography of post-war Serbia. The scores – such as the bus journey, in front of the wall, the factory hall as a VIP lounge, Pinter’s soundscape, the video projections of the bombing, the man on a metal bed – were all done as separate narratives whose connections were left for the audience to make. In addition, working at the location of the Zastava factory provided a rich context that gave various layers of meanings to build upon. The audience was left to establish their own connections, interpret and respond to the performance. InanMAthesis,J.Pavićević,a student from the College of Languages and Arts at the University of Kragujevac, gives an account of audience response.

The audience is slowly led by the soldiers into a Hall, a large room, to face the two existing poles of their own reality. They become aware of

their own isolation and the fact that numerous conditions are constantly being imposed upon them. The spectators were grouped in the middle of the hall by the soldiers in between two projections. The Hostess is relating to the demolished room as if it is a luxury VIP lounge. She bears the same name as NATO’s bombing operationinSerbia,‘MercifulAngel’[fig.1h],in a white dress the title is projected on her as well as on the images of the bombing. The VIP lounge hostess represents manufactured reality conceived for the public by the leading world powers in order to justify the actions taken against numerous sovereign states. The audience is instantly manipulated into a game, suggested by the hostess, which aims to relax themandkeeptheirthoughtsatbay[figs1i–l].

The audience is barely aware that the man sits silently alone on a hospitalbed[fig.1g),but there is no further explanation of why he is there or how long he will be there, why he is alone and what happened to him. Did he lose hisfamily?Washewounded?Theunspecifiedopening of this scene reminds us of the beginnings of Pinter’s plays, and the audience can question the history of the character in the same way Pinter does it: who was the dead body, who found the dead body, was the dead body abandoned? Only the pictures of the bombing and the destruction that are projected onthewallinformthesituation[fig.1e].Thestark reality of the man is further supplemented by the poorly furnished surroundings and his helplessness in front of the external forces that shattered his life to pieces. Although the man has no lines in the play, the character seems to develop simultaneously with the action;theactorassumesthecharacterasthestory progresses. His complete silence during thewholeplaybearsmuchmoresignificancethan the empty talking of the hostess. (Pavićević 2007)

From this account we can see connections the audience made between separate simultaneous scores based on their own experience that contextualized seemingly disparate acts. The performance event Trial of Harold Pinter freezes the spectators to observe their own conditions

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caused by the traumatic situations. Freezing serves as protection by stopping any further damages and preserving the energy. Indeed, freezing is a response caused by a feeling that there is no hope of survival or escape as it happens in car accidents, rape or when being robbed at gunpoint. However, staying suspended in these conditions does not allow any movement or possibility to overcome the initial threat. The whole community continues to live frozen unable to move forward.

As a one-off performance it has been seen by not more than 200 people. However, a regional channel,TVKragujevac,filmedtheeventandbroadcast it. Once on DVD the project became part of the University of Kragujevac’s library and was included in the post-graduate programme in multimedia studies. The project generated discussion and debate from Serbian activists groups, receiving in 2006 the St George’s Cross award for best cultural event of the year. Even usingtheword‘trial’inthetitlehassignificantresonance in Serbia. An ad hoc court, the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, definedSerbianrealityafterthebombing.Serbia’s future and membership in the European Union depended on the outcomes of an endless succession of trials of different Serbian politicians and military leaders at The Hague. In addition, the Zastava factory was a symbol for Yugoslavia, a country that was once successful and respected.9 The project engaged with collective perceptions and issues that challenged the community to identify areas of conflict.Justa few weeks before the performance event, former employees, who had been made redundant during Serbia’s ‘privatization’ and ‘democratization’ process, demonstrated in front of the factory (secured by the same guards who took part in the performance). Although seven years had passed since the bombing, the problem had not resolved. The community was still in a collective frozen response towards the 1990s wars.

R E F E R E N C E S :

Barlow, D. H. (2002) Anxiety and its Disorders, 2nd edn, New York: Guilford Press.

Barthes, R. (1972) Critical Essays, Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Birch, A., and J. Tompkins (2012) Performing Site-Specific Theatre, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bradby, D., and A. Sparks (1997) Mise en Scène: French theatre now, London: A & C Black

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9 Yugoslavia disintegrated throughout the 1990s in a war between different ethnic and separatist groups aiming to establish their own states: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovinaand,finally,Kosovo.

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