A GIPSY PRAYER FOR THE SOUTH by Zoran Tairovic

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PREPORUKAVeć duže vremena pratim rad Zorana Tairovića, tako da me nije iznenadilo da je njegov projekt “Molitva za Jug” prihvaćena za zvaničnu konkurenciju jednog od najprestižnijih festivala Evrope, Edimburškog festivala u kategoriji fringe. Upoznao sam se sa tekstom i muzikom mjuzikla “Molitva za Jug”, koji je u celini u svim elementima na visokom profesionalnom nivou. Romski melos i tema tretirani su na najvišem umetničkom nivou, ne kao kurentna komercijalna tema, već kao istinska izvorna inspiracija. Ovaj prvi prvi romski mjuzikl kod nas srećan je spoj autora pripadnika romske zajednice iz Vojvodine i darovitog umetnika visokog muzičkog obrazovanja. Sve ove kvalitete prepoznao je veoma probirljivi Edimburški festival, u Velikoj Britaniji koja poznaje žanr mjuzikla, i prikazivanje ovog dela na festivalu biće afirmacija naše zemlje, kao izraz pozitivne kulturne politike prema našim umetnicima svih nacionalnosti. .................Jun 2008. ............................................................ .... Jovan Ćirilov.................................................... ..................................................Prayer for the South Review A musical/an operetta / an opera / a drama / a tragedy with happy ending/ Broadway and off-Broadway show “Prayer for the south” is an idiosyncratic circulus vitiosis of Shakespearean turns and recognitions, Fitzgerald’s regret for the passed youth, and ideals, and typically Serbian patina that invokes Momčilo Nastasijević’s purity of style as well as descriptive lightness of Miloš Crnjanski. Zoran Tairović is not a writer, nor a composer, nor a painter, but he is an artist. He managed to create, by the means of his own intuition, post-modernism in Gypsy ghetto, mondialism in the middle of nowhere of a nation, colorful luxury in monochromatic surroundings. The story of a bar singer Mira and a feather buyer Mile is a stereotype of forbidden love that is centuries old, selfish interests in the manner of Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps, at one moment Mile will become a stereotype of all the gypsy folktales in our region, protagonist as well as an antagonist, a hero and an outcast hero, perhaps most of all an anti-hero.Mile’s grandmother is a sorceress, a capricious eternal witness of an ordinary tragic love. Mira’s father is a simple-minded blacksmith, a strong representative of monolithic patriarchy, but righteous and true. Their melodramatic register is more a capricious deus ex machina that goes through the entire work. If it were only about the dialogue and a story, Tairović’s work would be yet another index of a gipsy weltschmertz, a sad story with a happy ending. However, using only one simple trick, “Prayer for the South” becomes a grandiose and an epochal work of outstanding emotional sumptuousness, strange side roads, a cascade dramaturgy and meandered relations. Zoran Tairović composed the music, which is in fact taken from his diversionary palette, full of heterogeneous and primordial influences. Using a modern vocabulary, Tairović builds up an interdisciplinary work, globalist and antiglobalist at the same time. He combines the incompatible, but still logical, cries of pain with sighs full of happiness, brocade with mud, angelic with wicked, hedonism with moral purity. This drama could be happening in macabre suburbs of Buenos Aires in the thirties or even at the heart of Berlin from the period of Weimar Republic. The fact that it is taking place in imaginary Serbia, a demiurgic crossroads of cultures, languages, temperaments, destruction, beauty and the sublime, is for Tairović a necessity but also raison d’etre. Music in “Prayer for the South” is at one moment a wise soliloquy, and at another a flagrant and oneiric side road that simply has to lead the public to the ecstasy. The intertwining of styles, from the opera, operetta, salsa, a Latino ballad to joie de vivre chansons, Morricone’s strings, Nyman’s staccato or vocal abstractions is creating an extraordinary experience that tells us that all the great stories are already told, and that the greatest philosophy is how to tell them again. Zoran Tairović wrote the music as if he was painting it. The text is result of all stimuli from literature to life that can originate from neighboring house to Goethe’s Faust. Finally, as we are already used to it, the reason why we are enjoying the clichés, refusing to accept them at the same time, is a usual trick used in the theatre and Tairović reaches for it as well. Still, this trick brings epiphany and catharsis. The Angel is a phenomenon that explains everything, but in this play, the angelic sexual ambivalence, that is the androgyny, brings peace to the characters in the play and to the audience as well. The angel is a child of love, the Angel is reconciliation, and the Angel is the God’s emissary under which we all meet again to share the good. In this sense, “Prayer for the South” is a play of universal language and recognitions, the one that talks about all our rises and falls. Narrated using a universal language, stylized with the most familiar language, the language of music, and telling a lie on the theatre boards it in fact preaches the truth to our hearts.De Alejandro S. Janković