Hasija Borić was born in 1953 in Jajce (BiH), has studied in London and Wroclaw (at the Grotowski Institute) and worked in several Croatian and Bosnian theatres. After the war she returned to Sarajevo despite her very successful collaboration with the Volkstheater in Vienna, where she still makes guest appearances in Bernhard's Wittgenstein's Nephew. Her decision was based on a strong desire to actively participate in the transition from the old Balkan slaughterhouse to a young capitalist society. Borić returned to the National Theatre and started acting out an old wish of hers at the same time: that is creating The Hasija Borić Travelling Theatre (2002). The power of her cabaret is distinctively double: it puts political practises on stage, but not just any stage. The Travelling Theatre bearing the performer's first and last name is among other things a consequence of the well-known and rigid practice of many repetory theatres or large steady casts. In these situations a 'middle-aged' actress will inevitably fall into some kind of an empty space. If she doesn't 'leave' her 'home-theatre' and start working on her own projects, she can literally stay at home, where even playwrights think she belongs, because there are almost no middle-aged women's roles in theatrical texts. But Borić is committed to her profession, her willpower is a tremendous force, challenging the 'regulated' art world, and producing her own creations: stunning fusions of cabaret, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, and Monty Python.
Accompanied by one musician, Hasija Borić tackles the slippery terrain with great skill, a terrain over which more ink than blood has been shed, and still we don't know enough - the Bosnian killings, the political collapse and all kinds of fascist movements from 1992-1996 up to today. Within the show of just over an hour, which is based on the hyper-satirical texture of the Split-based magazine, Feral Tribune, which saw its beginnings as a feuilleton of Slobodna Dalmacija, Borić transforms herself into over 30 characters, and all the time dances on the blade-sharp border-line between political cabaret, which provokes a hysterical laugh at most, a bitter lump, dull tears, obscure cold and corrosive silence. Feral, which for the actress stands for the unquestionable 'intellectual and moral life' races through its silky dramaturgic stampede, settles between the 'former' and 'now', but above all it evokes the disappointed, robbed and wounded population deeply, and without being emotional. The deformed creatures of political old times are immanent to all present-day fascists; national zeal and killer blindness find their place in the present-day audience-member sitting next to you. There is no way out of the performance; every comment has no choice but to be political. Moreover, the mere presence of The Hasija Borić Travelling Theatre in Ljubljana translates into inexorable critique of our environment, which enjoys lamenting the 'hard times' so much, yet has not one political cabaret worthy of its mission.
Miha Zadnikar
