Dear participants of the 5th “Synergy WTF” festival, respected colleagues, dear audience.
Six years ago, when we launched the International Theatre Festival of Ethnic and Language Minorities of the World, this initiative, in addition to significant support from the city of Novi Sad, also suffered numerous criticisms, protests, and resistance.
The opposition to the new festival was mainly based on one claim: “there are a lot of festivals in Serbia anyway”; and on one question: “What can minority theatres say about the reality that surrounds us, that established-traditional and respectable theatres haven’t said already?”
Already in its second season, Synergy has shown that it does not perceive the concept of minority only as belonging to an ethnic-linguistic minority, but that MINORITY is the destined self-defining of the majority of the participants of this – still unique – meeting.
In the performances of the participants of our festivals, a synergy of different, less visible but ubiquitous issues and topics shed a light on what different kinds of mutual relations are being created.
The participants of the “Synergy” festival have sometimes tragically, sometimes melancholically, very often self-ironically and comically expressed their “minority state” and position in their plays.
That state and position, according to our belief, is not minority, but different, divergent. It’s not
antagonistic to the majority, rather it is a part of the whole – so “my problem” was also declared by someone, a member of the majority or minority.
The 4th “Synergy” was held in an atmosphere of post-epidemic alienation and fear: what is coming next? The war. War is always a process of realizing goals by force. It is not the truth that wins the war, but the stronger, and the winners are always self-proclaimed as the majority.
Dear friends, we are facing a great temptation: to accept the reality of force and surrender to the coming dehumanization or to lock ourselves in our theatres – like in some Noah’s arks
in which a minority waits for the flood to pass?
