Draft:Zlatko Paković

Zlatko Paković (Valjevo, 1968) is a Serbian theatre director and writer. He is best known for his fierce political theatre and his original take on Brecht’s learning plays, characterized by pronounced playful expressions. Throughout his career he has directed plays in various countries, including Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Norway, and the Netherlands. Some of his most notable works include, Othello: the Illegitimate Liturgy, Srebrenica, When we the Murdered Rise, To Kill Zoran Đinđić, Pope Francis Wrestles with His Angel and Katalin Ladik Experiences a Nervous Breakdown, Quits Her Job as a Bank Clerk and Becomes a Conceptual Artist. Among the numerous awards he has received for his work are the Sterija Award „Dejan Penčić Poljanski“ from the Round table of critics for best play for his play Katalin Ladik Experiences a Nervous Breakdown in, Quits Her Job as a Bank Clerk and Becomes a Conceptual Artist, a Special Sterija Award for directing and a Sterija Award for best play, both for the play If you stare into the abyss for too long, based on the novel by the writer Enes Halilović and Ahmed Vali Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also the recepient of the international Ibsen Scholarship for the project of the theater play Ibsen's Enemy of the People as Brecht's Learning Play.

Education and career
Paković was born in Valjevo, Serbia in 1968. Het studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade where he got a diploma as a theatre and radio director. From 1996 to the present he has been staging mostly his own plays in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Netherlands, Norway, Bulgaria, Cyprus and the Netherlands. Het lives and works in Belgrade as an author, playwright and theatre director.

Theater style
Paković's theater is one of great braveness and activism, a means of dissecting and exposing complex structures and ethical dilemmas that shape our societies. Always with an aim to raise awareness in the audience and move them to act and be the change. Hans-Thies Lehmann wrote about his originality as a completely new way of using Brecht's learning plays.

His plays are provocative (provocatio) because that is the way to arouse vocation (vocatio) in the audience - a call to be a responsible citizen, because to Paković theater is the art of the polis therefore, political art par excellence. Paković's plays often evoke admiration, excitement, and responsibility from the audience, but also retribution from repressive structures. Because of the author's play ''Srebrenica. When we the Murdered Rise,'' nationalist forces in Serbia publicly threatened him with liquidation. The play Pier Paolo Pasolini directs the Last Judgment was banned by a written order from the city authorities in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. Subsequently the premiere was played underground, in a private basement and live streamed to the audience. In the play Vox dei - civil disobedience, he judged the current president of the Republic of Serbia and the entire government. In his Croatian play Pope Francis Wrestles with his Angel, consequently following publicly spoken words of the current pope, he made the pope destroy the Vatican Bank, allow women to be ordained priests, and abolish celibacy for the clergy (as a countermeasure to mass pedophilia in the Catholic Church). In his Bosnian play Church of Bosnia - in which he advocates the idea that the only true religion among people, regardless of religious orientation, is the willingness to speak the truth, regardless of the consequences - he managed to prove that there is no religious obstacle for two women who love each other to be married in a mosque according to Sharia law.

Srebrenica, When we the Murdered Rise
In 2020 the play ''Srebrenica. When we the Murdered Rise'' premiered in the Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade. It was performed under police protection, because the director and the actors had been exposed to brutal (death) threats by Serbia’s right-winged nationalistic groups who, like the government, deny that the genocide in Srebrenica happened. The play was produced by the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia.

Through this artistic intervention, author Zlatko Paković reveals ideological, psychological and lucrative mechanisms that enabled the crime of genocide and now deny it. It is the first theatre play in Serbia that puts one of the most important moral issues for the society in Serbia at the epicentre – the recognition of the Srebrenica genocide.

The play was also performed in Brussel on November 16, 2022 followed by a public discussion led by Simon Papuashvili, programme director of International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR).

Ibsen’s an Enemy of the People as Brecht’s Teaching Play
In 2014 Paković received the International Ibsen Scholarship for the project Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People as Brecht’s teaching play. The play premiered at the Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade on December 20th, 2015.

Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People as Brecht’s teaching play is based on Ibsen’s The Pillars of Society and An Enemy of the People, and aims to generate critical reflection and action against the hypocrisy of the new, morally unsound political and social classes which has emerged from wars and besmirched transitions. The ultimate goal is to influence attitudes and values of the young generation, which has been brought up and educated in a time of forceful divisions, destruction of cohesion and social values, and embezzlement of social property and public goods. Brecht’s teaching play changes a classical audience into an active partner in a creative public debate about corruptive behavior, social ethics and citizens’ responsibility for wellbeing of their communities.

Theater

 * 2024: Wittgenstein's Pupils (Domino, Festival Perforacije, Zagreb, Croatia)
 * 2023: Katalin Ladik has a nervous breakdown, quits her job as a bank employee and becomes a conceptual artist (Dezső Kosztolanyi Theatre, Subotica, Serbia)
 * 2023: What's Erasmus to Us, or We to Erasmus (ICAF, International Community Arts Festival, Rotterdam, The Netherlands)
 * 2023: A Tomb for Boris Davidovich and How We Build It Today (Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
 * 2022: Pier Paolo Pasolini directs the Last Judgment (City Secretariat for Culture, Podgorica, Montenegro)
 * 2022: Poetics of Resistance by Branko Ćopić (Centre for Culture, Bihać, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
 * 2021: Hamlet A.D. MMXXII (National Theatre Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
 * 2021: Pope Francis wrestles with his angel (Bacači sjenki, Zagreb, Teatro Verrdi, Zadar, Croatia)
 * 2021: Subotica Secession (Dezső Kosztolanyi Theatre, Subotica)
 * 2020: If you stare into the abyss for too long (Novi Pazar Cultural Center and Regional Theatre, Serbia)
 * 2020: Srebrenica. When we the Murdered Rise (Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2020: Church of Bosnia (National Theatre Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
 * 2019: Vox dei - Civil Disobedience (Cultural Center Stari grad, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2018: Julius Caesar: res publica or cosa nostra (National Theatre of Bitola, North Macedonia)
 * 2018: Krleža or what are the flags to us or we to the flags and why we cry for them so much (Montažstroj, Zagreb, Croatia)
 * 2017: Fear Allah! Life and death of Ćamil Sijarić (Bosnian National Theatre Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
 * 2017: Don Quixote or what the windmills are today and where the wind blows from (Student Cultural Center, Novi Sad, Serbia)
 * 2016: Capitalism: demonstrated in geometrical order (Dezső Kosztolanyi Theatre, Subotica, Serbia)
 * 2016: Othello – the illegitimate liturgy (TeatroVerrdi, Zadar, Croatia)
 * 2016: Philosophy of Parochialism – Christmas Oratorio for Radomir Konstantinović (Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2015: Encyclopedia of the Living – an artistic intervention in Serbian and Kosovar reality (Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, Serbia, and Qendra Multimedia, Prishtina, Kosovo)
 * 2014: Ibsen's An Enemy of the People as Brecht's Teaching-Play (Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, Serbia, and Ibsen Scholarships, Skien, Norway)
 * 2014: What do the women on the right want? (Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia)
 * 2012: To Kill Zoran Đinđić (Student Cultural Center, Novi Sad, Serbia)
 * 2012: Anatomy of Nationalist Morality (Službeni glasnik, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2010: Madame Olga: in search of the Final Version of Civic drama (Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2009: Prison of the Danube Region (Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2009: Six Characters in Search of an Author (Duško Radović Theater, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2002: Tonight we are listening (Zvezdara Theater, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2001: A suit makes a corpse (Cultural Center Valjevo, Serbia)
 * 1999: I can't remember anything (Theater 199, Sofia, Bulgaria)
 * 1999: Second Wednesday (The Drama theatre in Montana, Bulgaria)
 * 1998: Mein Kampf (Little City Theatre "Off the Channel" Sofia, Bulgaria)
 * 1997: Easy piece (Drama Theatre “Sava Ognyanov”, Ruse, Bulgaria)
 * 1997: Professional (Theatro Praxis, Limassol, Cyprus)
 * 1996: The Bald Soprano (Serbian National Theater, Novi Sad, Serbia)

Books

 * 2024: Dodecalogue - twelve dramatic pieces (Zepter Book World, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2024: Bloody Poems (Multimedia Institute, Zagreb, Croatia)
 * 2022: Pope Francis wrestles with his angel (Multimedia Institute, Zagreb, Croatia)
 * 2021: Heretical Liturgy - Ten Plays (Zepter Book World, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2016: Encyclopedia of the Living (Centar za kulturnu dekontaminaciju, Belgrade)
 * 2015: On Authoritarian Conscience (Mostart, Zemun, 2015)
 * 2013: Die Gemeinsame Asche (Dittrich Verlag, Berlin, Germany)
 * 2012: Anatomy of Nationalist Morality and other columns (Službeni glasnik, Beograd, 2012)
 * 2008: The Common Ashes (Geopoetika, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2002: A Room for one Bed (Otkrovenje, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 1995: Singing diary (Hipnos, Belgrade, Serbia)

=== Essays ===


 * 2023: On Theatre's Responsibility in the Spectacle of Climate Change (TDR The Drama Review, Band 67, USA)

Film and television

 * 2009: Not in Our Name (Screenwriter and Director of the documentary. / Women in Black, Belgrade, Serbia)
 * 2006: Look into the Past (Director of the documentary series, ten episodes. (Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia)
 * 1994 – 2006 VIN - Video Weekly: the first independent television political magazine in Serbia. (Television Director)

Awards
2024 Sterija Award „Dejan Penčić Poljanski“ from the Round table of critics, Novi Sad, Srbija

2023 "Amra Prutina", Award for artistic courage, Mostar. Bosnia and Herzegovina

2021 “Ahmed Vali” Lifetime Achievement Award, Novi Pazar, Serbia

2021 “Special Sterija Prize” for directing, Novi Sad, Srbija

2021 “Sterija Prize” for the best theatre performance, Novi Sad, Serbia

2016 Literary scholarship from the Lazareti Art Workshop, Dubrovnik, Croatia

2015 Literature Scholarship MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, Austria

2014 The International Ibsen Scholarship, Skien, Norway

2010 “Desimir Tošić” Prize for Journalism, Belgrade, Serbia

1999 Belgrade City Parliament Prize for the best short story, Serbia