“The Lift - The Slobodan Show”, a controversial musical about former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, premiered in Gračanica, Kosovo.
“The Lift – The Slobodan Show” was written by Jelena Bogavac. (Reuters pic)
GRAČANICA: Twelve years after he died during his trial for war crimes, Slobodan Milošević, the one-time Serbian strongman, divided his audience again, this time as a character in a musical that made its debut on Tuesday.
“The Lift – The Slobodan Show”, written by Belgrade-based writer Jelena Bogavac, focuses more on Milošević’s personal relationship with his powerful wife Mirjana, his daughter Marija, and his son Marko than on the politics that made him infamous.
Milošević rode a wave of nationalism to power in Belgrade in 1989 as communism was collapsing across Eastern Europe. He then led Serbia through a decade of wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. Hailed by many Serbians as their defender against Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania, Milošević was seen as a brutal dictator by the West.
Around 200 Kosovars of Serbian descent attended the show at a theater in Gračanica, a town just outside Kosovo’s capital Pristina. They expressed mixed feelings about it.
“There’s nothing there, it’s simply a great manipulation … a political theater which actually tricked us,” said Živojin Rakočević, a former journalist from Gračanica.
In one scene Milošević comforts his daughter over the poor financial state of her radio station. In another, he tells Marko not to overheat the water in the family swimming pool.
Milošević lost power after a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 and popular unrest in October 2000.
The play ends with his war crimes trial in The Hague, where he died of a heart attack in 2006.
“I’m delighted … the point of the whole show is in one sentence when a young man says ‘Sloba (Milošević) didn’t get under my skin’,” said Viktorija Živković, who works in a local school.
“We tried to show through their personalities what happened both in Kosovo … and in Serbia of the 1990s,” Belgrade-based actress Tamara Tomanović said.
The play frustrated many people of Albanian descent who form the majority in Kosovo.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 in a move still not recognized by Serbia, as well as many Kosovars of Serbian descent.
An estimated 800,000 Kosovars of Albanian descent were displaced and about 10,000 killed by Milošević’s forces in the brutal 1998-99 counter-insurgency war.
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