Romance Among Ruins
A Russian-American duo stages Shakespeare´s evergreen romance, Romeo and Juliet,
with a difference, in Sarajevo

In the midst of all the despair and destruction, it was time to celebrate the traditional Sarajevo Winter Festival. The festival was held for the first time in 1984  coincide with the 14th Olympic Winter games and has continued since then, even during the war.
    "We call upon the world to ponder over freedom and peace. The festival proves not to be merely a festival, nut life itself," said Abraham Shape, director of the festival, which attracts hundreds of people from around the world.
    Participating this year in the festival were Serge Dreznin and Jesse Webb. Dreznin is a Russian composer and Webb is an American actor, specializing in musicals. The two put together Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo -- a musical that had already performed to rave reviews in Vienna. Their dream was to take the play to Bosnia.
    And their dream came true when on the invitation of the Austrian Cultural Center in Zagreb, the duo got to play not only in Sarajevo, but also in Bihac, Mostar and Tuzla. "Audiences sat through the performance in halls, hugging their overcoats and with bodies huddled close together to keep each other warm," gushed Dreznin.
    But isn't theatre the last thought on the mind of people of Sarajevo, one wonders? After all, the four-year-old war has reduced the capital city of Bosnia-Herzogovina to rubble. "We did not come and have a good time with us," claims Webb, insisting that theatre for him is sharing his joy with others and their sorrow with himself, or the other way round. "I try to say that the most of you have lost the loved one in the war. But we still have to go on living like decent human beings." For Web, the trip to Sarajevo is another attempt to try and reach out to people. To connect.
    The idea to do the musical was inspired not so much by the war in Sarajevo as by Shakespeare himself. Dreznin, who trained as a concert pianist at the Russian Academy of Musical Art in Moscow, adores the classics. At the Academy, Dreznin was taught the classics without much fuss and discussions on the differences between intellectual and commercial art. To study the works of the great masters was considered very normal.
    Dressing has put other works by Shakespeare and Pushkin to music as well in the past. He had done Ophelia - Opera in blue and Hamlet and the Pushkin tragedy, CrossRoads. The troubles in Sarajevo, recounted to him by his journalist wife and her colleagues in the international press, he says, reminded him of Shakespeare. "Even realities change, but Shakespeare remains the same," says Dreznin, adding that their production does not pretend to make any lofty statements. "Everybody knows that the war is bad. I don't have to go to Sarajevo or to other place to say that. Its the topicality of Shakespeare that makes it so fascinating. Sarajevo is just a symbol connecting our time to that of Shakespeare's".
    Once he had made a connection between Shakespeare and Sarajevo, Dreznin put together a team in which the writer came from Sarajevo, the director from Zagreb and the cast from different parts of Bosnia. The actress playing Juliet is a Serb, while Romeo is an actor from Tuzla and they all live in exile in Austria, along with thousands of other refugees.
    So what was an American doing in this group? Says Dreznin, "Trying to keep peace here. Or trying to cause trouble?" Webb, who resembles the bard of Stratford himself, replies after  a hearty laugh that life in America is not as rosy as people think it to be. "There is plenty of unemployment in my country."
    Webb came to Vienna nine years ago, to play a part in the record-breaking Andrew L. Webber musical, Cats. He stayed on for roles in Les Miserebles and Kiss of a Spider Woman. These were good jobs, he says, much better that anything he could dream of doing in America. And he finds this production of Romeo and Juliet especially thrilling. "I love the story and the songs in the play. Besides,  it has become a living experience for me as I work with a cast from over central Europe. Especially from Bosnia. And we have been forced to communicate with each other passionately in every language possible about what should go into the production."
    To prove how topical Shakespeare really is, the original location of  Romeo and Juliet has been moved from Verona in Italy to Sarajevo in the 1990s. While the language (for the songs)remains that of the author, the dialogues is translated into German and Serbo-Croat and the finale is sung in English, Bosnian, German and French. But it is Tune for Bosnia, the encore, which resonates in the memory long after the show is over.
    The play opens with a devided Sarajevo and the United Nations officer trying to stop the fight berween the Capulets and the Montagues. The background score is in rap. Instead of the square in Verona, the stoty unfolds at a cafee house called Casper, where it is possible to meet some of the most famouse people in the world, like Susan Sontag, CNN´s Christian Amanpour and kings of the underworld.
    Romeo, a Serb, meets his lovely Juliet, a Moslem, and sings: "My only love sprung from my only hate." They convert to Christianity to be able to escape Sarajevo through Roman Catholic Croatia. However, as a illfated pair prepares to flee, two shots are fired on the bridge Vrbanja. And they meet their end at each others arms.
    Later, it is the opportunism, or perhaps the farsightedness, of a waiter at the coffee house, who remembers to sell the story of Sarajevo´s Romeo and Juliet to a foreign reporter for $ 6,000.thus enabling the two to emerge as an international symnol of the war.
    And leaving one to wonder, once again,whether it is art that imitates life or the other way round?