There was a metal worker with iron will and heart big as the biggest hill. He fought against Hitler, he fought against Stalin, and he won them all. He was Marshal Tito. Tito built up the country as a home for all of its people. He run the country of six republics and two provinces, each with dominant nation and myriad of minorities and they lived in brotherhood and unity. One day in May twenty odd years ago he passed away.
One decade after his death the time was ripe to tear to pieces this weird experiment, a socialist country with market economy, a nation of hundred nations, religions, languages, and cultures, in middle of Europe a leader of the Third World. Puppets were installed to lead the nations against each other. The Horror Muppet Show amused the world audiences with thousands of deaths; thousands of rapes; millions of refugees and what was once a miracle had become a daytime nightmare. Yugoslavia was no more. Tito is dead. Tito was finally killed for good with the death of his child.
I was born one year before the Marshal died. I grew up with stories of his kindness, genius, spirit, goodness and love for all of us, his people. BY the time I grew enough to start enjoying his legacy of great and prosperous country everything was already gone. Yugoslavia underwent from economic crisis to fratricidal war in a span of my teenage years. Instead of summer holidays on the endless Adriatic shore, I started planning my trips around the Bosnian mountains and Croatian fields avoiding battlefields.
The beautiful Yugoslav girls I dreamt of meeting at the beach were raped and thrown in some ditch by the road. Yugoslav heaven turned into hell. No Tito for me. For me is the road. The one that leads further the better. I ended up over the ocean, further it cannot be. And from here I look back to my home. From north to the south as plague the war had spread to reach the outskirts of my hometown. Huuugh! Lucky I was. Far enough. I flew on time, on time not to kill or be killed. And every now and then I go back home. And every now and then I come back here, over the ocean and I look back home.
"Wake up! Tito is dead!" is multimedia performance in four acts. It is a story of a young man who tries to escape from his country torn by war and to reach the New World. The story is structured in four stages corresponding with his mental stages through which this young man underwent to find himself and to find a salvation.
This project is a reaction to the contemporary society and to the madness called living a life. Tito's death is a metaphor for the disappearing world of security and safety. After Tito died illusion burst as soap bubble and we have to fight for our own lives. We have to fight for a new world everywhere around us.
The performace was first shown at Bennington College, Vermont, USA on 25 December 2003.
Direction and set Design:Vuk Mitevski
Choreogrphy:Kate Martin
Light Design:Garin Marschall
Music:Olivier Samouillan