Writing about the lives of famous, or unrecognized, heroes and victims who have their place in the mythology we call history is, as it were, a certain recipe for a boring eulogy about some “great man” (whom we embellished with a few charming flaws to make him believable), or another story about the collision of an exceptional individual with a miserable bazaar that will never have an understanding of exceptionalism, no less boring. Because, you meet with an already ready-made idea of a person, as it were, with a model in which his life has been poured. Then there is another, equally boring question: was he/she like that, were the historical facts taken into account and why not in the right way, did you betray the historical truth – which, by the way, does not exist, like none other – where you fall victim to history maniacs, specialized in historical trivia from “Politics’s entertainment”, because this is their five minutes, when they will prove that life was unfair to them, and he rewarded you, a scoundrel, with the opportunity to (ignorantly) write about that.

The information I found about Bogoboj Rucović was equally uninteresting and led to the “misunderstood genius” side. And then I opted for the only healthy solution: write as you like, enjoy the process and cry over the result. Historical truths do not exist, they are only projections of meaning from the present into a meaningless past, but that is why there is an artistic truth, which is proven by the reaction of the audience.

The whole history is a big gossip about the past and those who brought us to where we are. That’s why I didn’t even introduce Bogoboj to the stage in this play, because the traces of him were left by others, benevolent or malicious, always subjective, always talking about themselves on the occasion of others. Thus, this piece is another piece of gossip about Bogoboj Rucović, a Budva actor who regretted his life choices on the Belgrade stage. You won’t find out anything about Bogoboj, as you won’t find out in any other artistic opportunity. You may just see that public opinion has always been toxic, malignant, and easily manipulated.

Nebojša Romčević