Sisters in Arms is described as an “essay in movement”. To me, ‘essay’ fails to convey the breadth and depth of this intriguing Serbian /New Zealand collaboration between Belgrade theatre company Hleb (Bread) Teatar and Dunedin’s Ake Ake. ‘Essays’ are frequently dreary monologues that rarely capture the imagination whereas this performance is so much more like poetry, based on stories of women’s sacrifice during the Great War and tales of ‘bread and blood’. 

As theatregoers arrive they are served bread with salt by cast member Sanja Krsmanović, herself the great granddaughter of war heroine Sofia Jovanović, a fitting touch that symbolises a welcome greeting in many European societies.

Every culture has its own unique history, shaped by monumental events.  In Sisters in Arms, the individual is given permission to speak their own and their family’s history.  Surprisingly, for two such vastly different cultures, the stories have many similarities. 

This work allows us to see the importance of the true writers of history. “The importance of personal histories – these are the truths, the true histories, not the histories written by conquerors.”

This gives permission, not just to the actors but also the audience, to explore their own history, realising that each is as important and as valid as the other. This is a fundamental strength of this work. It is a profound realisation that different cultures, and the characters within these cultural groups, can experience the same event in remarkably similar ways, despite being at opposite ends of the globe and, in this case, hundreds of years old (Serbia) and very recent (NZ).

Sisters in Arms is not always easy to follow.  There are so many characters involved, with the war diaries of many men and women providing their own perspectives and dialogue on the ‘horrors of war’.  An essential basis of the work is the service of individuals to their fellows and the sacrifice that involves.

The cast are very physical and every story is represented by carefully choreographed movement with live music providing a haunting accompaniment to the stories which are both spoken and sung. The props are simple yet each is imbued with great meaning. 

A highlight of Sisters in Arms is the inclusion of ‘End Notes’, a list that appears on the screen at the play’s conclusion with all the concepts explored in the work.  The audience are then asked to choose five items that the players then offer discourse on. Examples are ‘Genetic Memory’, ‘Mihi’ and ‘Anzac’.  This is a fitting end to a thought-provoking show and serves to give more flesh to the meaning and experiences behind these concepts. 

There are a few aspects of Sisters in Arms that could be improved upon.  The quality of sound is not always the best and it is hard to hear some of the dialogue. The text on screen that provides translation at times needs to be better lit.  I would also like to see some of the Māori translated also.

Nothing can take away, though, from the thought-provoking nature of this work.  My companion and I left thinking about how we could express our own ‘mihi’, the stories of our ancestors and their effects on our culture. A worthy result, I feel, of a carefully constructed offering to the Nelson Arts Festival twentieth anniversary.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

An unusual collaboration: Dunedin’s Ake Ake Theatre Company has teamed up with Belgrade’s Hleb (Bread) Teatar to explore some little-known aspects of the First World War and the ways in which it affected Serbians and New Zealanders. 

At the centre of the story are two real, remarkable women. Sofia Jovanovic, the great-grandmother of Hleb Teatar’s Sanja Krsmanovic Tasic, fought alongside men in the Serbian forces and during the course of the war received 11 medals in recognition of her courage. Meanwhile Jessie Scott, a Canterbury farm girl and Edinburgh-trained doctor, worked as a medical officer in the Serbian army, and she too was honoured for bravery.

A thread of horror unifies the production: horror at the essential pointlessness of the war, at conditions on the battlefield and in field hospitals, and at the needless suffering and death of so many people.

The narrative isn’t clearly focused and the characters themselves are not deeply inhabited. This is inspired story-telling or, as the programme says, an “essay in movement’, rather than conventional drama. The five actors (Belgrade’s Jugoslav Hadzic, Sanja Krsmanovic Tasic and Anastasia Tasic, and Dunedin’s Jessica Latton and Rhys Latton), convey their message through story, song and dance, Maori and Serbian elements combining almost seamlessly and building up to a harsh final song that observes that, after we are dead, we all taste the same to the flies – a comment on the pitilessness of war but also an assertion of our common humanity. At the end there’s an opportunity for the audience to ask questions.

The production is especially notable for its well-researched historical content and its strong visual appeal, which is enhanced by well-designed lighting. 

Sisters in Arms premiered in Belgrade last month and now, fittingly, it makes its appearance in Dunedin.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

“Theatre has always the power to be a dialogue with the dead… A plea for witnessing truth,” says Sanja Krsmanović Tasić, director of Hleb Teatar in Belgrade, Serbia. 

This uplifting sense of mission animates Sisters in Arms, the stirring new work of Hleb (Bread) Teatar and its New Zealand collaborator, Ake Ake Theatre Company.  Kudos to Creative NZ WW1 Centenary Fund for recognising the worth of supporting this memorable partnership.  It seems a perfect union: Hleb has worked throughout former Yugoslavia using theatre and music to help people heal the wounds of the civil wars that have racked the Balkans, while Ake Ake has a similar sense of strong spiritual purpose.  Dunedin is fortunate to have Ake Ake now based here, with its skilled practitioners, ability to embrace many cultures and impeccable integrity of vision.  

Jessica Latton of Ake Ake was impressed by Dah Teatar’s production in Wellington at the 1999 Magdalena International Festival of Women’s Theatre (on the very night that NATO bombed Belgrade) and travelled to Belgrade to study as part of her Masters in Theatre Arts. There she was inspired by Tasić’s “essay in movement” on her great grandmother, soldier heroine Sofia Jovanović, to find parallels in NZ war history.  Both women believe true history lies in the fate of the individual; that the horror of war must be set against personal stories of real bravery and generosity.

The stories that Sisters in Arms unfolds through thrilling physical theatre, accompanied by live music, exemplify this high courage.  Great grandmother Sofia Jovanović first fought to free the Serbs from the Ottoman Empire in 1912, and during WW1 received eleven medals for bravery.  Sofia’s role is mostly taken by her descendant, Sanja Krsmanović Tasić, a very striking and charismatic performer who succeeds in seeming every inch the soldier.  Her accent too is charming!

Jessica Latton shares the story of her own great grandmother, Agnes of the East Coast Ngāti Porou who, when handed the medals awarded to her dead soldier son and asked if she felt proud, replied, ”Oh no, I would much rather have my son.”  She reveals that a law had to be passed to permit the Māori to join the army and fight for Britain.

The New Zealand woman whose tale we follow, though, is the valiant Dr Jessie Scott from Canterbury, who was sent to Serbia by the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, when New Zealand rejected her offer of taking nurses to set up field hospitals.  She is regarded as a heroine by the Serbs, decorated – as was Sofia – for her courage in refusing to leave her patients when Belgrade fell.  This is enlightening: I had no idea that the defeat at Gallipoli prevented our soldiers from reaching Serbia to save Belgrade.  Dr Scott became a Prisoner of War.  I find myself thinking of our modern heroines, the modest, cheerful nurses just returned from caring for Ebola patients in Africa.

Latton makes a charmingly indomitable little figure as Jessie, slipping easily in and out of role; at other times she sings or narrates compellingly from the side.  She is impressive in all she does, and her warmth on stage is palpable. Like the woman she portrays, she exudes confidence without ego.

As we enter the theatre, a member of the company gracefully offers bread and salt, a Serbian tradition. The performance commences with a powerful Māori welcome, but true to Ake Ake’s respect for the traditions of all people, we continue to see Serbian ritual delicately performed, with candles and song, including the birth of a child, as a touching background to the scenes of war and violence.  Even the latter however, are lyrical and stylised, performed as dance, with remarkable acrobatics and skilled lifts. 

Here Rhys Latton comes into his own, his fluid grace and strength mesmerising.  Sisters in Arms takes as its starting point the assassination of the Austrian Grand Duke that triggered WW1.  This too is treated metaphorically.  As the assassin, Rhys flings himself painfully again and again against the wall, while a narrator tells us the awful truth: that the people so hated the Austrian overlords that Serbs were prepared to die one after another, after another, and another, until they succeeded.  Later Rhys will balance in mid-air, lying back on Jessica’s raised feet, seemingly floating in the light, as we are told of the sufferings of the soldiers, and the flies that drove them mad.  In one dramatic sequence he paints his half-naked body until he resembles a grotesque corpse. 

The Lattons and Tasić continually surprise with an eclectic mixture of theatre conventions, ably supported by fiery musician Jugoslav Hađžić, and Sanja’s daughter Anastasia Tasić.  A lively rendition of Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag (which was sung by all the armies) evolves into acrobatics, then a fight, then crazy music hall.  

Little boats carrying lit candles are towed across the stage to represent the soldiers sailing to war.  An ironic repetition of pinning on medals underlines the cruel absurdity of the ceremony.  I am enraptured by the way the body of a wounded soldier is carried by each member of the company in turn, transferring the weight, constantly reinventing achingly beautiful ways for bodies to support bodies. 

Reviewing The Little Jester in 2011, I noted Ake Ake’s “unique blend of simplicity and sophistication” and it is this that strikes me again – such a straightforward, almost humble approach, yet such polished and innovative stage craft.  Their easy communication with the audience is apparent when the performance concludes with ‘end notes’. Twenty or so topics are projected onto a screen while the actors sit before us and invite our questions.  We choose to ask about Serbian customs; when they performed in Serbia, audiences wanted to hear about the haka.

This is transcendent theatre that goes a long way towards the stated aim of helping people understand people, of stopping the circles of war and violence that keep repeating. The audience is enthusiastic in its applause. My mother, a blur of ethereal silver hair in the dark beside me (a dancer herself, who claims she trod grapes in Serbia in the 1930s), says emphatically, “This is significant. To take something as terrible as war and create something so moving, that is significant.” 

“But did you follow it all?” I ask, thinking back on the whirlwind of music, ritual, words, history, and extraordinary movement we have witnessed.  She looks at me with gentle condescension. “It’s theatre you feel, rather than follow,” she explains kindly.  I knew that.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer