Participants:
Željko Hubač, the author
Vladimir Đuričić, the director of the Zoran Radmilović Theatre in Zaječar
Nataša Petrović, the performer that speaks the lines from the book
Jelica Stevanović, theatrologist and the moderator at the book promotion

Čučuk Stana
Neither Serbian Nor Greek
Writing a literary work inspired by real personalities and historical events from our not-so-long-ago past poses not a small challenge for the author. Namely, respecting the facts is crucial, but at the same time, it’s important not to burden the literary tissue with numerous factual data that could impact the artistic-aesthetic level of the work negatively. Things complicate further if a dramatic form intended for stage realization is in question. Hubač skillfully found a way around such problems in this work, duplicitously and creatively balancing between history, myth, legend, and the oral tradition.
The fact that the monodrama would be performed on the Zoran Radmilović stage of the National Theatre by Nataša Petrović significantly contributed to the creative inspiration of the author. Hence, Hubač’s heroine got a multi-dimensional structure, both in terms of character psychology and motivation. Čučuk Stana is still represented as a Serbian heroine, only sans the excessive, pathetic, and moralistically educational observations. Using materials from several different sources, Hubač embodies a convincing character, simultaneously painting a wider socio-historic context from the end of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century. A literary-dramatic panorama of interesting personalities, distinctive patriarchal relationships and turbulent events that made the immediate surroundings of Čučuk Stana are etched into the form of a confessional monologue.  

The tragic fate of the heroine, whose end in foreign lands portrays the fate of the stateless and the impossibility of belonging to any of the two national corpora for whose independence and freedom she fought for her entire youth, highlights the questions of human identity, ideals, and the eternal relativity of the value system that the entire civilization rests upon. Those are the reasons why the subtitle “Serbian and Greek” could be interpreted as negation as well.