Theatre Director: No Time Left to Lose

Milica Kralj (BETAPHOTO/MILAN OBRADOVIC/DS)

Even if the people of Serbia take to the streets of every city and hold protests around the clock, they will not be able to put a stop to half of the crimes currently in progress or set to be committed against their homeland, Milica Kralj, a theatre director and member of the Assembly of Free Serbia, has said.

In an Nov. 29 interview for BETA, Kralj maintained that the protests held over weekend of Nov. 27-28, on account of the new law regulating referendums and expropriation, have brought about a new beginning. This "new but also final chance for Serbia," Kralj said, "is enough to finally, cautiously utter the word 'optimism,' but also dangerous enough to be worrisome, and powerful enough to open the wounds of other, recently crushed demonstrations. That is why we must make up for the time spent in silence, which has devastated our country, our minds and our value system," the stage director stressed.

In her opinion, there is no time left to lose. The people seem to have finally decided not to wait for some kind of superhuman leader to appear, instead seeking strength within themselves -- a strength without which there can be no fundamental change and no future, Kralj says.

According to her, the Nov. 27-28 culmination of public dissatisfaction -- which ended a week of various protests -- transcends even the word 'protest'. "It was a scream, this is [the people] screaming. There's no more time for long speeches, conferences, quotas, egos, pointing fingers, differences, party politics, divisions... Serbia is disappearing. It's being poisoned and sold off piece by piece. That scream should wake us up and warn that the end is imminent should we not come to our senses. Whether we will, I can't say, but I do know that some of us will not," Kralj concluded.