Amela Vučenović: It’s no small feat winning a Little Prince Award

On the second day of the festival, actress and director Amela Vučenović - one of the three recipients of this year's Little Prince Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the International Festival of Children's Theatres Subotica - spoke in a public interview with Zoran Đerić Ph.D. on her career and creative work.

The artist with an impressive toll of over 50 roles performed in puppet theater, 20 scripts written and estimated 40 plays directed - 17 of which in her own theatre establishment Bajkamela in Serbia, 3 in Estonia and around 20 in Russia - is the winner of more than 50 awards - among which the most common ones are handed out for the achievements in preservation of culture and tradition through the art of puppetry. For the artist, The Little Prince Award is the latest achievement in this long line.

"I’d like to thank you for this great professional recognition. I really don’t know how to properly celebrate and process the awards I receive. Maybe in a month’s time I will fully realize the notion that I've just won the Little Prince award? There’s also a fact that it is a lifetime achievement award. But you see - I'm just getting started", Amela Vučenović said during the discussion panel held at Hotel Patria, emphasizing that she grew professionally along with the festival itself during the course of its 30 years long run.

"It's no small feat winning a Little Prince Award", she pointed out. Zoran Đerić Ph.D. referred to details from Amela Vučenović's professional biography pointing out that she was a full-time ensemble member of the Pinocchio Theatre in Belgrade and that she had won awards at various festivals further defining her as a puppeteer and a director/writer specializing in puppet theatre. "We can safely say that she is basically in complete control of her plays - from the initial conception to final production, she’s in charge of everything", Đerić concluded. Amela Vučenović worked on over 20 plays in Russia - a country renowned for its exceptional tradition of children and puppet theatre.

In 2009, she completed her academic specialization in puppetry teaching at the St. Petersburg State Academy of Theatre Arts where she also began her lecturing career in 2015 as a senior acting lecturer at the Faculty of Puppet Theatre (Department of Directing and Acting). Since 2022 she took the role of an assistant-professor.

"I travelled to Russia for personal reasons, but also out of my love for that country. We were brought up to admire the country which is an absolute favorite in world of theatrical art. When I left, I couldn't be a performer anymore because I was told that my Russian had a Baltic accent. For the first time, I went for a three-month long specialization as a lecturer, but at that time I did not believe I would ever teach. I just wanted to improve and learn what I couldn't here.

Traveling around the world with various festivals, I witnessed things in practice that I had no explanation for”, she said. "Actually, the specific trigger was the performance of the play Alas, Todor and all the feedback I was met with globally. It annoyed me a lot, questions like “Why are they fighting, why are they yelling? What is wrong with them? What kind of theatre directing is that?", Amela recalled.

"When I was provided with the opportunity to learn more, I applied for an internship and underwent the entire process - from constructing puppets to directing actors in unique conditions of a booth behind the stage. Simultaneously, since they do not provide much theoretical knowledge there, I had to put in more of an effort myself. I sat for days and nights with textbooks spread all over my bed. I realized that I was desperately hungry for knowledge on puppetry art. We don't have enough books on the topic, so we can’t satisfy our hunger enough. That was the reason I learned the Russian language.” She spent several years in research and wrote a book about this play. In 2011, she reconstructed the play Alas, Todor - based upon Ilija Božić's performance - in her theater Bajkamela.

In 2015 the scientific-practical book The Road to My Todor was published in Russian. In 2016 she translated an updated edition of the book, published in Serbia. "The Russian edition is slightly shorter than the Serbian version which I specially supplemented during the translation process. I came across some new information. To my great joy and pride, I had the last opportunity to talk to the people who created the legendary play at the Duško Radović Theatre - namely Melita Bihali and Braca Todorović. Everything else was previously done by our famous Marija Kulundžić whom I had the honor of meeting a long time ago - when I still hadn’t even heard of the play Alas, Todor", said this year's recipient of the Little Prince award. As she states, due to the bureaucratic problems that arise with performing in a privately owned theatre, she was reaching for a solution so this play could come alive institutionally.

"My colleague Marta Aroksalaši from the Subotica Children's Theatre wanted me to direct the play and coach an actor from her theatre. That's when I realized that Marta would surely know better than me how to deal with the problem of finding a way this play could be staged in Subotica and in the whole of Vojvodina. I worked with a wonderful, brilliant actor Stefan Ostojić from the Children's Theatre in Subotica. However, the actor lifted his anchor and left and what we had taught him not everyone can pull-off. It is a very specific task. Not everyone has the nerve to cope with such a difficult job operating 10-12 puppets at the speed that play like Alas, Todor requires." Nevertheless, Amela Vučenović is optimistic: "Marta and I are now rescuing our national hero Alas Todor, looking for an actor, discussing who it might be. We're not letting Todor disappear again. Together we are stronger."