Commemoration for Sasho Milenkovski at Drama Theatre

A commemoration for Sasho Milenkovski was held at the Drama Theatre, gathering colleagues, actors and family to honour the director and playwright whose work left a strong mark on contemporary Macedonian theatre.

Belonging to the generation of directors who at the start of the 1990s introduced a new aesthetic and a contemporary theatrical language, Milenkovski is remembered as a creative force who reshaped stages and working methods across the region.

“I learned many important things from Sasho Milenkovski about directing and theatre because he wouldn't sit down to explain how to direct; he allowed me to be beside him, to watch how he worked and how he thought about a particular scene, searching for rhythm,” recalled director Sinisa Evtimov, speaking about his first encounters and later collaborations with Milenkovski.

Colleagues recall his demands and his care for actors

“He was not interested in comfortable theatre; he sought nerve, he sought vitality. Something that would move the stage and the person on it. I think that was his greatest strength. He didn't just create productions, he created the people around them. He had a rare talent to recognise someone and give them trust before that person fully believed in themselves,” Evtimov added.

Actress Vesna Petrushevska described him as devoted to actors and to experimentation: “He loved actors incredibly much, like few directors. He wanted to explore new things in theatre and to me he was an alchemist. And he constantly kept the actors on stage within his aim. He had a precise aim.”

Writer Venko Andonovski, whose text was read aloud by actor Predrag Pavlovski, noted how Milenkovski always transformed a playwright’s vision: “Not once did he stage the play I had seen in my head; it was always different from my visions and the production I saw I always liked much more than my text and my stage conception of it.” Pavlovski added his own memory: “Sasho was a master of making sense out of the absurdity of the world; he injected meaning even into the most senseless dramatic episodes of life. He sought meaning in the amorphous; he was like a child who recognises figures in the shapeless mass of clouds in the sky. He made those figures visible and clear to the theatre audience.”

His daughter, Sara Milenkovska, spoke of his influence on their personal and artistic choices: “He taught me not to respect any authority and because of that for us — me and Hana — to be what we are and thereby have the courage to be the best of yourself and in that way to do what we do.”

Across four decades of work, Sasho Milenkovski realised more than 50 productions on stages in North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Bulgaria, and received numerous awards and recognitions for his contributions to the performing arts.

Photo: press material from the event