Who Is Stevo Žigon

Stevo Žigon (full name Štefan Žigon; Ljubljana, 8 December 1926 – Belgrade, 28 December 2005) was a Serbian and Yugoslav actor and theatre director of Slovenian origin. For almost five decades he worked on the stages of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Atelje 212 and other theatres, and he also directed in Russia.

The wider public remembers him as the cold and calculating Krieger, the head of the Belgrade Gestapo in the series Otpisani (The Written Off) and Povratak otpisanih (The Written Off Return). The theatre world, however, remembers him above all for psychologically demanding roles, for his productions of the classics and for an unusual life story.

As a young man he was a member of a youth resistance movement and a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau. After the war he became one of the most respected artists on the Yugoslav stage. For his lifetime achievement he received the Dobričin prsten, the highest honour for acting in Serbia.

Origins and Childhood in Ljubljana

Stevo Žigon was born in Ljubljana to a tailor, Štefan, and his wife Marija, née Sel. His parents came from the Slovenian Littoral. His father was from the village of Volčji Grad near Komen in the Karst region, while his mother came from the Slovenian community in Trieste.

The family lived in Trieste until the Fascists came to power. Because of Italian rule over the Littoral, his parents left the region in 1922 and moved to Ljubljana, which was then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The future actor was born in that city a few years later.

As a boy he was an exceptionally keen reader. Poetry attracted him in particular, and among his favourite poets he named Alojz Gradnik, Igo Gruden and Oton Župančič. His love of the spoken word stayed with him all his life and left a mark on his stage delivery.

His childhood was shadowed by great political events. The Italian occupation of Ljubljana in 1941 changed the lives of an entire generation of young people, his own included. As a result, he had to grow up very early.

Education

From 1937 he attended the First Realgymnasium in Ljubljana. He matriculated in 1945, immediately after leaving the camp. According to the Slovenian Biographical Lexicon, he then continued his education by studying dramatic art.

He began studying acting and directing in 1946 at the Academy for Theatre Arts in Ljubljana. The following year he continued at the theatre institute in Leningrad (today Saint Petersburg). The Russian school of acting and directing left a deep mark on his later artistic work.

He completed his studies at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Belgrade, in an extraordinary class. For his graduation role he played Marchbanks in Shaw’s Candida. Sources differ on the year of his graduation: the Slovenian Biographical Lexicon gives 1951, while Serbian sources most often mention 1952.

The Academy was more than a place of study for him. When it was founded in 1949, he became one of its first assistants. It was there that his acquaintance with a young student, Jelena Jovanović, later grew into a lifelong partnership.

The War Years and the Dachau Camp

In 1942 Stevo Žigon became a member of SKOJ, the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia. According to available sources, while still very young he took part in resistance actions organised by the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People. Sources differ on exactly when these activities began, with some mentioning 1941 and others 1942.

The Italian army arrested him. Because he was a minor, he was spared execution, but he spent about a year in an Italian military prison in the Province of Ljubljana. After Italy’s capitulation in September 1943, he was captured by the German army and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. His prisoner number was 61185.

According to the Slovenian Biographical Lexicon, he was in Dachau from 1943 to 1945. Serbian sources mostly speak of two years, although some texts mention three. In the camp he learned German, and that knowledge would later play an important part in his career.

Thanks to this experience he knew German speech and manners extremely well. For that reason he was often given the roles of cold and cynical German officers. Even so, critics and colleagues stressed that he played these characters without caricature, with an inner truth.

Ivana Žigon later said that her father did not celebrate birthdays. In her words, he had learned in the camp that for a person every day is a new birthday.

Early Career

After the war Stevo Žigon began performing in the drama company of the Slovene National Theatre in Ljubljana. In 1948, however, the director Bojan Stupica invited him to the newly founded Yugoslav Drama Theatre in Belgrade. That invitation determined the course of his life.

He stayed in Belgrade until the end of his career. According to the Slovenian Biographical Lexicon, he worked at the Yugoslav Drama Theatre until his retirement in 1982. He also occasionally appeared at Atelje 212, which was becoming a centre of contemporary theatre in those years.

Stupica was a key figure in his artistic beginnings. According to biographical accounts, it was he who encouraged Žigon to turn to film and directing. His long collaboration with his older colleague shaped his view of the theatre.

Among his first significant roles were Franc in Ivan Cankar’s play The King of Betajnova, Haemon in Sophocles’ Antigone and the already mentioned Marchbanks in Candida. He also played Hippolytus in Racine’s Phèdre. All of these roles showed that the young actor was exceptionally disciplined and gifted for psychologically complex characters.

Rise to Popularity

During the 1950s and 1960s Stevo Žigon became one of the prominent names of the Yugoslav stage. The Slovenian Biographical Lexicon describes him as a convincing interpreter of psychologically complex leading roles, especially from European drama.

He himself singled out among his favourite roles those in Chekhov’s Ivanov, Krleža’s In Agony and Büchner’s Danton’s Death. In the last play he portrayed Maximilien Robespierre, the Jacobin leader, whose uncompromising nature he rendered with chilling conviction.

He also had a distinctive voice and impeccable diction. For that reason he was regarded as an outstanding radio actor, and his voice was recognised even by those who had never seen him on stage.

At Atelje 212 he also appeared in James Joyce’s Exiles, directed by Hugo Klajn. There he played Richard Rowan, and his partners included actresses such as Marija Crnobori. Engagements like these show the breadth of his repertoire.

According to Politika, over his career he played 59 theatre roles and staged 57 theatre productions. That number alone says a great deal about his work ethic and devotion to the theatre.

Robespierre Before the Students in 1968

One event in June 1968 particularly marked his biography. During the student demonstrations in Belgrade, Stevo Žigon appeared in the courtyard of the Faculty of Philosophy. There, in front of the assembled students, he performed an excerpt from Danton’s Death.

He played Robespierre, and the speech his character gave at Danton’s trial made an especially strong impression. According to accounts, the gathered students responded with thunderous applause. That performance entered the history of Yugoslav theatre and political culture.

Later, his appearance in the courtyard of the Faculty of Philosophy became the subject of scholarly analysis. Researchers interpreted the monologue as a performance composed of dramaturgical, historical and performative elements. The event is also mentioned in Želimir Žilnik’s documentary about the June events.

It is worth noting that Žigon had been politically engaged since his youth. Even so, his 1968 appearance remained above all an artistic act. In a later interview for the Slovenian weekly Mladina, he described himself as a Bolshevik, but not a political one.

Film and Television Roles

Besides the theatre, Stevo Žigon took a considerable number of film and television roles. The Slovenian Biographical Lexicon states that he made around thirty films. From the early 1950s to the late 1990s he appeared in domestic and co-produced works.

His early films include I’ll Be Back (1957), Kala (1958) and Five Minutes of Paradise (1959), in which he played the character Stevan. He also appeared in X-25 Reports (1960), as well as in The Enclosure (1961), playing Dragulavić.

He himself named two of his best film roles. The first is the journalist in Oxygen (1970) by Mirko Klopčić, for which he won the Golden Arena at the Yugoslav Film Festival in Pula. The second is his role in Rondo (1966) by Zvonimir Berković.

His greatest popularity came from Krieger, the head of the Belgrade Gestapo. He played this role in the television series Otpisani (1974) and Povratak otpisanih (1976). These series are still rebroadcast today, so Krieger has remained, for generations, a synonym for the cold German officer.

He also appeared in the films Walter Defends Sarajevo (1972), Fear (1974) and The Idealist (1976). Later came works such as The Tenth Brother (1982), How I Was Systematically Destroyed by Idiots (1983), The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud (1984), The Red and the Black (1985), Haloa – Festival of Whores (1988), Marital Journeys (1991) and Tell Me Why You Left Me (1993).

The last role mentioned in film databases was a British liaison officer to the Supreme Headquarters in the film British Gambit (1998).

Director and Author

Over the years Stevo Žigon acted less and less and turned more and more to directing. His directing body of work counts 57 productions. He most often chose works by Russian classics, Shakespeare and Crnjanski, and while guest directing in Slovenian theatres he staged plays by Shaw, Gorky, Gogol and Sheridan.

He staged his first better-known production, Dear Ruth, in Mostar in 1954. He later directed at the National Theatre in Belgrade, the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, the Poetry Theatre and the Academic Theatre. He also worked in Novi Sad, Vršac, Sombor, Banja Luka, Dubrovnik, Bitola and Zenica.

At the National Theatre he directed Romeo and Juliet (1981), August Strindberg’s Miss Julie (1994), Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1995) and Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull (2000). In The Idiot, the title role of Prince Myshkin was played by Nebojša Dugalić, who received the “Stojan Dečermić” award for best young actor for it.

He also directed abroad. He staged Krleža’s In Agony in 1979 at the Maly Theatre in Moscow, and he also worked at the Bolshoi Drama Theatre in Leningrad. His production of Hamlet is remembered as challenging and controversial.

He also wrote. He published the books Stevo Žigon – Chronicle, Monologue on the Theatre and Dramatisations and Adaptations. His dramatisations of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Strindberg and Chekhov are considered particularly inspired. Monologue on the Theatre was translated into Russian and published by the National Theatre of Russia.

Greatest Achievements

His career offers a number of recognisable achievements. Some of them can be singled out:

• Krieger in the series Otpisani and Povratak otpisanih, the role for which the wider public remembers him most;
• the Golden Arena in Pula for best leading male role in the film Oxygen (1970);
• Robespierre in Danton’s Death, including the 1968 performance before students;
• long years of work at the Yugoslav Drama Theatre under the leadership of Bojan Stupica;
• productions at the National Theatre, among them The Idiot and The Seagull;
• productions in Moscow and Leningrad, a rare recognition for a Yugoslav director;
• the Dobričin prsten award for lifetime achievement.

Private Life

Stevo Žigon met Jelena Jovanović in 1950, when he was working as an assistant at the Academy and she was a student. She later said herself that she fell in love with him at the Academy, and that from then on she had been “under his director’s baton”. According to IMDb, they married in 1957.

Jelena Žigon (1933–2018) became one of the well-known Serbian actresses, remembered for roles in films such as The First Citizen of a Small Town and in the series Žika’s Dynasty. The couple had two children: a daughter, Ivana, and a son, Nikola.

Ivana Žigon (born 2 February 1968 in Belgrade) became an actress and often performed in her father’s productions. Among them were Miss Julie, Desdemona in Othello at the Novi Sad Summer Festival, and Nina Zarechnaya in The Seagull. Nikola Žigon is a painter who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade.

Ivana and Jelena Žigon founded the ensemble “Kosovo Peonies” in 2004. In her memoirs Ivana Žigon also described a night by her father’s bedside near the end of his life.

Final Years and Death

Stevo Žigon died on 28 December 2005 in Belgrade, in his 80th year. According to Wikidata, the cause of death was a myocardial infarction, while IMDb cites heart problems.

He was buried at the Belgrade New Cemetery, in the Alley of the Greats. Several years later, in 2009, Serbia issued a postage stamp in his honour. His wife Jelena Žigon was buried in the same cemetery after her death in 2018.

In his last years he devoted himself intensively to directing. His last major productions were The Idiot and The Seagull at the National Theatre, while the roles in which he appeared in that period became increasingly rare.

Interesting Facts

• His real name was Štefan Žigon, and “Stevo” is the form under which he became known in Serbia.
• In the Dachau camp he learned German, which later allowed him to convincingly play German officers.
• He was regarded as an excellent radio actor because of his unique voice and perfect diction.
• He was one of the first assistants at the Academy of Theatre Arts, founded in 1949.
• His Monologue on the Theatre was translated into Russian.
• His daughter Ivana Žigon has received several awards at the “Golden Knight” festival, and Nikolai Burlyaev called her the true heir to her father’s work.

Awards and Honours

Stevo Žigon received numerous honours for his work in the theatre and on film. The most significant among them are:

• the Dobričin prsten for lifetime achievement, awarded for 2002 (presented in early 2003);
• the Golden Arena for best leading male role at the Pula festival in 1970, for the film Oxygen;
• the Joakim Vujić Statuette;
• the “Bojan Stupica” Award;
• the Order of Merit for the People;
• the Order of Labour.

Legacy and Influence

Stevo Žigon left a mark in several fields. As an actor, he brought seriousness and intellectual discipline to the Yugoslav theatre. As a director, he brought the Russian school and the European repertoire to the stages of Serbia, and as an author, he published books about his theatrical experience.

His collaboration with younger colleagues is especially valued. He was a teaching assistant at the Academy, and many generations of actors passed through his productions. Nebojša Dugalić, for example, received a significant award precisely for his role in Žigon’s The Idiot.

His work lives on beyond the borders of Serbia. The production of The Idiot directed by Stevo and Ivana Žigon was performed at the National Theatre of Belarus in Minsk and greeted with ovations. On that occasion Nikolai Burlyaev said that Stevo Žigon was one of the few artists who remain a treasure forever.

The centenary of his birth, on 8 December 2026, will be marked with celebrations at the Cinematheque and the National Theatre in Belgrade. For that reason Stevo Žigon is still counted among the most significant artists who worked in Serbia and Slovenia.