We all know about Smoje's legendary Šarko, the dog who served as the leitmotif for many of his texts, later collected in the Pasje novelete (Dog Novels), offering an allegorical perspective that opens up numerous possibilities for satirical commentary—both on the reality we live in and human traits. Šarko was much more than just a dog; he was a companion who, in intellect, age, and experience, never lagged behind his master, thus earning the right to his irony and all the forms of manipulation any beast, whether animal or human, uses to navigate its environment. He was a kind of canine Cervantes, a delicate and sharp-witted creature whose character the author uses for literary purposes, attributing his observations as though this small, cunning beast had a much clearer view of the world, people, and events around him, with far more talent for mischief than his human contemporaries.

Thanks to his status as Smoje's interlocutor, Šarko, in this play, becomes a hero with his voice in the first person. As Smoje himself says in the title of one of the Pasje novelete: "No dog's a beast," and in defense of this title, he reflects: "I can’t get it in my head that my little companion is an animal. Here in the Balkans, people have compromised the concept of an animal. People have turned into bloodthirsty beasts, horrible creatures who, for fun, destroy and plunder villages, attack children, the elderly, and homes." Unlike humans who turn into beasts, Šarko represents a species whose preoccupations lie in enjoying life, that primal hedonism which even Smoje, Šarko's companion, was never ashamed of.

In Smoje's Pasje novelete, the bond and love between him and Šarko "entered the record," and now, on the theater stage, we reconstruct their walks, adventures, and dialogues in which Šarko, thanks to everything Smoje wrote about him, takes the lead in evoking their shared memories. It is much more than the dog’s life he was condemned to until his life's path intertwined with the writer's.

Šarko was fortunate to have such a biographer in his lifetime, and we are lucky that Master Smoje left us the writings of a touching friendship with a dog who, years later, found his way to the theater precisely because—he is not a beast.

- Marina Vujčić