Contains spoilers

When you are accustomed to sharing your life with another living being, the realization that one day you will have to go on living without them, is one of the hardest things you can experience as a human. Especially when they go away suddenly and unexpectedly that your life takes a 360-degree turn.

The play Father and Father talks about this turn. It becomes even more painful when we come to understand that this loss was caused by other human beings. The drama openly laments the missing persons of Kosovo’s war and their to-this-day unresolved fate.

It is a touching piece that deeply affects its audience. Jeton Neziraj’s text, which slowly reveals its epiphany, is directed by Kushtrim Koliqi, with music composed by Adhurim Grezda.
Every day is the same for the three members of the family in the play. The actors Ilire Vinca as the mom Sara, Bujar Ahmeti as the father, and Kosovare Krasniqi as daughter Lola. The actors create an engaging atmosphere with their performances, with their words, gestures and their tears, making it possible for the audience to feel like an organic part of the drama throughout the production.

The main character Sara continues to give her husband drugs for his incessant chest pain as if he were still there. She refuses to accept that her husband ceased to be a living member of the family quite a long time ago. She speaks for all the families of the missing people and wants to show us how painfully absurd it is to know that the people most dear to you have been added to the “missing people” list but that you have never seen any material proof that they are gone.

Father and Father shows how painful and traumatic the undefined status of the missing people is for their families, and how knowing their epilogue, their fate, would lighten the load of the pain for the people left living. Since people cannot live in the agony of waiting for too long, and this non-responsiveness on the part of the institutions only adds to this agony.

Time doesn’t stop passing for Sara and Lola, but it does stop for the father. He has remained young in Sara’s and Lola’s memories. Because he was young when the war took him, and he became one of the 1600 people who are still missing in Kosovo since 1998-99.

Sara is a seamstress who has a regular, low-paid job in fabric and also cleans a house two times a week. She’s the breadwinner of the family and does all she can to help her daughter to study and get a degree at university.

The play brings the discussion of the fate of the missing people into wider society, since this has remained an unsolved political issue that has dragged on for many years now, as the families of the affected wait in sorrow and terror for an answer. It is a play that should be shown to those who hold the answers about the fate of the missing people in Kosovo and in every place in which such cruelties occurred.

Living inside the world of this play, even for less than two hours, one is able to feel the nightmare that families of the missing people in Kosovo have lived with on a daily basis for 22 years. A nightmare translated into a psychological terror that will haunt generation after generation until they finally get their answer.

Sara’s husband was a geodetic engineer who struggled to get a job. Neziraj’s play also critiques the governance of institutions and their poor handling of employees’ conditions. This theme of unemployment and unsatisfactory job conditions is a major concern of our country, and one of the reasons why our population continues to migrate to this day.

As Sara continues her life with the presence of her husband, Lola has found someone and she is getting married, and as a result she will leave the house. On her special day she wears a black dress instead of a white one, and that day Sara seem to accept that her husband is not actually present in their house. Sara has to accept that she will have to live alone once Lola is gone for her new life and that no matter how they want it, the father is not coming back again.

The play is staged in a small room on the second floor of a building of Prishtina’s Ethnological Museum. It is small and has limited seats, which only adds to the intimacy of the play. The actors manage to hook the audience’s attention for the majority of the play’s running time and the atmosphere of the space contributes to the rise in emotions as the play’s revelation is slowly unveiled. We start to comprehend why the actor playing the father is younger than the actress playing the mother. We understand that it wasn’t comic misunderstanding when the father goes to get a birth certificate and instead gets a death certificate. These issues of his are still considered an “administrative problem” and his fate, along with that of many others, has remained unresolved due to slow-moving hands.

We realise that all the scenes in which the father is present in fact happened only in the mind of his family members. They are just fragments of Sara’s past, uncomplete memories that will continue to haunt her and the members of the missing people’s families until the relevant institutions treat them with the dignity with which they deserve to be treated.

Produced by Integra // Written by: Jeton Neziraj // Directed by: Kushtrim Koliqi // With: Ilire Vinca, Bujar Ahmeti, Kosovare Krasniqi // Music: Adhurim Grezda // Lights: Skënder Latifi // Costumes: Njomëza Luci // Set: Mentor Berisha // Assistant director: Kaltërim Balaj // Video: Leart Rama // Design: Florian Mehmeti

Produced by Heartefact, performed at the National Museum, Prishtina, as part of the Kosovo Theatre Showcase 

Seeking love and acceptance, not a cure

Is a hug a sign of acceptance? Of love and of being proud of the person whom you are hugging and not letting go?

A living room is presented to us with a table surrounded by three chairs. A woman is preparing the table for dinner. A man insists he will also stay for dinner, in order to wait for his son who is coming from abroad. As he waits, he complains that his children do not respond to his texts.

The mother and father discuss between themselves - mostly blaming each other - their son who has a “problem.” After they are done with blaming each other, they try to come up with a solution to cure the 'sickness' of the fact their son has "a close intimate roommate”.

They find a solution in the book of Richard Cohen a 'former homosexual,' who got married and had three children and now writes about this, but you might rightly wonder if you are a 'former' something, do you still preserve the skill of being capable of that thing, or it is only when you excel at it? Cohen's book is called: “Coming Out Straight: Understanding and Healing Homosexuality” as if homosexuality is an injury you get while cooking…

The play 'Our Son' is written and directed by Patrik Lazić, and stars Dragana Varagić, Aleksander Dindić and Amar Ćorović. The whole thing takes place in the living room that is an open space together with the kitchen on the side. You could smell the chicken soup and lasagna, the meal they were having for dinner. The performance of all three actors is truly memorable, and in the moments when the son throws the bowl of salad to the floor or when he has to leave the room to come back calmer, you wonder how they could ever better this. Some moments felt way too real, like the moment when the radio played and they were obliged not to make any noise on the Saturday afternoon because the father was asleep, the mother almost breaking into tears while she relives her past through the voice of her son; this game of looking always for the guilty is a game that we practice every day in our life; it is scary isn’t it?

A performer should believe in the play they are acting in order to convince the spectator, and I was fooled by this performance, not to say taken in. The son leaves in the end, but why does he come back to eat dessert? For the tiramisu?

The mother and father still haven’t dealt with the fact that their son is gay. They come up with a plan to “cure” this “illness”, the key is the father, he is the one who has to do all the effort in this part, a plan that fails, because from a distant relationship you cannot build a close relationship overnight like the father tried.
It failed even because with the aid of Cohen's book because the son has read it and because he has tried to solve “the fact of being who he was.”

'Our Son' truly heartfelt piece, filled with humorous and melodramatic notes. Sarcasm, irony and jokes based on stereotypes and clichés about homosexuality are present throughout the play. The son has brought with him his roommate Nikola. Does Nikola make an appearance in the play? Does Nikola become a son in law? Do the parents meet him or accept to meet him?

Lazić, who is both the author and director, uses the techniques of retrospective and flashbacks almost in all the play showing parts of the past that have influenced the present to tackle some really deep problems who might change the course of a family - or a person. There is an exchange of characters where the son becomes the father showing how he was in the past.

The whole performance was captivating, a great emotional rollercoaster that goes from laughing to accusing, from accusing to screaming, from screaming again to joking, and from joking to true drama, from true drama to real tears, and from real tears to reflections.

The play tackles the topics of sexuality, of acceptance, of bringing down taboos, of dealing with unhealed wounds, of facing real issues, of making peace with the past in order to live in the present.

I wonder if you can find happiness, or be happy without dealing and facing the past, find validation, make peace and find acceptance. Can you be happy? Truly, can you? Who do you hold on to? Whose hand do you seek not to let you go, whose hand makes you powerful?

Written and directed by: Patrik Lazić // With: Dragana Varagić, Aleksandar Đinđić, Amar Ćorović
​

As the lights dim, the four actors start moving through the theatre, as if they are swimming in the sea. The audience are sitting on the stage, looking out at the seats. The lights from the arena's far end fall on these seats, creating the illusion of waves.

The actors appear as if they have emerged from the sea. Director Blerta Neziraj's idea to seat the audience on stage is a brilliant one; Yann Perregaux's lighting design is also inspired.

The actors are dressed alike (the costume design is by Mentor Berisa) to maintain their neutrality; they are citizens without names or surnames.

We are in Roccalumera, a small town in the south of Italy, where no refugees have ever arrived. This has caused widespread depression in the city. Dreams of boats being emptied in the city's harbour sweeten citizens' sleep, but they are only dreams. All the money from the European Union is going to Lampedusa and other Italian cities where there are refugees, “the bloody bastards” says one of the characters. Even the cat, Sonno, the only cat in town, decides to leave forever because of this.

That's how small fishing towns are, living with what the sea brings to shore.

Then someone appears in the ‘sea-seats’ and slowly, his body passing from seat to seat, he comes to our feet and flows to the shore. The person is both dead and not a refugee -  it’s the body of an Italian. But the people of Roccalumera are good capitalists, if life gives them lemons, they make lemonade and sell it, so they decide to cut off the body’s penis and put him in a niqab, turning him into Roccalumera's first refugee. "Wherever there is one refugee there are many." Scene follows scene as there are press conferences and the much-anticipated funding arrives from the EU.

Everything is getting better in the town now, even the cat Sonno returns.

Jeton Neziraj’s writing is both genuine and artistically appealing. He creates a small fishing city between the theater seats and is able to depict the passage of time, piecing together brief scenes where little happens, like the fall of a handkerchief from a balcony, or even sometimes, nothing at all. Sitting on stage in front of the ‘sea’ you cannot deny the fact that nothing happens; we all have days like that, even in Roccalumera.

Despite the fact that the movement between the theater seats does not appear comfortable, the actors do an impressive job. Gani Rahmani is able to quickly and convincingly convert himself into several roles (including Sonno the cat), and Tringa Hasani fits into her roles well and appears to be experiencing them.

But happiness does not last long; since the dead body was an Italian, someone comes from the Italian mafia. And so he begins to murder the citizens while seeking among them the killer of his brother Giuseppe (the dead body, brought from the sea). Later, he discovers that Giuseppe is still alive and that everything was a misunderstanding, so he returns to his hometown leaving behind, as a way to apologize, his torture tools. “Make a museum,” he advises. As if saying: “do not forget.”

The Roccalumera cat returns again. And this cat reminded me of all the Albanians I know, always trying to escape to the fabled West, but always returning back, if not physically, in some other way.

A ship carrying real refugees approaches the shores of Roccalumera, but after everything the citizens lock the port and turn off the lights. Silence now. They remain silent so as not to be heard by the refugees. We on stage are also silent.

This is when Jeton Neziraj decides to strike. He places one of the actors in the role of the god, speaking to us. Asking us what would we do if a van with an African family of 15 members standing in front of the theater now, which of us would go and pick them up and shelter them in our house? Thus the sea disappears and from Roccalumera we return to Gjilan, and from Gjilan, we go deep inside ourselves.

​In the last scene an actor dressed as Superman enters the stage holding a large frame covered in black fabric. He tells the story of a little boy, Aylan, who with his father had taken the sea route to Europe, to escape the war in Syria. Superman was Aylan's favorite toy, so he was not afraid, because his hero could save everyone.

The fabric is removed to reveal the real photo of little Aylan, that the waves had washed ashore. Apparently, the sea required a sacrifice. The revelation of the photo in this way stunned the audience; some burst into tears.

Superman, who saves everyone, could not save Aylan who never arrived in the promised land, in the free Europe where life would resume.

Pablo Picasso says that the purpose of art is to clean the dust of everyday life from our souls. This play shook the dust from our shoulders. The dust that makes us forget the human inside us. It was like a strike for the audience: remember, it said, remember…

Superman didn’t save Aylan, but can art do something? Can art save us all?

By: Jeton Neziraj // Directed by: Blerta Neziraj // Ass. Director: Avni Shkodra // Cast: Aurita Agushi, Ernest Zymberi, Kushtrim Qerimi, Tringa Hasani, Gani Rrahmani dhe Alban Shahiqi // Stage Design and Costumes: Mentor Berisha // Choreography: Gjergj Prevazi // Music: Tomor Kuci // Light Design: Yann Perregaux // Translated into English by: Alexandra

Produced by: the Gjilan City Theater, Gjilan In Roccalumera

Photo by: Ferdi Limani

An Orgiastic Musical in the Aftermath of War 

Imagine yourself at a hedonistic nightclub full of campy decorations, cheap furniture and guests that drown themselves in shots of rakia. Now imagine that bloodshed is happening everywhere around you, caused by unhealed traumas and unresolved conflicts of the just-finished war. Imagine that even in these morbid circumstances you'll be drawn by turbo-folk music to participate in orgiastic dances. Welcome to the world of Balkan Bordello. 

This flamboyantly dark anti-war show isn't just rich in story and style, but also in the production's prehistory. Jeton Neziraj's play has been directed twice before: once by Stevan Bodroža at the National Theatre of Montenegro in 2015, and András Urbán at the National Theatre of Kosovo in 2017. Both are prominent regional directors, but Urbán's unapologetic and provocative way of making political theatre alongside Neziraj;s critique of a post-war society might be the reason why the second show was greeted with protests and violent threats from Kosovo war veterans. 

However, this third directorial iteration by Blerta Neziraj takes place in a slightly different political environment. Albin Kurti, the Prime Minister of Kosovo who unlike his predecessors doesn't look back nostalgically at the war of the 1990s, attended the premiere. He did not appear provoked, rather relaxed enough to scroll on his cell phone during the performance, and not because he was composing an angry tweet because of the show.

This production can also be seen as a milestone in artistic collaboration with Serbia that still doesn't recognize Kosovo as an independent country since the show is a co-production of Qendra Multimedia with Atelje 212, an institutional theatre from Belgrade, and also with LaMama theatre and the My Balkans organization from New York. 

Though the show feels very contemporary, the basis of its story is as classical as it can be – it's a rewriting of Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, and quite a faithful one. Jeton Neziraj has kept all the major plot points, focusing his adaptation on the contemporary world. The first big alteration is the setting, so the story takes place at a decadent but dismal and run-over-by-time Balkan Express Motel, and the second big change is the modernization of characters. Agamemnon is now a victorious military commander and war criminal with implicit but clear reference to the Kosovo war, while his wife Clytemnestra is the owner of the Motel who's ready to kill her husband in order to stop him from abusing her anymore. There's also a queer streak that runs through the production: Orestes and Pylades are now a queer couple. 

Jeton Neziraj's plot is satirical and the irony is only intensified by Blerta Neziraj's directing, which ensures that all elements of the show work towards this goal. The production's musical elements, its energetic electro-oriental sounds composed by Gabriele Marangoni, form  suitable background to the play's songs about the seduction and absurdity of war.

The satire is also mirrored in Gjergj Prevazi's choreography. On one hand, the characters meet the returning commander with almost ceremonial movements and the fighter, played by Ivan Mihajlović, performs an agile celebratory dance to his speech. On the other hand, there are often collective scenes of drunken dances with erotic elements, both homosexual and
heterosexual. There's also Pylades, played by John Gutierrez as a choreographer from Berlin, fascinated by the locals' 'barbarism'; he wants to humanize them through dance – a clear critique of the West's hypocritical and cosmetic altruism. Pylades also teaches other characters basic dance steps at the most awkward times, for example after the murders that happen at the Motel. 

A thick layer of irony and campness might be the show's biggest protection from total nihilism. Even though the story is full of violent male characters, their traditional image of masculinity is subverted by their queerness. Not only is Orestes openly gay as an avenger of his father's honour, but so it seems is Agamemnon's fighter whose image of homophobia and aggressive masculinity cracks during a drunken interaction with Pylades.

Agamemnon's image of masculinity seems sincere until the end, but he's the first one who gets killed almost at the beginning of the performance. The show feels to a certain extent like a post-gender society in which the characters are judged on their deeds and not so much on sexual or gender identity. This would explain the lavish, glittery and colorful scenography (Marija Kalabić) and costumes (Gabriel Berry) that are assigned to almost all characters. 

With actors coming from New York, Kosovo and Serbia, there was a risk of incoherence because of different acting styles, but it seems that's avoided. All actors adopted a grandiose, over-the-top approach that fitted very well into the concept of the show. George Drance as Agamemnon has a firm posture and elevated, formal manure of speech, only for this illusion of nobility to be scattered by his periodic outburst of anger and violence and Verona Koxha's frantic performance of Cassandra who's a traumatized victim of Agamemnon and the war. Svetozar Cvetković's exaggerated and loud gestures present him as a pretentious poet who deludedly believes that he and his fellow intellectuals are the founders of the new state and not the warlords. Cvetković's expressiveness only really comes into action in the second half of the performance, but this is an issue with the whole show. It feels like it's not polished enough and that everyone would benefit from a week or two of more rehearsals. There are issues with sound; it is sometimes a struggles to hear all the words, and some actors are heavily dependant on microphones while others are not.

But the life of Balkan Bordello has just begun. The New York premiere is scheduled for April next year and it's almost certain that the cast and the whole show will come to function much more efficiently in the weeks and months ahead. 

A trans-Atlantic theatrical project of  La MaMa's Great Jones Repertory Company, New York​

Author: Jeton Neziraj // Directed by: Blerta Neziraj // With: Onni Johnson, Svetozar Cvetković, George Drance, Eugene the Poogene, Valois Mickens, John Maria Gutierrez, Mattie Barber-Bockelman, Ivan Mihailović, Matt Nasser, Verona Koxha // Composer: Gabriele Marangoni // Costumes: Gabriel Berry // Stage design: Marija Kalabić // Choreographer: Gjergj Prevazi // Visual and light concept: Nico de Rooij // Dramaturges: Dimitrije Kokanov, Zishan Ugurlu // Producer of the Balkan Bordello: Beka Vučo // Production coordinator: Maud Dinand Lighting: Yann Perregaux /

As people sit on the theatre seats, the stage is already set. An old woman, whose hair is in the curlers, is waiting for us. She has been waiting for people to come and go in the same, dark room, every single day; for a long while, this has been her life.

The set, designed by Theranda Sertolli, consists of a table with two chairs, closed curtains, a small kitchen with all the ingredients of a cake waiting to be made. Some balloons in the back frame the audience’s view. Although inanimate, these balloons bring some color to this dull place.

The play The Birthday, written by Ivor Martinić and directed by Iliriana Arifi, absorbs the spectators. From the very beginning, the actors and the staging catch your attention and hold it; you enter into the world of the play smoothly, almost without noticing it.

The room has been adorned in this way for Denis’ 25th birthday. Denis was fine when he was a child but soon he became ill, and he lost his ability to walk. At first, he used crutches, and lately, as his health got worse, his family bought a wheelchair for him. His health is in constant decay, just as is the main characters’ approach to life.

Denis chooses to be alone most of the time, using his wheelchair to go to the park, feed pigeons and sometimes even meet Sara. “I don’t love her, but she loves me and that’s just fine,” he says.

You expect Denis to talk more, but he doesn’t. He chooses quietness and less crowded places, probably because he has had enough of people. The ones who know Denis think of his wheelchair as clumsy, and strangers can’t stop staring because they think of him as “different”.

Mia, the housewife, Denis’ mom, the caretaker and much more, clearly doesn’t live life for herself. She is  one of those women, of which there are many, who dedicate their entire being to their families, their husbands and children, and their husband’s family, their own family and even animals - cats and green canaries.

Both Rebeka Qena who played Mia and Labinot Raci as Denis, played straight to the heart, deeply touching the audience with their affecting performances. They could transmit to the audience the routine of these characters’ lives, the routine of one single day, a routine that for the people in the play is that of a lifetime. The society in which the characters live is fully judgmental, their lives are full of regrets: people they haven’t been with, places they haven’t travelled, ardent dreams that now merely tempt the characters as delusional. They are caught in a paralyzed way of life.

Mia can’t accept the fact that her 25-year-old paraplegic son can’t walk. She does the impossible for him to appear smiling and barely standing up in the yearly photos the family takes.  And Mia loves her invalid son extremely. She loves him with that blind kind of love that deprives you of living. That kind of love that brings more darkness, despair and tears, for sickness is outside our control.

But Mia knows that “Some things need to be saved and used moderately. Nice dresses, love, tears and things like that.” Although she doesn’t quite practice it in her life.  Mia knows that she is keeping too much of a heavy burden with her, but can’t let go easily. Again, she forgets to turn on the lights of the room.

And bang!

One of the balloons pops by itself and the curtains drop down. The play ends. But the world, well, the world ends with a whimper right, rather than a bang?

​By: Ivor Martinić // Directed by: Ilirjana Arifi // Cast: Rebeka Qena, Labinot Raci, Igballe Qena, Bislim Muçaj, Sheqerie Buçaj, Florenta Bajraktari, Alketa Sylaj // Stage and Costumes: Theranda Sertolli // Light Design: Skender Latifi // Stage Technicians: Albert Gashi, Bedri Maloku, Fadil Bekteshi

Black Hole: The asshole of the universe

A black hole is where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. I’ve heard that these holes exist on earth also, in the cities of Kosovo. There, holes are dug, and from them sprout tall buildings, the fruits of which are enjoyed by the "few". In a corrupt state it is well-known who "the few" are.

Better to fall in the asshole of the universe, than to live in a corrupt city like this. This seemed to me the message of the warm, humorous yet dramatic play, Madeleine’s Incident. In these days, when there are so many failed attempts at "alternative" plays, more "classical" plays like this are heart- warming for theater lovers.

The play is written by Kosovar playwright, Jeton Neziraj and produced by Pocket Theater from Cyprus. The director is Marios Theocharous.

Citizens are often left behind and communities like the Roma are even more left behind. Madeleine, the title character of the play, is Roma. The staging was filled with vivid colors that are characteristic of the Roma. Madeleine's mother, performed by Miranda Nychidou, is dressed in red and speaks the Greek language with a Roma accent. We see her also performing the role of the cleaner, of the nurse, of the official from a Kosovar institution, and the official from the German embassy. The father, performed by Andreas Nicolaides, wears a gold thread vest. He is  a dreamer with a large heart, much of which is occupied by Madeleine. Nicolaides also plays the energetic showman, and the worker who digs the hole.   

Madeleine is represented by a puppet in a pink dress, performed by the actress Athena Savva dressed in black, a good choice to maintain neutrality. We see her also performing the role of the male doctor smoking cigarettes in the hospital room, another official from a Kosovar institution, and the official from the German embassy, the businessmen and the municipality representative.

One of the most impressive characteristics of the Pocket Theater production was the performers' ability to play a variety of roles, even contradicting ones, while being completely transformed and conveying the nuances of each character to the audience. This kind of elasticity, along with a quickness in changing costumes, made a play with 13 characters, but just three actors, come from her family home to ours.

Little Madeleine had a cheerful, lively voice, like children who see everything as a game. She burst like a popcorn kernel as she happily walked the streets of this post-war city, where it seems the enemy is now internal.

Madeleine was born in Germany, where her family emigrated due to war in Kosovo, but after the war they were forced to come back. The only contact Madeleine has with Germany is a friend of hers, Katja, who has not heard from Madeleine for a long time, because she fell into a hole that was dug to create a new building, and she now is standing right in the middle of the black hole.

While Madeleine is in a coma in the hospital, on stage we see corrupt doctors, corrupt businessmen, the media that tries to reflect the reality in their own way. The case of Madeleine went to the bureaucratic offices of Kosovo, with officials who aggressively ignored Madeleine's parents’ request for help. The roles of the officials are performed by Athena Savva and Miranda Nychidou. In the next scene, the same actresses are transformed into German embassy officials.

They refuse Madeleine's parents' requests for assistance in obtaining a German visa so that she might be treated in Germany, but this time they respond nicely, in a European manner, where even the worst news is delivered with a smile.

And while these are happening, in a world where not only humans but all of humanity has taken a back seat, it seems Madeleine made her decision.

In her dream, Madeleine asks her father for a fast train, so fast that it would seem that it is flying. This is the most beautiful scene of the play. 

As in a dream, a scenario of magical realism is created between the real and the fantastic. Madeleine eventually spots the train in the horizon and joyfully embarks on her journey to another world. Somewhere beyond black holes and assholes. Where politics, money and corruption do not have the power to turn man into a beast digging graves in the middle of the city. In that world, little Madeleine can find happiness, love, and big hearts, like that of her father.

In the end, Madeleine’s parents leave the city. Because the Roma are Roma only when they travel.

Produced by Pocket Theater from Limassol, Cyprus

Author: Jeton Neziraj // Directed by: Marios Theocharous // Cast: Andreas Nicolaides, Miranda Nychidou, Athena Savva // Sets and Costumes: Thelma Cassoulidou // Choreography: Marina Poyiadji // Music: Demetris Spyrou International Outreach: Marios Theocharous // Translation into Greek: Marios Theocharous// Lights: Vasilis Petinaris // Translated into English by: Alexandra Channer 

​​

Alireza Mahvelati

Towards a minor theatre

Jeton Neziraj’s controversial and avant-garde text, The Return of Karl May sparked the notion of “the minor” in my mind. “The minor” is a concept coined by Gillez Deleuze, the French philosopher and thinker, and his friend and colleague Felix Guattari. It concerns social subjects who have been marginalized from the “major thinking and discourse”, and form a “Machine of Desires and Powers” so that they can make changes to the society in which they reside.

Director Blerta Neziraj has the capacity to charge every visual element, movement, and character in the play into a performance in which the spectators can feel the text, not only by listening to the  dialogue, but also by seeing, smelling, touching and conceptually tasting the concepts which run through the play.

This text is an attempt to examine the correlation of some concepts in Deleuze’s thinking with the form, content, and structure of Jeton Neziraj’s work.
 
The Return of Karl May concerns the bigotry created in the West against the people, culture, and traditions in the East. This ever-present hostility comes from a framework within which western people have always considered themselves as being superior to others. The dichotomy is such that even many people from the East have imagined the West as their “land of dreams”. The sense of superiority results from a discourse that tries to convince the world that the superpowers of  in the West can play the role of Messiah for the rest of the world whom they regard as being uncivilized and savage. This undoubtedly has roots in colonialism, bigotry, hegemony and racism.

The play portrays Kara Ben Nemsi, the protagonist of the works of German author Karl May. Along with a group of actors from Kosovo, he escapes from the east to the west on a journey to Germany. On his way, he runs into a number of figures - Slavoj Zizek, Peter Handke, a member of Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund - who have not only been satirized by Jeton Neziraj, but also deformed so that the reader, or spectator, is presented with new challenges related to their historic, philosophical and literary characters.

Karl May’s works are typical of those writers who, on one hand, paint the West as being intellectual, wise, and civilized and, on the other hand, describe the East as being ignorant, despotic, full of illegality and savageness. A simple search on Google confirms this. Racism, fascism, Hitler and so on. An article in the New Yorker magazine: “How American Racism Influenced Hitler” contains the eye-catching sentence: “From boyhood on, Hitler devoured the Westerns of the popular German novelist, Karl May.”

The satiric and critical language of Jeton Neziraj demonstrates that little has changed. There are still European intellectuals who a draw the line between the civilized and developed West and the poor East. According to Michel Foucault, the French 20th century post-structuralist philosopher, power throughout the past has changed its shape so that it can be revealed in much more civilized way. What these days is seen as the modern, developed Western culture and civilization propagates the idea that what emerges in the East needs to be eliminated in order for democracy, as defined by the West, to be exported. The West is still a role model for the rest of the world. A new racism is appearing. Umberto Eco was correct when stating that “Eternal Fascism” is still accompanying us, waiting for an opportunity to get back on track.
  
A performance of “the minor”: deterritorialization
 
The Return of Karl May exemplifies the concept of “deterritorialization” of the stage, a controversial and significant concept coined by Deleuze and Guattari. According to one of their most notable works, “Anti-Oedipus”, in the dominant regime, we face a fixed “Territory”. This territory represents the position which is allocated to each person in the machine of society. The regime assigns positions to social subjects from which they cannot deviate. Deleuze and Guattari believe that the social subjects need to deny this territory which has been imposed on them. In other words, they need to “DE- Territorialize” the position they have in this machine of society so that they can remake (reterritorialize) the position for which they have desire.

In the theatre, we can consider the traditional stage as being the “territory”, which has been defined by the dominant discourse to be the only place where performance can take place. In the new theories of performance, this idea has fallen away. According to Richard Schechner, performance can happen everywhere. That is to say, the people involved in the production of a performance must deterritorialize the stage as the fixed place where performance can happen. And then, they can use other places as being the stage such as on the street, among the spectators and also anywhere added to the stage. An example of this is seen in Blerta Neziraj’s performance, when we see one of the actors entering the performance from among the audience. This could be considered an example of “deterritorialization”. In this way, both Jeton Neziraj’s text, whose form has been emptied of the dominant structures of the signifying regimes (due to the manipulation of word-order in the dominant language), and also the performance have “political effectivity” as far as the “mis en scene” is concerned. Once all elements – set, props - were considered as being inferior to the text,  while on the stage, these are different points in the “rhizomatic network” (another term of Deleuze and Guattari) of the performance. Here, according to Deleuze, the concrete concept of the collective creation takes place. What is seen on the stage is not a “text” to which all the agents of the performance (director, actors, stage designer) are committed, but a complete collective creation.

What is fascinating is that Jeton Neziraj has designed the deconstructed the structure of the play in a form which could be assimilated by any kind of society. This means that having a collective creation of the play, The Return of Karl May, is totally possible in any society. The Return of Karl May could be transformed into “the return of anybody else”. This is mainly because this play is moving, according to Deleuze and Guattari’s unorthodox reading of Kafka, towards “a theatre of the minor”. Deleuze insists that the concept of ‘the minor’ is not quantitative as the minor could be bigger than the major. ‘The minor’ could exist in any kind of ‘Machinic Society’ (a concept coined by Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus).

What defines the society is the abstract machines of desire and power as it can clearly be seen in Blerta Neziraj’s performance. We see on stage a number of “nomads” whose aims are totally absurdist in a positive manner. All the actors employ abstract movements to form an image of thought before, behind and around the eyes of the spectators. They even neutralize the “dominating regime of signs existent in the dominating language”. This occurs when, for instance, one actor starts using some meaningless words (I call these words “neutralized and deterritorilised language”.) in Hungarian to satirize the ridiculous convention of “the angry police officer” and then, the second actor is persuaded to speak a language which nobody understands but sounds like Slovak. This is a characteristic of “the literature of the minor” conceptualized by Deleuze and Guattari in their reading on Kafka. According to this work, one of the most important features of “the minor literature” is that “that a minor literature should deterritorialize the major Language”

What they mean by deterritorialization is the neutralization of the sense, or the signifying aspects of language, and a foregrounding of the latter’s asignifying , intensive aspects. This involves a kind of stammering and stuttering or ‘becoming a stranger’ in one’s own tongue.

This neutralization is evident in some lines uttered by the actors. It can also be claimed that the satiric role of Rihi the frog is foregrounding the meaninglessness of the semantic which has dominated every context in which the language starts to perform. This notion of stuttering and stammering exists in the history of theatre, especially in the works of Carmelo Bene, the Italian actor, director, playwright and filmmaker. He, in particular, imposes this neutralization of the sense on the performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III by William Shakespeare (as described by Laura Cull in Deleuze and Performance).

In addition to the first approach, deterritorialization can happen beyond the linguistic and semantic level. The lack of coherence, pragmatically speaking, is more or less destroying the sense of being straightforward over the course of the text so that it is impossible for the viewers to follow a logical sequence throughout the play and the performance. In this way a force starts growing out of the events generated by the presence of the collective subject (the actors) whose leading role has disappeared due to the lack of the auteur’s commands. The actors seem to be disobeying the commands given by the director (that is the character of the director) and this way the traditional role of the director, is deterritorialized so that it can be reterritorialized into a new form.

The director “becomes” a part of the performance machine on a horizontal basis without enjoying any superiority over the other actors on the stage. He, the director, is trying to put the structure back into the text. However, he fails to monitor the process of “becoming.” In the case of this play, it “becoming” Slavoj Zizek, becoming Peter Handke, becoming Kara Ben Nemsi. In spite of the dialogue, thesy are not representing any particular sense that can exist in reality. This means that there is no typical signifier and signified relationship between the linguistic codes in the text and their reference in reality. The opposition of virtual (becoming animal, Rihi the Frog) and actual (the actors trying to put process into practice) creates multiplicities.

I believe that neither the text nor the performance is metaphoric. Metaphors are organized and coherent. They can be decoded. So I would like to call both the text and the performance “conceptual.” The difference between the concept and metaphor lies in the fact that metaphors exist “out there.” When something preexists in the world outside, what the author does is to bring about a representation of them on the stage or in the text. Nevertheless, the concept is invented, shaped and created. “Rihi the frog” is not symbolizing anything special. Why, the viewer and the reader might ask? Rihi the frog is a frog. There is no magic. In “Metamorphosis” by Kafka the beetle talks to the spectators while it is not comprehensible to the characters. Here, we encounter a new concept, which is “becoming animal”. Rihi is neither frog nor a human. It is the process of “becoming animal”. Rihi, ribbits while it speaking human language as well. Is this a metaphor? Of course not. 'Becoming' animal is not a representation. It is created on the stage. There is no messianic power inside Rihi. What we have on and off the stage is “the presence of some concepts” trying to cause multiplicities. All in all, what I have been trying to locate in this review is a new reading which could go beyond seeing the play which is performed as a text only. The ideas of Deleuze and Guattari provide the possibilities of coming up with new ideas which can trigger “thinking”. What I have thought up is the possibility of encounters and events. This way we can create forces through which the spectators encounter the new concepts. This requires going beyond the representation and looking at the performance in a totally novel approach. This way, any type of difference and hierarchical structure is eradicated so that a complete “Collective Creation” could emerge. Even the stage has been deterritorilaized.   The eyes of the spectators are not fixed at a stage which is traditionally separated from the viewers. One actor crosses the spectators to join the other actors on stage. The nomadic actor (I would like to call it the “collective subject”) joins the collective subjectivity. There is a director, yet no hierarchical relationship has been represented on the stage. This is what Laura Cull calls the “theatre of immanence”, using Deleuze’s  idea of “the plane of immanence: a life”.

The idea for “the theatre of immanence” insists on the “eradication of hierarchical system” from the theatre. Laura Cull is looking for a kind of theatre which is no longer representing reality. As with Deleuze, she tries to conceptualize a type of performance in which the immanence emerges so that the representation has to leave the performance and instead we have the presence, the presence of collective subjectivity”. This collective subjectivity owns “nomadic thought”. Nomads do not stay in one place. They enter a territory, and deterritorialize it so as to reside there. The actors (subjects) are nomads forming their territory while they have deterritorialized the streets and the viewers’ eyes. Here, there is no distinction between “on” and “off” the stage. So, according to Richard Schechner, the performance and life become one thing, and they fail to be distinguished in the eyes of the viewers. This is the realm of a new ontology which tries to create a “difference” in itself. There are many others. No superiority is witnessed on the stage because first of all there is no stage, where people can feel that they are different. No unique individual identity. What is performed is the collective creation of a performance to which even the spectators belong