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

Photo credit: ​Atdhe Mulla

Photo credit: ​Atdhe Mulla

Agnesa Mehanolli
​
To think that time passes but so much remains the same is mind-blowing, right? The fact that a work of art, no matter how old, can be revived and put on stage and still make you feel the same as the first audience that witnessed it, is just… wow!

I mean, Vaclav Havel wrote his play Audience in 1975, written to serve as a mirror of, or even a backlash against, the communist regime that existed in his country at the time. And to think, today, 45 years later, we still feel the need to put on such a play within the theatre scene of my own “democratic” country is just sad. 

Havel's play depicts a suffocating bureaucratic system that not only doesn’t contribute to the artistic wellbeing of its own country but is destined to prevent its progress, unless it under agreed conditions of course.

This adaptation by Jeton Neziraj shows two men on opposite poles; a theatre director, trying to prepare a show for the premiere that’s supposed to be held in a couple of days and a man working for the system who has come to investigate seemingly baseless charges that turn out to be legitimate albeit absurd. The plot unravels itself in meaningless dialogues (that serve to make us bored) eventually reaching a point that says: What do you know? The truth is boring indeed!

There is no conflict in this play. There is no special place to which the characters are trying to get. The play takes the form of a serious talk (with not such serious acting) about the serious problems of our governing system that sometimes intentionally makes space for a few little jokes just to keep us focused.

There is a third character, but we never see her. The actress Rozi is an invisible character who from time to time takes the focus away from the other characters with her strange noises. I believe she is there to remind us that it’s a play we are watching. We can laugh a little, we can enjoy it. But she is also there to remind us what a key role in the decision-making of the bureaucratic world is played by the “female erotica” – element.

To my mind, the whole point of this play is to allow us to understand the sad reality in which we exist. We need to see the dirty agreements that are constantly being made behind closed doors, even if it means contaminating the stage with such horrific truths. In fact, if it has come to this, than I am supportive of putting on stage plays with such intentions.

Dukagjin Podrimaj plays the Theatre Director and Shpëtim Selmani plays the role of the bureaucratic guy. The personification of the director was executed perfectly by Podrimaj, making me feel each gram of his frustration, anger, tiredness, and hopelessness. He justified each and every word and action made by his character, to the point that the play felt a bit one-sided.

Though Podrimaj convinces completely as the Director, alongside him Selmani is less persuasive as the Inspector. Or maybe it’s just me not remembering how bureaucratic types are around here, and Selmani is indeed doing the best to paint a portrait of such not-serious, grotesque and common guys like the one around here, in Kosovo.

Watching this play feels like sitting in your favorite café. You find a good chair in a beautiful spot and your favorite waiter comes to take your order.  You tell him that you trust his choice and with a very excited face he promises you the best drink, with all-natural ingredients. He disappears only to come back with a beautifully decorated cup and he tells you that it’s something original that he’s been working on these last few days. He assures you that it’s very delicious and you trust him just like all the other times when he proved it to you.  But then, suddenly the boss shows up and he takes your drink, doesn’t let you try it, while coming to the conclusion that this is not what you ever wanted! And then he makes the waiter bring you a whole different ugly-tasting drink that contains “more than natural ingredients” that according to him are supposed to satisfy you. And what is left for you to do if things are going to work this way? To never come back there!

This does not mean that I have come to the same conclusion as in the previous paragraph.  It just means that, like a whole bunch of people in this country, we will soon get tired of drinking ugly-tasting drinks and we will rise to say no! No to bad theatre. No to bad governments. No to bad actors. Yes: to new opportunities, even if that creates more of everything I have mentioned. We are just going to have to keep on fighting.

Author: Jeton Neziraj//Director: Agon Myftari​//Cast: Dukagjin Podrimaj, Shpëtim Selmani

In Five Seasons: An Enemy of the People, Oda Theater

Tringë Arifi 

The stories I’ve heard as a child were not just fairy-tales. These stories, that arose from love and in the midst of ruins, speak of a reality: the reality of post-war Kosovo.

In Jeton Neziraj's play, the lord of construction, Meti, is initially presented as someone who suffered during the war, but he has a mission to build and reconstruct: ostensibly in the name of development.

The Architect (played by Armend Smajli) also deals with the urban plans of the city; he has a love for his city, but he needs to deal with the legalities as well. The Architect works diligently for a city which is being ravaged by construction.

A Journalist asks him for an interview about his plan, but the Architect refuses to do so without completing the plan he has started. Then comes the Union Leader who informs us about the death of a construction worker and asks the Architect to do something for them, while the Architect tells the Journalist to introduce this topic on television and the Journalist invites the Union Leader to speak.

The Union Leader's only criticism of the devastated city is based on the fact that he was once a patriot, and that construction materials were coming from Serbia, from those who burned our houses and our villages. The Architect calls for patience, because there is a hope that his plan will be approved by the Municipal Assembly.

To institutionalize the demolition of the city and to give colour to this issue, the UN administration appears in the form of a representative of the administration, Pierre, who organizes a party ostensibly to celebrate the successes of the city.

After this party, there are some quarrels about construction, but the businessman's reasoning is that those constructions will be stopped and now a plan will be worked on, to create the "City of the Sun" and that all other plans can stop. So Pierre suggests he can stop all the evil in this city, but he is also an accomplice with the heads of the mafia, who are ruining the city in order to raise their capital. 

The Architect's daughter (played by Verona Koxha) has been hired by the UN as a translator and is being offered an opportunity by Pierre to go abroad, to France. She suffers from epilepsy and the anxiety of abandoning her father, but Pierre insists that she takes the job and vows to help them through the French ambassador.

The voice of the Lord of Construction murmurs through the city at night, rejoicing in the sleep of the citizens and the darkness because in this way he can build his multi-storey buildings. In Pierre's office, Meti talks to him about the misfortunes of the people and mentions the war. Pierre hates this word; he closes his ears and will not hear about these sufferings, and so he fulfils the role of almost every UN administrator in Kosovo.

In the second season of Neziraj's play, things take an ironic turn as the discussion of the urban plan and the voting have been removed from the agenda. There is a neo-colonial logic to the Administrator, who deletes things from the agenda and keeps his eyes closed in front of regular urban plans for the city, but his open eyes on the mafia who constantly build without any order and ethics. It is a familiar logic, one that has not stopped since the post-war period in Kosovo and has often been supported from above, when we were in the protectorate and in government, as now.

At a meeting in the office of the Union Leader, the Architect's daughter enters and gives the father a letter in which she has received a threat. Pierre has informed the daughter to tell the father that he is not the only one being threatened, his daughter is too.

The office is talking about organizing a revolt, a protest of workers, and for this the Union Leader has big promises. He says that he will bring together about 10,000 (or maybe at least 100 people). But, these are all empty words and the Architect remains stoic in his attitudes to save the city.

He dreams that his daughter is being raped and runs to save her, but this is a result of his subconscious and his fear of threats that are constantly blurred by the mafia. He does not give up; he fights even in his dreams. He is a true dreamer.

On the TV show, the Architect calls the UN, swindlers, mobsters and construction mafias, gangsters who are eating the city, and he calls the people who work for them mercenaries. He also raises the dilemma of what is the difference between the mafia and the UN, and says with a laugh that the mafia is better organized than the UN.

When the show airs, it turns out that the interview with the Architect has been deleted and the Union Leader and Meti are working together. Everyone is turning against the Architect, perhaps because he alone had proposals and concrete work and ideas for the city, the others had empty words and played the role of agitator just to discover his plan.

At night on the street, the architect is attacked. Smajli plays the role so well you can feel his passion, his love for the city.  The Architect has connected his life with his city, and as a result he is killed by the mafia: the master of construction. In the last moments of his life, he asks "why do you want to kill me"? while Smajli's eyes convey the full spark of his ideals and love for the city. And the lord of constructions answers: because you have become the enemy of the development of this city.

The play's ironical climax sees Pierre announce to the Architect's daughter two pieces of news, good and bad. Koxha's expresses her pain so well that in this scene it seems that a part of her body is resting with her father, and it is not too late for the scholarship she has won. Her eyes reflect this endless pain as she faints.

But no, this is not the end. The final irony is when the killers and instigators inaugurate the 'Architect's Way', a street formerly known as the 'French Revolution'.

The Architect's daughter makes her way to the airport, but still has questions for herself. Her father's murder leaves scars. She says that every autumn someone leaves and that she should have done the same, but now it is too late to leave, but not too late to stay and understand more about her father's murder. Here Pierre is embarrassed and starts talking defensively about how we internationals brought you freedom and you were waiting for us with flowers.

The Architect's daughter had to stay to understand more the truth of this city and if she left she would never find out.

The play's fifth and final scene - or  season - connects the subconscious mind of the Architect's daughter with her father. When the Architect, in the middle of her dream, asks her `"are you happy?" `She answers hesitantly because she no longer even knows what she is; there are many people around her but she feels lonely.

In Neziraj's drama we are presented not only with the absence of the father, but of the man, a man with dreamless dreams, who had decided to open his eyes to his daughter and his community. To imagine something better than dust, concrete and a waste of time, a system run by rotten people with rotten ideas. And when the rot spreads it led the best people of the city to be declared 'Enemies of the People,' and only after their murder to be declared heroes, with streets named after them, living on in myth. Traces of the beauty of a place are usually engraved only on street names and in the vivid traces hidden beneath the constructions. 

I shared the sense of disgust that permeates the play and I empathised with the Architect, with his loneliness during this process.

The play also introduces the idea of the eye as an organ through which art sculpts our individual instincts. This is the privilege of some wise people, and we are desperately searching for them.
As the crazy craving for making money becomes a goal in itself, it has undoubtedly weakened people’s capacity to understand the deepest potentials of life. And so as Bauhaus teaches us, the Architect displays a vision where he learns the special language of form in order to be able to give visual expression to his ideas. He conducts intensive studies in order to rediscover the grammar of design, in order to equip the spectator with objective knowledge of optical facts such as proportion, optical illusions and colours. He constantly informs us that art is a product of human desire, that it transcends the boundaries of logic and reason. It is an area of ​​common interest for us all, like beauty which is an essential requirement of civilization and not simply multi-storey design.

As his eyes after death are directed even more powerfully towards the public and after he is declared an ``enemy`` of development and the people, he tells us the opposite: we must fight for development, for our ideals.

As in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche's On War and Warriors, he says that our highest ideal should be left to command us and that man is something to be overcome, and the love of life should be the love of your highest hope. In Neziraj's In Five Seasons, this is love - and hope - for the city.
 
Author: Jeton Neziraj//Director: Blerta Neziraj//Cast: Egzona Ademi, Shpetim Selmani, Afrim Mucaj, Verona Koxha, Kushtrim Qerimi and Armend Smajli 

Naten, Ma, Metropol Theater, Tirana, Albania

Fatlinda Daku

This is is not a typical performance. This audience is seated in a circle on the stage. In the middle of the circle sits Telma, an elderly woman watching TV. The play is set in her kitchen, a space surrounded with black walls. Some red pillows are on the chairs contrast with the gloom that grips the whole space. It’s been two minutes since the performance started. Everything seems normal. Routine. A scene of ordinary life. We wait for something to happen.


All of a sudden, Jessi, Telma's daughter, enters the room. With an unusual calmness she asks her mother where her father's pistol is because she has decided to kill herself. Telma is shocked. She strongly opposes Jessie's decision. She tries to convince Jessie to not do it. We learn that Jessie is divorced and she has a son. She feels that she failed as a mother and the only way to make everything better is by killing herself.

Suddenly, the set disappears. Don’t get me wrong, it's still there. But Telma and Jessie are the ‘play’ now. The whole of Ema Andrea's production is focused on the complexity of their mother-daughter relationship as portrayed by Ilire Vinca and Jonida Beqo. They face each other for the first time. They are talking about things they have never talked about before. Their dialogue is like a poem that never ends. Even the melody playing in the background ends up being unfinished.

They tell each other white lies.  They discover others. The harsh reality of their life is being told. As it is. They question one another, they confront their realities.

The performance, based on the Pulitzer-winning play by Marsha Norman, raises many questions. Do we all experience a situation in the same way? What happens when there is no proper communication between people? What exactly is proper communication? And most importantly, do we lie to save other people from the pain or do we lie to save ourselves from the other people's pain?

Natën, Ma provoked feelings in me. It made me reflect on myself and my circle. We all know a Telma and a Jessie in our lives. Often even we are like them in different situations. Like Telma who is afraid of the unknown, Telma who often lies to not hurt others with the truth, who likes her comfort zone and finds peace when she knows what will always happen. Even if it's all a white lie. The TV is a metaphor for this.

Like Jessi who feels that she has failed in everything, in every role that this society has given her, as a daughter, as a woman, as a mother. She feels insecure. She feels rejected. Society has placed unattainable expectations on her. This wish to kill herself is her act of rebellion against those expectations. Jessi only exists, she does not live…

Norman's play also makes you analyze yourself. Your actions. When the performance ends you suddenly find yourself questioning many decisions in your life. You find yourself thinking about the future and the way how you will communicate with your family and friends. You also count your own white lies.

It is a play capable of making you become a better person. And I believe that this is the greatest achievement of any performance in the theatre. To make you have these ‘’a-ha moments’’. To make you, be you. Without the white (or not so white) lies.

Author: Marsha Norman // Directed by: Ema Andrea // Cast: Ilire Vinca, Jonida Beqo // Music: Bojken Lako // Music Players: Endi Aaron Cekani, Rei Kondakciu // Stage Design: Enio Shehi

Arturo Ui, National Theatre of Kosovo

Tringë Arifi

Violence in the city. Violence in the people. This is the plan of gangster Arturo Ui, who in addition to a character in a play by Bertolt Brecht, is a character of our times, our politicians and those who govern us. 

Emptiness and decay manifest themselves in a moment when things do not go as expected by Arturo and his gang, slowly emerging into chaos.

There is a lot of symbolism in the production, the last to be directed by the late Bekim Lumi. A scene in a bathroom, in which men sit on the toilet bowl sipping espresso, symbolises their comfort. This is followed by the complaints from the minority to the majority (the people) where they say `` why are they complaining`` ;`` why do you see crisis and why are the people not giving the cauliflower products while they are rotting? `` … They are sitting comfortably over the rot and misery they have created, trading in cauliflower then passing on complaints about not selling them.

When some of his friends start to complain, to get out of that kind of comfort, Arturo's circle is narrowed further. The boss appears in the bathtub and two men scurry around him, then one comes and kills the other in front of Arturo - perhaps this scene shows the inferiority they have towards him, the will to commit more and more crimes to keep Arturo happy as he becomes the highest in the hierarchy of crime. 

After this macabre scene of murder disguised as suicide, the mafia talks about the corruption, while the old man appears as a business intermediary who is threatened. The whole scene is accompanied by music. Tom Waits' November is used in the face of crime, like Beethoven's 9th symphony with which the Nazis had committed crimes against humanity, and so they sing and dance like crazy people.

As violence echoes across the city and humanity, Arturo devises another plan to destroy the courts in which the perpetrators are supposed to face justice. 

The culmination of the crime comes when his friends have become worried about Arturo as he comes second and kills the two friends who were in trouble for him. He is afraid of his own being.

The old man addresses Arturo about the glory. He says that it is not won by force - and so the old man is also killed.

Corpses appear in bathtubs. The first corpse is unveiled and resurrected. He rises and gives a speech: "You killed yourself when you killed me." 

Then the unconscious man begins to talk about violence, robbery and murder. He talks about the faith, about the will of the old man, the thanks he gave him in the will - though we do not see the will.

When Arturo asks for votes on who is in his favour, he says those who are not in favour are necessarily against me. His only two remaining friends raise the hands of the dead from the grave as if they were voting, saying that everyone should be thankful. The irony is that only the two are alive and can vote, but his unjustifiable desire for power and crime makes them his two remaining friends lie and deceive him with votes, just as he likes to constantly lie to himself.

Arturo appears again with an ironic speech about peace, protection of the city and trade, in which he says that no slander will stop him and he laughs like a madman. This laugh comes from not facing oneself, fear of oneself, a conclusion that drives him crazy. 

This is how the fate of a people ends and the scene closes without seeing the fate of this leader, but the being and the destruction towards this being are very well illustrated.
 
The actors bring subtlety to their roles, an interiority is evident in  every performance. Bujar Ahmeti, an actor of the new generation performs with the skill of a veteran. He takes the audience with him, walking us through the devilish mind of the character. Afrim Kasapolli, an actor of the older generation plays Dogsborough. He uses his interior a lot and masters the stage.
 
The actors work well as an ensemble, as a team, clearly confident in the director and the concept. They fuse together. They become one. They evoke the passion, courage, and emotion of the characters, delicately drawing the relationships between the characters throughout the show.

Author: Bertolt Brecht// Director: Bekim Lumi//Ass. director: Bashkim Ramadani // Cast: Bujar Ahmeti, Afrim Kasapolli, Afrim Mucaj, Labinot Raci, Faris Berisha, Valmir Krasniqi, Edon Shileku, Ismet Azemi, Ylber Bardhi, Kushtrim Qerimi, Shpetim Kastrati, Muhamed Arifi, Alban Rexhaj // Choreography: Majlajdo Gala // Music: Dren Suldashi // Stage Design: Mentor Berisha // Costumes: Alma Krasniqi // Tailor: Fadil Sahiti // Light Design: Mursel Bekteshi // Sound Design: Dren Suldashi, Avdi Gervalla // Stage Manager: Bajram Mehmetaj // Translation into Albanian: Robert Shvarc // Adaption into Gheg: Gazmend Berlajolli, Bekim Lumi // Organizer: Beqir Beqiri // Master Carpenter: Aziz Maloku // Carpenters: Rrahman Mehmeti, Hasan Buzaku, Fatmir Avdiu // Props: Xhemail Gllavica, Driton Musliu // Dressers: Fahredin Ahmeti, Linda Ahmeti // Make Up: Flori Hasani, Myrvete Tahiri