BALKAN BORDELLO
2022-08-12 22:00
Cinema Square
OutlookFriday, August 12
Cinema Square, 10 p.m.
BALKAN BORDELLO
Duration: 90 minutes
Language of performance: English
Author: Jeton Neziraj
Director: Blerta Neziraj
Cast: Ema Andrea, Svetozar Cvetković, George Drance, Eugene the Poogene, Valois Mickens, Mattie Barber-Bockelman, Ivan Mihailović, Matt Nasser, Verona Koxha, Adrian Morina
Music: Gabriele Marangoni
Costumes: Gabriel Berry
Stage design: Marija Kalabić
Choreography: Gjergj Prevazi
Visual and light concept: Nico de Rooij
Dramaturges: Dimitrije Kokanov, Zishan Ugurlu
Producer: Beka Vučo
Lightning design: Yann Perregaux
Assistant director: Gëzim Hasani
Production coordinators: Maud Dinand, Kushtrim Sheremeti
Technical support: Mentor Berisha
Sound design: Damiano Meacci, Bujar Bakteshi (Sound Assistant)
Assistant costume designer: Flaka Rrustemi
Video: Ilir Gjocaj
Tour organization: Dejan Jovanović
Partners:
“Balkan Bordello: The Saga of a Balkan Family is based on Aeschylus’ trilogy The Oresteia. As an avatar of the modern world, Agamemnon returns triumphant from the battlefield, having reduced the enemy city to ashes. But the fever and enthusiasm that come from inglorious victories are blood animals – they feed and live on blood. When he returns home, death awaits powerful Agamemnon. He is killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, the oppressed woman who, by killing her husband, seeks to find freedom. Together with Egist, a hypocritical poet, Clytemnestra wants to start a new life, without fearing she will be raped and humiliated by her husband. But freedom cannot materialize in territories where violence once reigned for so long.
Now that Agamemnon is gone, Clytemnestra takes on the role of the abuser – she becomes the missing Agamemnon – and the one who must suffer from her violence, oppression, and intolerance is Elektra, her daughter. But the cycle of violence cannot be easily closed, because ‘any blood shed, evokes new blood,’ as it is sung in the play. Therefore, as she once killed her husband, Clytemnestra must now be killed by her son, Orestes, who, together with his boyfriend, Pilad, a choreographer, returns from Berlin where he was living as a refugee. This is the bedrock of this play, which, with black humor, touches on the very fabric of the Balkan temperament, traces the morbidity of the human soul, and highlights the stupidity and naiveté of an era being built on the foundations of violence, intolerance and hatred…”
Jeton Neziraj, director of Qendra Multimedia, formerly served as the Artistic Director of the National Theater in Pristina. He has written over 25 plays that have been staged, translated, and published in more than 15 languages. As a playwright, he has collaborated with many theaters and theater companies, including La MaMa in New York and Volksbühne in Berlin. His plays have won numerous awards and have been performed at theater festivals across Europe. The German theater magazine Theater der Zeit and the Deutschlandfunk Kultur German radio have described him as “Kafka of the Balkans,” and the Los Angeles Times called him “a world-class playwright who challenges our complacency at every twist and turn.”
Blerta Neziraj has been actively directing plays in Kosovo and internationally, with numerous productions of hers touring extensively abroad (Vidy Theater, Lausanne; Piccolo Theater, Milano; Volkstheater, Vienna). In 2018, she was a member of a Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab in New York and in spring 2019 she staged 55 Shades of Gay at La MaMa in New York. Blerta is an award-winning theatre director (including The Best Directing Award for 2020, in Kosovo) and has received celebratory local and international reviews. The Guardian described her as “one of the country’s leading directors”, while The Stage described her shows as “uncompromising… necessary… bold and powerful”.
