Qendra Multimedia’s “Negotiating Peace” will be part of this year’s Oslo International Theater Festival. The show will be presented twice on March 20 at 19:00 and March 21 at 17:00 at Black Box Teater in Oslo.

This edition of the International Theater Festival in Oslo is held under the theme “Roots and Returns: Theater at the Crossroads of Empire and Identity” and is curated by Mart Meos, Allan Kaldoja, and Marius Ivaskevicius—the team that organizes the Freedom Festival in Narva, Estonia.

Questions related to identity, freedom, democracy, and both collective and individual trauma characterize the performances in this year’s festival program. This year, the festival will host artists and performances from Ukraine, Estonia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kosovo—countries that have been, and in some cases still are, under authoritarian regimes. In parallel, the festival will feature a thematic program with lectures and discussions.

A dedicated program centered around Kosovo will be featured in this edition of the festival, taking “Negotiating Peace” as its starting point. In addition to the play, a discussion will be organized between Jeton Neziraj and theater critic Natasha Tripney, along with a staged reading of the play “Citycide” by Kosovar anthropologist Eli Krasniqi, published by Qendra Multimedia. This reading will be followed by a conversation with the author, as well as a social event titled “Kosovo Night.”

Alongside these events, the festival will also present the Norwegian production of “The Handke Project”, written by Jeton Neziraj and directed by Blerta Neziraj—a production by the Norwegian Theatre Academy (NTA) in collaboration with Qendra Multimedia, which premiered on March 15 in Fredrikstad.