ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

The first act of this “trilogy” lays bare the zeal of a Kosovar society that persistently strives to shift itself, politically and culturally, into “European civilization” and to fit within it, believing it belongs there historically. Amid paradoxes, conflicts and uncertainty, the people and animals of Kosovo mobilize to meet the required standards required for Kosovo to join the EU. The second act turns the scrutiny, analysis and critique on Europe itself, which in popular culture is known as the “old witch,” or “the old bitch gone in the teeth,” as Ezra Pound called it. Historical traumas, political conflicts, contradictions, cynicism, arrogance and Babylo-bureaucracy expose Europe as it really is: beyond that naive Kosovar idealization, but also beyond the belief that she stands firmly on the democracy and values it proclaims.

Actor: We’ve worn ourselves out riding across Europe, yet I still don’t understand what this Europe stands for! What is my relationship to Europe as an actor, and what is my relationship to Europe as an Albanian? “What’s Europe to me, or I to Europe, that I should weep for her?” as Shakespeare would say.

Director: As an actor you carry a certain insecurity: even though our approach to the show is Brechtian, you were trained in the Stanislavski method, which is considered outdated in Europe, and on top of that you love oriental shadow theater… So you have a certain artistic inferiority complex. And as an Albanian you feel like Europe’s mythic child, but an abandoned child. You love Europe unconditionally, the way a child loves its mother. But does Europe love you? That’s what troubles you!

“Kosovo Trilogy…” is an attempt to retell contemporary European history, together with its Eurocentric foundation and its ideological kitsch, which is exposed to us packaged beneath the pathetic makeup of formats like Eurovision.

Beneath the absurdity of the contests for points and the battles for recognition and validation lies a world structured by hierarchies created by the “club of the powerful” and the “decision-makers.” And in that world there is a knife-sharp divide: between those who judge and those who are judged; between those who are allowed in and those who remain outside; between those who are slaughtered with a rusty knife and those who are smothered with European injections; between those who are citizens and those who remain foreigners, and so on.