His plays have brought threats, vandalism - and international acclaim. Now the fearless dramatist is retooling Ibsen to lay bare corruption in his homelandJeton Neziraj has clear views about the role of drama. `Theatre should be on the side of those who have no power, on the side of victims, on the side of minorities,` he says. Arguably Kosovo´s leading playwright, he attacks his country´s political issues head-on. His 2018 play The Hypocrites, or The English Patient, savaged the dire state of the healthcare system and was inspired by a bribery scandal. He published one of his plays - in which Serbia and Kosovo fight it out for the EU spot vacated by the UK - under the pseudonym `a Kosovar cynic`. His 2017 play, 55 Shades of Gay, which played at New York´s LaMaMa theatre this year, dealt with the bureaucratic and social fallout when a gay couple register to marry in a Kosovar town. His new play, Department of Dreams, an Orwellian comedy set in an autocracy, is currently at the City Garage theatre in Los Angeles. A fable-like drama set in a world where people are obliged to deposit their dreams in a large state-controlled bank and `would-be dictators want to control all aspects of people´s lives`, the play is applicable to more countries than just Kosovo.Neziraj is dizzyingly prolific - he has written more than 25 plays - and his work has been performed all around Europe, though not yet in the UK. The plays are raucous, irreverent and absurdist. They invoke Ibsen, Molière and Kafka, while raging against corruption and injustice, forcing the audience to confront the wounds of a country that only gained its independence in 2008, and where the war and its aftermath are still being processed. Continue reading...
|
