Biography

Nikolina Rafaj (1994) is a dramaturge, playwright, and director whose work spans both institutional and independent theatre. With a background in Dramaturgy as well as Anthropology and Ethnology, she is currently continuing her academic journey through a PhD in Literary Theory and Theatre Studies. Alongside her creative practice, she enjoys leading interdisciplinary workshops and has been recognized with several awards and grants for her work.

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“GONE, YET STILL LEAVING\LIVING”

After the death of the Mother, the Father is unable to come to terms with her passing and intentionally embarks on a self-destructive journey, marked by the sudden reappearance of the Son, who returns to the family nucleus after some time. The Son’s presence becomes the only obstacle to that journey — the Son who, in his own struggle to cope with the breakdown of his marriage and the loss of the Mother, whom he never had the strength to stay with, becomes obsessively preoccupied with the Father. This private triad is continually intersected by the Multitude, which functions almost like a chorus, amplifying the sense of entrapment and the protagonists’ inability to act. The Mother’s perspective introduces a counterweight, raising the question of the right to leave — on her own terms — and thus becomes the only true driving force. She alone manages not to drown in the multitude of other people’s voices, thoughts, and desires. In a way she manages to carve out silence. The stages of the self-destructive journey — or the attempt to externalize the unprocessable — are also shaped by contexts that offer at least the possibility of coping: chanting at a stadium, a conversation with a priest, or an attempted theft. Departure — except the kind over which none of the characters has control — never actually happens. Instead, each of them sinks deeper into a space of limbo that offers no resolution, only new paths for continuing the journey. Or wandering. Sometimes, it’s all the same.