Lucija Klarić
Lucija Klarić studied at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, Zagreb. She is a writer and dramaturg who likes “interactive” things. She is a two-time winner of the national playwriting prize for young people and the "Words Beyond" competition. Her work is translated into French, Italian, and English. She is a resident at several international programs. She is proud of her big teddy bear with whom she runs The Bureau of Missing Reactions.
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"THIS IS OUR HOUSE"
is a text about the unstoppable progress of history and the generations of a family that survives it. It’s not a story about the great historical events and big tragedies of worldly proportions but about a microhistory being built through several generations that preserved the family line amidst the unpredictable and crushing movements of history. Told through the perspective of a female and male character, the couples of the family, the drama poses questions on where is the line between the conservation of the family tree and heritage in relation to our own life and happiness? What is it that we consider to be essential to pass on to our kids and grandkids - to those that come after us, and what do we actually pass on to them? Using the idea of the couple as the vehicle to tell the story, as the basis of the family, an intimate chronicle unfolds in which survival and self-preservation always triumph over love, perhaps to this very day, and perhaps not. As the (family) house still stands, it gathers the things we would’ve loved to forget and hide and holds the things we decided to conserve and build in its foundation, so what happens when the house becomes too full of history to continue? What do we do with all that baggage that was quietly passed on for years and is there hope for a world bigger than one house?
Nikolina Rafaj
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.
Nina Plavanjac
Nina Plavanjac (1998) is a playwright and theatre director from Belgrade, author of premiered plays Just Voice, Castle in the Lake, Clouds, and Aquarium, which marked her directorial debut. She received the Sterija Award for her play A Name in the Ashes and the award for the best Bosnian-Herzegovinian play for Petar’s Doll, and was a finalist for the Sterija, Heartefact, and Aurora awards.
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"NAME IN THE ASHES"
A Name in the Ashes is a play about what happens to women when society decides they are inconvenient. It draws inspiration from the historical reality of women vanishing into asylums—often without diagnosis, trial, or return. The play follows women confined to a luxurious sanatorium where, under the pretense of healing, they are robbed of their identities and sold as merchandise. It is not only a story about victims and abusers, but about victims who become abusers—about how trauma and cruelty are reproduced and inherited, and how power corrupts even the broken. Structured in three parts—each marked by a shift in setting, language, and musical genre—the play reflects the way identity is fractured by systemic violence. Each of the three parts features a women’s chorus performing musical forms tied to female expression: ballads, cabarets, and laments. Though the women remain the same, their names and roles change with each part, reflecting how society rebrands them depending on their perceived worth—first as Beauties, then as Whores, and finally as Monstrosities. Writing this text was my way of confronting personal trauma, depression, and fear of institutional punishment, and I’ve since seen it create a deep sense of connection, healing, and solidarity in others. As misogyny and authoritarianism rise across Europe and the world, often hand in hand with renewed efforts to control women’s bodies and inner lives, this play insists on remembering the names that were taken.
Vida Davidović
Vida Davidović is an award-winning Bosnian and Serbian playwright, screenwriter, dramaturge, and novelist. She is mainly interested in writing about Balkan modalities of femininity under colonial gaze and transgenerational trauma (mental illness) in the Balkans. Her plays are fragmented, non-linear, and poetic, often inspired by psychoanalysis and postcolonial theories.
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"KANSAS CITY, KANSAS"
KANSAS CITY, KANSAS is a play written as a part of a graduate thesis at University of Nebraska - Lincoln that operates in the tradition of expressionist dramaturgy and playwriting, taking up themes of abuse, imperialism, war, trauma, womanhood, Balkan identities, and the history of the Balkans, as well as the discourses of psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory. The use of different theoretical frameworks related to both international and personal politics, which are shown to be intertwined, suggests a strong relationship between political processes in Second World countries that have experienced multiple occupations throughout their history and the way women in those countries relate to questions of body, authority, femininity, and interpersonal relationships. The play ultimately aims to establish the deep connection between two entities— personal and political—and to present politics through individual feelings and bodies; it seeks to point out the destitution of identity that follows the destitution of the country, and the destitution of the country that follows the destitution of national identity under the forces of colonial oppression. Playing with the idea of mirroring, the play resolves around three characters reflecting each other's lives as immigrants from Bosnia living in the US through a fragmented, non-linear, often surrealist form with many dream-like sequences. Ultimately, Kansas City, Kansas is written to all of us who carry marks of geopolitics on our bodies.
