The 5th edition of the Kosovo Theatre Showcase will run from 25th to 30th October 2022 and will feature work by Jeton Neziraj and Patrik Lazić.
Over a period of five days this October, the Kosovo Theatre Showcase will present a series of performances in Prishtina and other cities in Kosovo. The 2022 programme will feature 10 performances which will take place both in theatres and other cultural spaces.
This year’s programme starts on 25th October with Jeton Neziraj’s moving play Father and Father directed by: Kushtrim Koliqi, which will be presented at the Ethnological Museum in Kosovo. On the 26th, there will be an opportunity to see a performance of Husino’s Miner, a production of Caryl Churchill’s seminal play Top Girls, directed by Shkurtë Aliu at the Dondona Theatre, and The Handke Project, an international co-production written by Jeton Neziraj and directed by Blerta Neziraj.
On 27th, the City Theatre of Gijan will present Jeton Neziraj’s Kosovo for Dummies followed by a production of Florent Mehmeti’s play about grief, The Afterloss, at Teatri Oda in Prishtina. The day’s programme concludes with Death Hour, written by Ulpianë Maloku and Agnesa Mehanolli and inspired by the real-life experiences of the prison system under communism in Yugoslavia and Albania. This performance takes place at the Museum of the Prison of Prishtina.
On 28th, there will be performances of Jeton Neziraj’s play Sworn Virgin and Our Son, written and directed by Patrik Lazić and produced by Heartefact Fund, performed in the National Museum of Kosovo.
On the final full day of the programme, audiences will be able to see performances of Vaclav Havel’s The Memorandum directed by Agon Myftari at Adriana Theatre in Ferizaj and Stiffler, Doruntina Basha’s scathing play about societal violence against women, at Prishtina’s Teatri Oda.
The showcase programme will also feature panel discussions about the role of the critic and theatrical curiosity and myopia in moments of crisis entitled Theatre Beyond Our Backyard. There will also be a Theatre Market event during which upcoming projects will be presented and a series of readings including The Shadow Garden by UK playwright Sarah Hehir.
Since 2018, the Kosovo Theatre Showcase has brought together programmers, critics, journalists and other theatre professionals from around the world to see a selection of the latest productions from theatres in Kosovo and the region.
For more details about this year’s programme, visit: qendra,org
Further reading: The Handke Project
Further reading: Doruntina Basha interview: “There is a knife in each of our backs”
Natasha Tripney is a writer, editor and critic based in London and Belgrade. She is the international editor for The Stage, the newspaper of the UK theatre industry. In 2011, she co-founded Exeunt, an online theatre magazine, which she edited until 2016. She is a contributor to the Guardian, Evening Standard, the BBC, Tortoise and Kosovo 2.0
