Mladinsko Theatre, Ljubljana, premiere 31st January 2025
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet,” declares Juliet as she mourns her Romeo in Shakespeare’s tragedy. But this play is not Romeo and Juliet. This play was not written by Shakespeare. This play does not tell a tale of a tragic love story. Boško and Admira is a play about the tragedy of society.
Director Živa Bizovičar took – as the starting point for creating the original play – a war photograph of a dead couple embracing on the Vrbanja Bridge in Sarajevo. In 1993, Admira Ismić, a Muslim, and Boško Brkić, an Orthodox Christian, attempted to escape from the besieged Sarajevo, but just a few meters before the border, they were shot by a still-unknown sniper. Two Americans, photographer Mark H. Milstein and journalist Kurt Schork, dubbed the couple the “Sarajevo Romeo and Juliet”, turning the tragic death of two young people into a sensationalist story and their dead bodies into a symbol of love cut down by war.
Because today anyone can take and publish a photo to present their perspective, dramaturg Nik Žnidaršič and Bizovičar tried to access the story told by the war photograph of Boško and Admira through seven so-called ‘loops’, and present their research material through different perspectives. Each loop concludes with the actors in the same position, mimicking the placement of the bodies in the photograph.
Set designer Dorian Šilec Petek dresses the stage as a photographic studio with screens, lights, and photographic equipment. The camera plays a supporting role throughout, sometimes recording and projecting the actors onto the screen, other times capturing the space, or just some details. This highlights how society, through the media, perceives only fragments of a larger mosaic, never the whole picture. Moreover, this perspective is always limited and framed from a specific angle. Thus, the play presents seven faces of the same story – none more true than the other, yet all equally bold.
Actors Primož Bezjak, Nataša Keser, Boris Kos, Stane Tomažin, and Kaja Petrovič lend their bodies and their voices to various people who tell their stories, from Boško and Admira to their families, to various generals, and journalists, but they do all this with a certain distance. At the beginning of the performance, they all sit around a table, using microphones to create the atmosphere of a podcast recording. Then, in American English, they begin discussing the tragic story. The scene carries a strong sense of irony, particularly in how outsiders – distant from the war both in time and space – present the circumstances through stereotypes, distorting reality with an inappropriate romanticization. An interesting scene is also the one where Keser and Bezjak are framed within a doorway resembling a television screen and they portray a possible future that Boško and Admira might have had. Without words – only through movement and imagery – they bring to life unwritten stories of love, family, and aging.
The actors frequently step beyond the stage, exiting through the front doors and even leaving the venue of Pošta (formerly Nova Pošta of Mladinsko Theatre), effectively expanding the performance space. This directorial choice is particularly interesting: when the actors disappear from our sight, we are left to rely solely on the camera projecting what unfolds beyond the wall. But can we truly trust it? Or are we naively deceived? This spatial expansion is especially powerful in a scene where Keser and Bezjak lie on the ground outside (beyond the visible stage) in the position of Boško and Admira’s bodies, and the camera projects this image onto the screen. Just a few moments later, they step onto the stage, even though the external image is still visible. And for a moment, the audience is in shock, realizing that they have just been deceived.
Boško and Admira. Photos: Dorian Silec Petek
After nearly an hour of weaving stage dialogue about this particular photograph, the audience realizes that they haven’t seen it yet. It has only been discussed, interpreted, and reimagined in various ways. This moment prompts reflection on how easily we, as a society, can be led into a narrative, a belief, or an idea without ever verifying the authenticity of the source ourselves. In one of the scenes, the actors and technicians transform the space into a darkroom, suitable for developing analogue photographs. Bezjak then begins the process of developing the photo. After a few minutes, we finally see it for the first time – the photograph that has inspired musicians, filmmakers, theatre creators, and ultimately Živa Bizovičar’s team. But they saw more than just a love story set against the backdrop of war. Therefore, they saw a society that capitalistically exploits stories of wartime horrors, turning them into sensationalized narratives and spectacles — at the cost of human lives.
The performance feels highly dynamic. It is composed of numerous short scenes, which, due to the fast-paced rhythm, the audience struggles to fully process. At times, it can even give the audience the impression that too much is happening on stage. Perhaps fewer but longer scenes would help sustain the audience’s concentration for a longer time and this would allow deeper engagement. Nevertheless, the thematic and poetic-aesthetic aspects of the performance remain very strong – especially the ending. In the final moments, Keser places small mounds of soil across the stage (which associates us with mass graves). Meanwhile, the other actors with the positions of their bodies attempt to recreate war photographs projected onto a screen. At the same time, a voice-over lists the names of deceased couples who perished in various wars throughout our history. At one point, Petrovič and Tomažin lie down for the last time in the position of the corpses in the photograph, and the other actors bury them with the earth we walk on every day.
The play Boško and Admira reflects on the ethical responsibility when exploring such themes. It questions the portrayal of others’ suffering and how contemporary media report on wars. In the end, one must take a side – but the question remains, which one? After all, is history really written by the victors? Even the first historian, Herodotus, in his Histories, documented the Greek wars from his perspective. After all, many questions still remain unanswered.
Credits:
Directed by: Živa Bizovičar//Dramaturgy: Nik Žnidaršič//Set design and video: Dorian Šilec Petek//Costume design: Nina Čehovin//Music and sound: Gašper Lovrec//Lighting design: Andrej Hajdinjak
For tickets and further information, visit: Mladinsko.com
Nika Šoštarič is a master's student of dramaturgy and performing art. She is also a writer, playwright and a world traveler.
