Heartefact House, Belgrade, premiere 12 May 2025
The beginning of They Are All Gone, a new performance at Heartefact House in Belgrade, registers as a highly naturalistic piece of contemporary theatre – although it achieves this effect with technology, among other means. As we are seated around the performance space and find headphones on our chairs, we are asked to keep them on all the time because we will need them even if it appears otherwise.
The first scene of They Are All Gone happens off stage and on the audio as we follow an older married couple in the apartment’s bathroom – Sadika is bathing in ice-cold water, because she likes it that way, and her husband Azem is washing her hair. We hear the gurgling of water and two old, fragile, often stumbling voices. And indeed, when the two characters finally appear in person – Sadika in her bathrobe and Azem fully dressed and helping her walk – we witness physically weak, slow people who are incredibly convincingly played by legends of Serbian acting, Mirjana Karanović and Svetozar Cvetković. Their empathetic and vivid portrayal of everyday characters – the couple could be grandparents of any one of us from the post-Yugoslav region –gives the strongest naturalistic thread to the performance.
But then something off-key, mysterious, maybe even fantastical happens. After Azem retreats to other parts of the apartment, Sadika arranges the dining table for her birthday lunch and celebration and starts talking to her family members – children, grandchildren, in-laws – who are not there. The audience doesn’t see the new characters on stage but we do hear them through our headphones, together with the realistically-crafted dialogue between them and Sadika. The usual family-gathering conversation plays on – is everyone coming?; who is sick and should I be worried about them?; don’t hide your problems from me, I am old but I deserve to know everything and want to help you. The dishes and cutlery are clanking but only through our headphones and, apparently, in Sadika’s mind.
If you tend to read the announcing description of the show before you go and see it, and if you take note from the title, you won’t perceive as a spoiler what I will write now. Sadika’s entire family has been killed in the Srebrenica genocide and what we hear or see from them (everyone, including Azem who appears in person) is a form of Sadika’s fantasy. Is it, what we witness on stage and on the audio, her memory? Or perhaps an imagination of what could have been? Does it play out as a form of the protagonist’s dementia? Who knows. The beauty of the show is that it keeps these questions unresolved but what is sure is that the Sadika’s consciousness uses fantasy as a coping mechanism with the reality that’s so utterly cruel and incomprehensible, for the genocide in Srebrenica is arguably the darkest hour of an already bleak and bloody conflict of the Yugoslav wars.
This interwoven network of trauma and everyday life, reality and fantasy, naturalism and speculation is written by the Kosovan playwright Doruntina Basha who collaborated with the director Andrej Nosov, also the founder of Heartefact, on the show. Basha’s work has already been staged by Heartefact, her play Finger was produced more than a decade ago, in which she dealt with the lingering trauma of the Kosovo war on women who lost a family member. Besides writing about the destructive effects of war, Basha has also put female characters in leading roles and that’s why she is such a good choice for a project like They Are All Gone, since she already has experience writing about immense loss and women’s marginalized position in society.
They Are All Gone. Photo: Nebojsa Babic
Both Basha and Nosov worked to create They Are All Gone as a deeply intimist performance, but this choice also reflects a wise political decision. Srebrenica is still a deep wound in the region and a flashpoint in Serbia, and we are light-years away from grappling with the legacy of this horrible war crime. By approaching this issue through the lens of a touching personal story full of human pain and desires, the authors are giving a face to human suffering – the genocide’s victims and all those affected by it are no longer statistics but flesh-and-blood characters.
Nosov’s work with actors is exquisite, and not only with Karanović and Cvetković. Alban Ukaj also appears as the protagonist’s caregiver in a nursing home in The Netherlands where she actually lives. He is warm, understanding and connects with Sadika because he is also of Yugoslav heritage. He is also the only character, besides Sadika, who is real, i.e. not imagined by her. When he is present, we are watching the realistic portrayal of everyday life; when he is not, we are in fantasy. Besides these three actors who appear on stage, an ensemble of 10 actors from Sarajevo give voices to imagined family members. This has happened, from the production point of view, since Heartefact and the Sarajevo War Theatre SARTR are co-producers of the show, together with My Balkans (USA, Serbia), La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (USA), Ibsen Scope (Norway) and Allianz Foundation (Germany). Premieres of the show are also planned in Sarajevo and New York.
What’s unique about Heartefact House is not that just it’s located in the centre of Belgrade in a former apartment converted into a performance space, but that shows created there cleverly incorporate that space into their dramaturgy. Our Son, How I Learned to Drive and All Good Barbies all used the setting to conjure both the intimate and claustrophobic family atmosphere of their stories. In the case of They Are All Gone, it’s not so much the claustrophobic setting as the impression of closeness to these relatable and vulnerable characters. But it’s not only the playfulness with space that connects many Heartefact’s shows, it’s also the idea of giving voice to the marginalized – gay and trans folks, women and economically constrained millennials. With They Are All Gone, Basha and Nosov have also give a voice to those affected by the genocide in Srebrenica and they have done it in a gentile and empathetic way.
Credits:
Author: Doruntina Basha//Director: Andrej Nosov
Cast: Mirjana Karanović, Svetozar Cvetković. Alban Ukaj
For further information, visit: Heartefact,org
Further reading: Doruntina Basha interview: “There is a knife in each of our backs”
Borisav Matić is a critic and dramaturg from Serbia. He is the Regional Managing Editor at The Theatre Times. He regularly writes about theatre for a range of publications and media.
He’s a member of the feminist collective Rebel Readers with whom he co-edits Bookvica, their platform for literary criticism, and produces literary shows and podcasts. He occasionally works as a dramaturg or a scriptwriter for theatre, TV, radio and other media. He's the administrator of IDEA - the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association.
