Dodona Theatre, Prishtina, premiere 5th November 2024
A case could be made that Euripides’ The Trojan Women is the earliest anti-war play. This reworking by Kosovo playwright and actor Shpëtim Selmani saw artists and actors from Kosovo – from the Prishtina-based Artpolis Art and Community Centre – and Serbia joining forces for a unique production performed in Albanian and Serbian.
Directors Zana Hoxha and Maja Mitic collaborated with actors from Serbia and Kosovo to bring this story to the stage. Euripides’ play tells of what befell the women of Troy after their husbands were killed, and their remaining families taken away as slaves. Written in 415 BC, it’s a play about the human fallout of war, and particularly its impact on women and children. It’s a play that remains resonant and relevant, as wars continue to rage today.
The production has been two years in the making, and earlier versions have been staged in Belgrade, and in Prizren’s Cinema Lumbardhi. Actors Shpëtim Selmani, Qendresa Kajtazi, co-director Maja Mitic and Labinot Raci have been with the production since the beginning, while Branka Stojković, Semira Latifi, and Aleksandar Stoimenovski joined later on.
The play features Hecuba, Helen, Cassandra, Andromache, Athena and other female characters from Ancient Greece but also modernizes the original in parts, with the actors breaking character and starting to discuss the play from our contemporary perspective.
The staging was simple and minimalistic. There were only a few props. A huge piece of blue plastic was used to represent the raging ocean waves. Ropes were also used to depict how the women were enslaved, with the actresses tying them around their bodies. The choreography creates moments of vitality in the production, but it also feels unnatural at times.
This approach – switching between the ancient and the modern – led to a production that was sometimes jarring tonally, with scenes shifting from one epoch to the other and not always smoothly. This does not help to build the themes of the play in a cohesive way. I was never able to immerse myself fully in the play’s more brutal and poignant moments, such as descriptions of rape – drawing on a real-life rape of a Kosovan woman. The actress shares the experiences in the first person and goes into details of what happened in a manner that suggests they are drawing on documentary material.
Similarly, when the Greeks forcefully took away Andromache’s son Astyanax in order to kill him and avoid the possibility that he might, one day, avenge Troy, the power of the moment was lost.
Photos by Esad Duraki
The dialogue explores the corruption of human nature. but the play rarely achieves lyricism. The words always feel like mere words and seem distant and detached. The style of delivery sometimes dropped from naturalistic dialogue, which is less effective and breaks the flow.
The mixing of dialogue in both Albanian and Serbian makes one lose touch with the sense of antiquity. This incongruence in dialogue led to a trampoline-effect with conversations jumping from one place to the other – without giving one clear message.
Some of the choices of directors Zana Hoxha and Maja Mitic felt rushed leaving a production that had many loose ends. Stripped of tension and emotional impact, the production didn’t feel like a tragedy.
The feminist perspective on war persists, however; these women lamenting the deaths of their beloved were being taken as slaves to another country after so many years of living in freedom. It also shows their rage and their willingness to seek revenge for the injustice being done to them.
The contemporary parallels to the politics of today are obvious. Women continue to suffer in this way, and nobody knows how we are going to rescue ourselves from such politics. In one scene, the actors mention the names of states that have gone through war with one another in the last years – but it’s never clear who’s the oppressor and who’s the victim. The play didn’t tell us who caused these wars and why.
To me, it showed how collaboration on cultural projects between Serbia and Kosovo artists can work – how our unhealed wounds mean we feel compelled to mingle our past in everything we do together. But I believe sometimes we can also work together on other projects that don’t include our history but are simply stories of humanity that will touch people.
The topic of wars around the world, and particularly the war between Kosovo and Serbia, will never be exhausted but I think as artists we have to question ourselves on how to tell these stories beyond what we have already seen and heard in the media. Our artists – and audiences – are already well aware of the war and its impact. Artists have to ask themselves how they use this knowledge in both their work and their everyday lives. How do we go beyond the stage to show the truth of humanity? How do we end war? Can art ever do that?
We talk about freedom and liberty a lot. This is true of this play too– but freedom comes in many forms: there is physical freedom, but there is also the freedom of the mind and soul.
Credits:
Directors: Zana Hoxha and Maja Mitic
Cast of actors in this production: Maja Mitić, Shpëtim Selmani, Semira Latifi, Branka Stojković, Qëndresa Kajtazi, Labinot Raci and Aleksandar Stoimenovski.
Performers participants in the process in Belgrade and Prizren (two former phases of the play): Blerta Gubetini, Donika Ahmeti, Ismail Kasumi, Ivana Milenović Popović, Ljubica Damčević, Mikel Markaj, Milica Petrović, Zhaneta Xhemajli, Zoran Vasiljević, Edlir Gashi and Hristina Toshiq.
Further reading: Trojan Women – Replica: Breaking down barriers through theatre
Florida is a lover of words, and of art in all its forms: fiction, poetry and drama.
