Dramaturge, assistant director, project manager for Modet Att Döda/The Courage to Kill (1978) by Swedish playwright Lars Norén.
Invited by fellow student of theatre directing Arta Kallaba, the play was realized at Babës Theatre, with the cast and crew as follows: Enver Petrovci, Luan Jaha, Arta Muçaj and composer Izet Kallaba, directed by Arta Kallaba. Unfortunately, I don’t have the names of the technical staff.
Lars Norén’s play, The Courage to Kill looks into the relationship between a father and a son who’s unable to forget the past and embrace the present because of the complexities caused by the grudge towards an absent and careless father that has caused an unhappy childhood.
Even though written from a surrealistic point of view, this play aimed to be relatable to the Kosovar audience at the time, when fathers and sons had become estranged by the abyss dug between the two generations due to the wounds caused by the war and sentiments too fresh to be dealt with.
The project was funded by Pro Helvetia Prishtina The Swiss Cultural Programme Kosovo/a.
Looking back at this engagement and the project proposal, I find it curious that The Swiss Cultural Programme Kosovo/a decided to fund the whole crew besides myself and the director. Sure, we were students, but it also set the precedent to normalize unpaid labour, a dubious lesson to learn for artists starting their careers. From today’s vantage point, it sounds absurd not to pay a project manager nor any laborer in a project, be it a student or not. I suppose the experiments conducted in the post-war Kosova became a learning curve for all…