“Behind the Fog” is my first feature length play which I wrote as a student of the Dramaturgy program (Playwriting, Screenwriting and Dramaturgy) at the Department of Dramaturgy, University of Pristina, Faculty of Arts Prishtina, Kosova.
The play tells the story of an Albanian woman and mother, Edona, who’s child is taken under protection by a Serbian young man, Bojan during the Kosovo/a war in 1999. The play aims to explore the potentialities of humanity and dehumanization during political conflicts with a basis on ethnic discrimination.
When I showed this work to my playwrighting professor who examined it within the class ‘Playwrighting I’, he cynically said: “This is a great play to get international funding with!”, meaning the play seems written to please the perspective of the then-present international community of peacebuilding (United Nations and European Union) who was insisting on a rapid reconciliation while the wounds of the resent war were still fresh. Although a reasonable critical comment, it came to be very hurtful for me as an 18 year old student, learning how to stand on my own feet and it may have been the reason why I never pushed to have this play staged. I wasn’t trying to please anyone; what I wrote came from a desire to restore my faith in humanity and to document the small stories that would hopefully help avoid identitarian generalizations and the potential future buildup of hatred and revenge, hence more conflict, and more conflict, and more…