Fjolla Hoxha

Writer and performance artist

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Pylli i pashkelun i ishullit Tamtum (The Unstepped Forest of the Island of Tamtum), 2017

About

I am an internationally published and staged writer, theater & performance maker, educator, and art critic from Prizren, Kosova, based in Nashville, Tennessee. My practice combines academic and artistic research with individual and collective histories and archives, aiming to call attention to the nuances of congealed knowledge by amplifying the narratives of the peoples in the margins, with a particular focus on transformative and climate justice. I work across various mediums such as language, sound, video, movement and produce site-specific participatory performance art that investigates the relationship and mutual impact between humans and spaces.

In 2025, I published my first book named Six Youth Plays, supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of Kosova, and Qendra Multimedia, a book of plays developed during devised youth empowerment workshops in Kosova over a decade.

I have collaborated with various artists, collectives, and institutions based in Kosova, Europe, and the U.S. My work has been staged and stage-read across Kosova (National Theater, Oda Theater, Lumbardhi Foundation, Dodona Theater, Kino Rinia), Helsinki/ Finland (LAPSODY, Vapaan Taiteen Tila, Myymälä 2, City Theater Studio Pasila, oksasenkatu11/Äänen Lumo, Vantaa Museum), Lucerne/Switzerland (Lucerner Theater), Berlin/Germany (Berliner Festspiele/Theatertreffen), Waldstock Festival and London/UK (Unicorn Theater), and the U.S. (Kindling Arts Festival, Defy Film Festival, CoopGallery, Belcourt Theater), while my plays, op-eds, reviews and critique have been published in Kosova’s Koha Ditore, Kosovo 2.0., Prishtina Insight, БАЛКАНСКИ КЊИЖЕВНИ ГЛАСНИК- The Balkan Literary Herald in Athens, Greece, NO NIIN Magazine in Helsinki, Finland, The Theater Times in New York and Nashville- based Music City Review.

I serve as a member of the board of directors for Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Inc.

In January 2024, alongside filmmaker Chelsea Hall, we launched Art Friends, a collective dedicated to creating space for sharing artistic processes, inspiration, and co-creation. I’m also a member of the Nashville-based transgressive art collective TRANCE//FURNACE.

I am currently pursuing my professional graduate studies in Community Development and Action (CDA) at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, Department of Human and Organizational Development in Nashville, Tennessee, and work as a teaching assistant for undergraduate students in Applied Human Development with a focus on Youth Development.

UPCOMING

“Gjashtë lojna për të rinj” which translates to “Six Youth Plays” is my first printed book. A compliation in Albanian of six plays developed in collaboration with various youth groups during theater workshops and summer camps held in Kosova between 2005-2018. The publication is finantially enabled by the support of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of Kosova, and its distribution is enabled by Qendra Multimedia. The book will be promoted and distributed to all high schools in Kosova during 2025 and I would ideally like to have it translated to English and all the languages spoken in Kosova.

PAST

CoopGallery, The Packing Plant, Nashville, TN. Jan 3 – Jan 25 | Performance: January 3rd, 7pm. https://www.coopgallery.org/exhibitions/a27s3zpavsegqheygex4ifrs9pmsss

‘What Sprouts First When the Earth Burns?’ is a labyrinthic play which examines the many
levels in which assumed women’s freedoms are challenged in a normative world.
The play lays the grounds to scrutinize the experiential gap that exists between women’s’
different exposures as well as their gender roles. Is it possible to understand another persons’
difficulties or is it the relationship that helps us elucidate our actions/reactions and where we
want to be in life? Furthermore, how do the experiences of female identifying persons differ
between countries and continents and what unifies them?
‘What Sprouts First When the Earth Burns?’ was devised by playwright Fjolla Hoxha and theater
director Flutra Zymi for the National Theater of Kosova in 2015. The original production
included actors Kumrije Hoxha and Alketa Sylaj, visual artist Kleidi Eski, creative assistant
Valmira Gashi, stage and costume designer Leonora Mehmeti. The show was part of the
repertoire of the National Theater of Kosova for six months.

The modified version that marked my debut as a playwright in the U.S. and in Nashville at Kindling Art Festival’s 2024 edition was made possible with the dedication of Dawson Wells who astonished me with their deep dive into the play. Their commitment made the staged reading feel more like a staging than a reading; Dee Benn whose contagious charm and presence were astounding; my partner Dylan Simon for the continuous support, advising, sound editing and taking wonderful photos, Mike Lacey and Caitlin Hohn for lending their voices for the voicemail portion of the play, Alie and Kaci for their readiness to accommodate us at at global.education.center, Chellsea Hall for advising , Kelly Ann Graff for the striking photos and kindlingartsfest, particularly the producing artistic director Daniel Jones for providing the platform upon which to test out and expand artistic ideas into practice.

Writer’s Gym <<Performativity of Text>>

July 24th, 7:00-8:30pm at Coopgallery
Organised by nashvillepoetrylibrary

The image for this event is designed by Dylan Simon @anachronisticmediaworkshop

Words are never words only. They are signifiers of the signified, symbols that utter positionalities, dynamics, structures; they stir actions and reactions to occurring situations and interactions. They evoke emotions and carry ideas.

During the workshop, the participants were invited to scrutinize the meanings of words and look at language as a performative action. The workshop didin’t focus on syntax but rather on the historical linguistic contracts and the subtextual latency of the written word. In what ways do words form associations, how do texts perform and what drives the certain ways they act? What power does language hold in constructing, deconstructing and changing realities? Through an anticipated interactive participation that was well responded to, writing prompts and discussions, this workshop expanded on the complexity of these questions.

We dipped our feet on Saussure’s semiology, Derrida’s deconstruction of fixed meaning, Austin’s performative utterance and Butler’s gender performativity, all through practical exercises.

BLOG

The Faces of WeGo Metro: Who’s riding on Nashville’s buses?

Quarters and one-dollar bills may become crucial factors in preventing the obsoletion of physical money. Sometimes one needs nothing more than two one dollars bills or 8 quarters.

I utilize the pinball arcade in the neighborhood to make change although the owners don’t appear very happy that I don’t use the coins to play a game. I understand the philosophy that money needs to be kept in the house, but I also break it. I contribute to the external circulation of the quarters within a macro system that takes from the private and gives to the public, to the city, apropos to the state. A twisted kind of a Robin Hood, isn’t it?

Upon paying your one-go ticket, you can request a transfer which means using the same ticket twice within 2 hours. There are affordable daily, weekly, and monthly ticket options too.

The drivers are admirably patient and generous people.

Their gender appearances are diverse, but they are predominantly black. So is the majority of the clientele. In my rides, I use headphones only when I feel like someone sitting close by is intimidating, like one time when an elderly white man asked me where I was from. I didn’t want to overdo the conversation in a packed bus, so I said, “I am from here.”

“You don’t look like you’re from here.”- he responded.

I am not originally from here, but who is? How far are we willing to trace the origins?

I don’t have a car which is why I use the bus to move around Nashville. I don’t have a driver’s license because I never needed one. Buses, trams, trains and ferries took me to about everywhere I wanted to go within other cities I’ve lived in. Prizren. Prishtina. Ankara. Istanbul. Helsinki.

As a foreigner, I enjoy riding together with what occurs to be the predominantly impoverished layer of the society in Nashville. I listen to conversations about free food and shelters, co-worker sabotages and observe those who seem to be carrying with them everything they own. Most of these people appear to be dependent on public transportation. Dependent on sharing space and moving together. It doesn’t seem like taking the bus is a choice, but a necessity. To be exposed to the others’ baggage. Instead of riding behind black windowed invincible cars, public servants voted in vow to improve people’s wellbeing need to ride on buses to see the true face of their cities and to understand their issues at the core.

There’s a great article on Trans Lōc’s website, a U.S. transit provider based in Durham, NC, on mayors who ride buses and why more of them should follow the lead. The article also entails interesting information on the usage of public transportation in the 70s by the current president of the United States.

Here’s the link: https://transloc.com/blog/your-mayor-should-be-riding-the-bus/

If you’ve heard of or seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) directed by Robert Zemeckis, loosely based on Gary Wolf’s 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? you may want to re-watch it, this time focusing on viewing the cartoon characters as representatives of racially and ethnically disadvantaged groups of (hard) working class people. “Because of their lower status, the toons are very vulnerable to exploitation and incrimination”. [1]

The film is a subtle critique to the destroying of the iconic Red Car trolleys as means of public transportation during the gentrification process and the corporate wake of LA’s freeway system that gave place to a new era of private automobiles.[2]

Plans to improve Nashville’s public transportation access and routes in fact haven’t been absent.

On May 1, 2018 (not an accidental date isn’t it?), a local referendum called Let’s Move Nashville was initiated proposing the funding of the construction of a mass transit system under the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority in Davidson County. It was a $8.9 billion plan which would have included several light rail and bus rapid transit lines along major corridors, to be built between 2018 and 2032. The plan was proposed in 2017 by Mayor Megan Barry under the Tennessee IMPROVE Act and supported by some Nashville politicians and businesses.

The plan would have included 26 miles (42 km) of light rail and 25 miles (40 km) of bus rapid transit, as well as additional funding for local buses and the existing Music City Star commuter rail line. The light rail element of the plan would have been built in phases between 2026 and 2032, while the bus rapid transit lines would open in 2023. The plan was defeated in part due to an opposition campaign organized by Americans for Prosperity[3]

Within this profit-oriented ideology, “everything public is considered of lower status, and to its accordance, any person with a “normal” income should live his private life not having to look at the low-ranking people’s faces.”[4] One can’t deny the fact that this is a thoroughly cunning divisive system that numbs its communal capacities and creates desensitized social bubbles.

Challenging the compounded behemoth called capitalism that has infiltrated every pore of our lives starts with minor resistances and one of them might as well be to refuse the further enhancement of the car industry and kick the war-mongering eco-terrorist gas industry where it hurts the most! In refusing to contribute to its pathological expansion by pouring our sparse dollars to it!

To overturn the notorious concept of individualism, one person may start the spark of a revolutionary change, and that individual might be you! I hope to encounter your gazes and smiles on the WeGo bus some day!

Nashville, 2020

[1] Grigoryan, Lilit, Podcast for English 492, Professor Colleen Trip, 11 December 2020

[2] Grigoryan, Lilit, Podcast for English 492, Professor Colleen Trip, 11 December 2020

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Move_Nashville

[4] Grigoryan, Lilit, Podcast for English 492, Professor Colleen Trip, 11 December 2020

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