Five younsters dream the same dream and have the same calling, unbeknownst of each other. They are foretold of the arrival of the Desolate Mamumian who will destroy their city, Prizrenotopia, if they don’t step up and go on a quest to stop it and defeat it. Each of them is told to bring to the journey an object they are closest to and nothing more. The children, desperate to save their families and cities, enter the quest alone, to find each other and realize that the only way they can fight the Desolate Mamumian is by interchanging their objects and joining their secret forces together.
As a project, “The Roundabout to Fantomia” was realized within the MERULA initiative of the theatre on stilts by a Kosovar-German team, including Felix Remter who together with Peter Pruchniewitz (from the theatre on stilts Die Stelzer Teater) landed from Munich to Korisha where they met with Isen Bobaj from AWO Kosovo, Afrim Ajradinaj, a doctor and leader of workshops for conflict resolution and they invited me to the team as a playwright, together with young Albanians, Gorani and Roma from the Prizren region.
The ambiguity of the ethnic identities of the young people participating in the workshop was an important topic of the research which aimed to replace prejudice and anger with appreciation and acceptance of both the differences and similarities between these young people. Another key factor in this project was highlighting the personal experiences of the young immigrant participants who were deported from Europe when their families did not gain the right to remain there. The identity of these confused young people who know they are from Kosovo, but feel German and the examination of national identity in general was a focus for the realization of “The Roundabout to Fantomia”.
Peter’s experience as a professional actor on stilts brought to the project the symbolic element of standing on equal footing and counting on each other to stand on a more stable background.
I am also attaching here the link on vimeo where you can see a mini documentary about the beginnings of the MERULA initiative and our preparation for the pilot presentation, a year before we focused on the realization of the play “The Roundabout to Fantomia”. https://vimeo.com/96650350