BALKAN BORDELLO
By Jeton Neziraj
The play is set in the early 21st century in the Balkan Express Motel, now a decrepit nightclub in a tacky style about two decades behind the times . . . The theatrical language is as allegorical as it is lyrical.
— Steven Leigh Morris, American Theatre
Imagine yourself in a hedonistic nightclub full of campy decorations, cheap furniture and guests that drown themselves in shots of raki. Imagine that bloodshed is happening everywhere around you, caused by unhealed traumas and unresolved conflicts of the just-finished war. Imagine that even in these morbid circumstances you’ll be drawn by turbo-folk music to participate in orgiastic dances. Welcome to the world of Balkan Bordello.
— Borisav Matić, The Theatre Times
Borrowing the setting from the Oresteia, the play evokes an archetypal society which emerges from the war in a state of confusion, where the old order and power relations have been subverted, and the new does not seem to have any legitimacy because it is based on pure force.
— Anna Di Lellio
One theater production . . . is arousing great interest throughout the Balkans . . . The play is about the wars in the former Yugoslavia but relies on Greek tragedies and carries a universal anti-war message.
— Deutsche Welle, Germany
Why don’t the moral categories arising from rote, traditional codes ever change? As long as man’s mind is in constant war with itself and the world, the cycles of violence will not be broken. This is why Blerta Neziraj directs the play like a nightmarish half- dream, a state of oblivion.
— Nataša Gvozdenović, Vreme, Serbia
If the history of violence and its perpetuation is universal, as this play purports it to be — Kosovo’s problems, though particular, aren’t just peculiar to Kosovo, they are the problems of the whole world.
— Verity Healy, SeeStage
Balkan Bordello tackles the subject of war and its consequences with force and enthusiastic provocation.
— Taz, Germany
The inspired performance of this energetic, painful (and in its own way witty), warning, and sobering drama caused a storm of emotions in the viewers. —Suzana Sudar, Nova, Serbia
Images from the La MaMa ETC, Qendra Multimedia, Theater Atelje 212, and My Balkans Trans-Atlantic Theatrical Project; directed by Blerta Rrustemi-Neziraj; set design by Marija Kalabić; costume design by Gabriel Berry; with Onni Johnson, Svetozar Cvetković, George Drance, Eugene the Poogene, Valois Mickens, John Maria Gutierrez, Mattie, Barber-Bockelman, Ivan Mihailović, Matt Nasser, and Verona Koxha; photographs by Ferdi Limani and Kushtrim Ternava.
About Jeton Neziraj
Drawing by Biba Kayewich
If this whirlwind of recent history seems to you as macabre as it is absurd, if you can find bleak and sometimes outrageous humor circling the gratuitous cruelty and vindictiveness . . . then you’re on the road to grasping the significance of Neziraj’s plays, where on some deserted road in the Balkan countryside, Aeschylus meets Beckett meets Ionesco meets Havel.
— Steven Leigh Morris, American Theatre
Jeton Neziraj is the former artistic director of the National Theater of Kosovo, and the founder and current director of Qendra Multimedia. He has written over twenty-five plays which have been staged, translated, and performed throughout Europe and the United States.
