A NOTE FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT

I was 21 when the siege of Sarajevo began. I left the study of literature, became a soldier, and after that, a student of dramaturgy. I was intrigued by the Stanislavski method, fell head over heels in love with acting, and through it, with writing for the theater. The first time I read about the Stanislavski system I was drawn to the chapter describing the “magic if.” Stanislavski was explaining the art of acting, and I quickly saw that in the besieged city, thousands of Sarajevans who knew little or nothing about acting were living “by Stanislavski.”

Every day I dreamed about — peace. I imagined boring Sundays, lounging in half-empty cafés; peace would be the “absence of things happening.” I thought of boredom, started my imaginings with the word “If . . .” and went on from there. If there were peace now, I’d go to the coast. If this were a peaceful city, I’d buy a pizza and go see a new movie. If the war ended, I’d enjoy these boring lectures on language and stylistics . . . If . . . if . . . if . . .

Soon I had written my first sketches for a future play. If This Were A Performance. Aside from the inspiration awakened by that simple “if” I was inspired by Queneau’s Exercises in Style. In dozens of ways I varied a news item about the murder of a boy, hit by a sniper while he was on a Sarajevo tram. I turned my characters into witnesses of suffering, and the story changed under the “influence” of the characters. A similarity to the people we were watching at the time in the television broadcasts from the Hague courtroom mattered to me. There were countless witnesses appearing before the TV cameras. Once I watched an old man from Eastern Bosnia testify; he’d survived the Srebrenica genocide. The monotonous voice of the translator, whose pronunciation made me think he was from Croatia, probably Zagreb, taught me an important lesson about truth and accuracy. Everything the translator said was accurate, but it wasn’t close to the truth that could be heard in the voice of the half-literate old Bosnian man. His experience was untranslatable.

If This Were a Movie was written many years later. There are oblique lines in it, which communicate with my first play, with that younger, naïve Almir who was eager to take on a theatrical “juggle.” The new text is simpler, its structure is straightforward, the characters’ lines are more cinematic. The idea goes back to a child’s faith in miracles — if this were a movie, if these were “moving pictures,” if those who couldn’t walk took their first step . . .

— Almir Imširević, Sarajevo, 2018