WAR IN TIMES OF LOVE
By Jeton Neziraj
The entire piece is set in an asylum. Four female patients run an imaginary beauty salon, and as they perform manicures or remove the hair from their clients’ rumps, they tell each other their own love stories.
— Wolfgang Kralicek, theater critic, Vienna, from the introduction to Jeton Neziraj, Six Plays
Neziraj creates a disturbing and cathartic play in which his characters’ lives intertwine in order to better recognize and illuminate them.
— Borka Pavićevič, theater critic, Belgrade, from the preface to the French publication of War in Times of Love
A mythic resonance . . . a testament to the blooming theatre culture of Europe’s newest country.
— Luke Dixon, Artistic Director, theatre nomad, UK
However grieving the inmates of this mental hospital are, they recover a lusty health when they speak of their love lives.
— David Larre, Au Poulailler, Paris
Grotesque and tragic elements, mundane and fantastic aspects all blend their assorted fragrances to cover up the massacre and its stench . . . Behind a rather provocative title, the play reflects, with humor and great invention, the breakup of ex-Yugoslavia.
— Gilles Boulan, Le Billet des Auteurs de Théâtre, Paris
War in Times of Love is one of the most beautiful, expressive, powerful, most poetic and imaginative of creations — not only with respect to the author’s output, but to the entire existing framework of contemporary Albanian drama.
—Bekim Lumi, Loja Magazine, Kosovo
In this asylum of beauty, this temple of madness and artifice, they reveal their delusions and receive the visits of very special clients. — TERMOS Collectif artistique
War in Times of Love has been performed in London, Paris, Florence, Istanbul, Prishtina, Skopje, Belgrade, Tirana, New Haven, and elsewhere.
From the TERMOS Collectif artistique production of War in Times of Love at Théâtre le Magasin à Malakoff in Paris. With Anaïs Ancel, Soleïma Arabi, Juliette Pouchet, and Stéphanie Cavaillés. Stage design by David F. Perrin. Costumes by Lou Delville. Photo by Aurèle Dumaret.
ABOUT JETON NEZIRAJ
Drawing by Biba Kayewich
His orientation in the “tragicomic” genre is accomplished in the noblest manner. — Borka Pavićevič, theater critic, Belgrade, from the preface to the French publication of War in Times of Love
We stand naked before Neziraj’s dramatization of our lives. We are helpless but, all the while, in safe hands, because he is wholly directed by the humanity within us. —Ballsor Hoxha, Koha Ditore, Kosovo
The Kafka of the Balkans. —Jakob Hayner, Theater der Zeit, Germany
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.
