On Friday morning, after the excitement of the first public performance of For Mountain, Sand and Sea on Thursday, I set off from a deliciously sunny Barmouth, via Manchester and Zurich, to Pristina,Kosovo. I’d been invited to talk at an event at the National Theatre of Kosovo, which seemed too interesting a proposition to miss.
I arrived in Kosovo after midnight. The arrival hall of the airport resembled an old aircraft hangar more than the identikit
easyjet airports of most smaller cities, and the drive from airport to city centre revealed a territory still delicately balanced between old rural ways, urbanization, and the landscapes of war. The Grand Hotel Pristina was kind of what you might imagine of a former Soviet hotel in a city that’s seen more than it’s share of conflict, and a visit to a town further south the next day highlighted the very real beauty of the country and its history (Ottoman castles, ancient mosques and well-preserved Catholic churches) alongside more recent scars (Serbian Orthodox churches surrounded by barbed wire, and burned out houses from both sides of the conflict).
The artists and the young Kosovons I met (all from the Albanian majority) were full of passion, aspiration and
ideas. They younger people in particular had a very clear and set view of recent and longer-term history, and there was much talk of ‘Albanian blood’ and how it unites the Albanians of the region, wherever they live. I struggled to imagine what it must be like to have lived your childhood in a war and to be building your adult life in a new country resulting from that war.
The more established theatre folk had, perhaps, a more complex range of opinions. The director of the National Theatre, Jeton Neziraj, a
writer, was particularly impressive in his refusal of easy answers and his enthusiasm for challenging ideas. On the way home I read one of his plays, which was very strong. We are talking about ways that we can work together in the future.
From an NTW perspective, it was interesting to discuss our work alongside a national theatre in a country that is struggling
into existence in such a bloody and painful way. The great challenge for the theatre there is to address that struggle without becoming a mere mouthpiece for the national agenda – a result that everyone was clear would be a betrayal of theatre’s potential.
There was a lot of interest in, and discussion of, our launch year ‘theatre map of Wales’, and the model it
provides of exploring nation through place rather than focusing on identity or history as the core principle.
I came back with a real sense of the significance of the term ‘national theatre’ and how crucial such a thing can be
in our understanding of today’s world.
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