Aug 8, 2022
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Aug 13, 2022

Balkan Bordello: World Tour

"Balkan Bordello...was a turbo charged mash-up of theatrical styles and cultures...Based on The Oresteia, Balkan Bordello reminded me of a quote from Che Guevara—'history finds us where we are born.' Which is to say, history finds us everywhere...Kosovo’s problems, though particular, aren’t just peculiar to Kosovo, they are the problems of the whole world." - See Stage

Written by Jeton Neziraj
Directed by Blerta Neziraj

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August 8–13, 2022

Balkan Bordello won the "Best Performance" award at Nisville Jazz Theater Festival in Nis (Serbia)!

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After a successful US tour, Balkan Bordello produced by the prestigious New York Theater La MaMa (USA) in association with Qendra Multimedia (Kosovo), Atelje 212 (Serbia) and My Balkans (USA/Serbia), returns to the region with a tour in some of the most renowned summer festivals.

  • August 8 at Nisville Jazz Theater Festival in Nis (Serbia)
  • August 10 at Ohrid Summer Festival in Ohrid (North Macedonia)
  • August 12 at KotorArt International Festival in Kotor (Montenegro)
  • August 13  at Wild Beauty Art Festival in Zabljak (Montenegro)

Balkan Bordello premiered in Prishtina on November 2, 2021 and continued with a tour in Kosovo, Albania and Serbia. In March 2022, the American premiere at New York’s La MaMa was followed by ten shows and attracted the attention of European and American critique.

Balkan Bordello: The Saga of a Balkan Family is based on Aeschylus’ trilogy The Oresteia. As an avatar of the modern world, Agamemnon returns triumphant from the battlefield, having reduced the enemy city to ashes. But the fever and enthusiasm that come from inglorious victories are blood animals—they feed and live on blood. When he returns home, death awaits powerful Agamemnon. He is killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, the oppressed woman who, by killing her husband, seeks to find freedom. Together with Egist, a hypocritical poet, Clytemnestra wants to start a new life, without fearing she will be raped and humiliated by her husband.

This is the bedrock of this play, which, with black humor, touches on the very fabric of the Balkan temperament, traces the morbidity of the human soul and highlights the stupidity and naiveté of an era being built on the foundations of violence, intolerance and hatred. The characters surrender to fate and nearly unconsciously fall into the trap of discontent and destruction. It’s this vein of destruction that seduces as death seduces life. Balkan Bordello is a play about traumatized societies that eat themselves. It confronts us with war as a machinery of destruction where life and normalcy capitulate in the face of humans’ infidelities and evils.

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Photos by Ferdi Limani and Kushtrim Ternava

Performers seated and standing around table with red lights hanging from the ceiling
Performers on stage, dancing, in colorful costumes
Performers dancing on stage, there are red lights hanging from the ceiling and red rugs on the floor
Ivan Mihailović (Solider), a white man, is shirtless and in foreground in blue light, other performers in background
Performers on stage at a red table, Verona Koxha (Cassandra), a white woman, is seated and Ivan Mihailović (Soldier), a white man, is standing and forcing her to sing
Performers on stage in red lighting, Eugene the Poogene (Orestes), an Asian man, is naked and confronting Svetozar Cvetković (Aegisthus), a white man
Valois Mickens (Esme), a Black woman, is on stage with a microphone
George Drance (Agamemnon), an older white man, being executed while other performers watch
Svetozar Cvetković (Aegisthus), an older white man, is on stage, being watched by other performers
Onni Johnson (Clytemnestra), an older white woman, on stage wearing gloves and an animal print dress
Eugene the Poogene (Orestes), a shirtless Asian man wearing an animal print sarong, illuminated in the background, other performers in the foreground
Svetozar Cvetković (Aegisthus), an older white man on stage holding his face with his right hand
John Maria Gutierrez (Pylade), a young Dominican man, on stage, seated at a red table
Mattie Barber-Bockelman (Electra), a young white woman, on stage holding a confetti cannon with sparkly confetti in the air
Ivan Mihailović (Solider), a white man, on stage and kneeling on the floor, he is dimly lit
George Drance (Agamemnon), an older white man, alone dimly lit in a white light
Ivan Mihailović (Solider), a white man kneeling on the ground in foreground with other actors in background, covered in blue light
Svetozar Cvetković (Aegisthus), an older white man, holding Onni Johnson (Clytemnestra), an older white woman, in a chokehold

By: Jeton Neziraj; Directed by: Blerta Neziraj

With: Svetozar Cvetković, George Drance, Eugene the Poogene, Valois Mickens, Ema Andrea, Adrian Morina,  Mattie Barber-Bockelman, Ivan Mihailović, Matt Nasser, Verona Koxha

Jeton Neziraj is the Director of Qendra Multimedia, after serving as the Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Kosovo. He has written over 20 plays that have been staged (over 50 productions), translated and published in more than 15 languages. Blerta Neziraj is an award-winning theatre director (including “The best directing for 2020”, in Kosovo) and for her work she received great local and international reviews. 

Balkan Bordello is made possible by the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the Howard Gilman Foundation. Additional support by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Donors who contributed to the production and U.S. tour include: Rockefeller Brother Fund, Kosovo Foundation for Open Society, European Fund for the Balkans, Open Society Foundation Serbia, Olof Palme International Center, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC, European Union in Kosovo, The Dutch Embassies in Prishtina and in Belgrade, Municipality of Prishtina, Municipality of Belgrade, Sigrid Rausing Trust, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Kosovo, and ProtoPharma Beograd.

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La MaMa’s Great Jones Repertory Company (GJRC) is an intergenerational ensemble of diverse artists, pioneering new forms of storytelling through radical physicality, voice, and movement.

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