France rewards Kosovo drama hitting genocide deniers

In a race with 400 dramas from all sides, the Handke Project”, author of the playwright, lives Neziray and translated into French by Sébastien Gricourt, has received the Best Foreign Drama Award. And in France's biggest competition, “Journeées de Lyon des Auteurs de Théâtre”. That the Handke Project has won in this competition for the best foreign drama, among those 400 plays, is certainly an honor to me, Neziraj said. The translator Gricourt has said: “ky Award represents a great appreciation for a Kosovo author like Neziraj, who has since been placed among the famous European authors in the field of theatre”
The Handke Project” drama has received an international seal. This time France's most important drama contest, “Journées de Lyon des Auteurs de Théâtre” (Days of Lyon Theatre authors). In this competition, the Handke Project”, authored by the playwright, lives Neziray and translated into French by Sébastien Gricourt, has received the Best Foreign Drama Award. According to organisers, 400 dramas have participated in the competition. Contest organisers have announced that all manuscripts have been read at least twice.

After various stages of elimination, the remaining 23 texts were read over the summer by the 25 members of the jury”, the report states. “The Handke Project” as a work that strips away the genocide unbeliever and supporters of Slobodan Milosevich, Nobelist Peter Handke, calls for distance from all those who deny crimes and support criminals.

This success of the drama comes in the month when the show based on this text was best declared at a prestigious festival in Montenegro, despite Serbian nationalists and media supporters who labeled the show as “terrorist attacks”.

Dramaturgu Jeton Neziraj said the Francophone “Yournées de Lyon des Auteurs de Théâtre” is certainly the most important in the field of theatre writing in France.

That the Handke Project has won in this competition for best foreign drama, among those 400 plays, is certainly an honor to me. Of course, I am very grateful to the hardworking translators, the Sébastien Gricourt, who has translated the drama into French, but also, I am grateful to my publisher there, Dominice Domonieu, whose publishing house, IÉditions ICEspace d'stantı, has so far published my 10 dramas”, he said. According to Neziright, while some German theatre editors who had contacted them had been reluctant to publish this drama, considering it as the highly controversial “”, Domonieu decided to publish it without hesitation, along with the next drama “The return of Carl May”, as well as translated into French by Sébastien Gricourt.

This important prize, for the drama expected to be published, is a good start, but what her theatre life will be there, remains to be seen”, Neziraj said of TIME.

While translator Sébastien Gricourt has said that the Prize for “The Handke Project” has some meaning.

“After a major competition of 400 texts for such a contest in the French theatre world known, and only one translation was spotted, this prize represents a great gratitude to a Kosovo author as Does Neziraj, who was now placed among the famous European authors in the field of theatre”, he said. According to Grikourt, this new award, coming this year at the start of the year for the first prize of “Pen Club” for the joint translation with Evelyn Noygues for “Flight on the Kosovo Theatre” but also after the publication of “a.y.l.nx7> in the famous UBU magazine in June, notes a new contribution to Kosovo's foreign image, as well as the Francophony. According to him, it is thus fought against prejudice and ignorance.

But in particular, this text, the Handke Project, provides a needed enlightenment in the continuation of the denial of war crimes and humanity and genocide acts (on the part of a Nobel Prize of literature) that was carried out by Serbia in Bosnia and Kosovo”, he has said of TIMEN. According to Gricourt, it is very necessary to make known the continuation of these denials in a European world where only extreme right is growing, which supports these currents, and where, “for the sake of finding a solution to the relations between Kosovo and Serbia there is a tendency to leave, if not forgotten, the unforgivable past...”

For this translation work, I would describe it as another universal work of the author that raises the key question: What is the role of the artist, what is his/her responsibility before society and before the truth? How far can the artist be called an artist and when he closes his eyes so much on the undeniable reality to the point when he becomes an unbeliever/associate and co-operater of war criminals? So, we now came to French a work that will keep the justice requirement alive still so expected in the Balkans”, Grikourt said.

This success of the drama comes days after the jury of the International Alternative Theatre Festival (FIAT) in Montenegro has praised the performance “The Handke Project” as the best in this year's edition of the festival. It has been described as a painful confrontation with regard to the positioning of creators in relation to powers. Besides, the best actor award has met actor from Kosovo with an international career, Arben Bajraktaraj.

This show is a painful confrontation with the centuries-old puzzle of the positioning of creators and intellectuals against power by pointing to intellectuals ' problematic responsibility. The project "Handke" is the opposite of predigma. The exhibition by Blerta Rrustemi-Neziray created a show that is a mosaic of hell, which makes us surprised”, is written in the argument of the jury of the Podgorica City Theatre writer and director Stevan Koprivica (head), and members Jelena Miniq, Montenegrin National Theatre Theatre actress, and Edin Jasarovic, producer and dean of the Dramatic Arts Faculty in Cite.

The 38th edition of this year's traditional festival has been held from 8 September to 17 September. For the show team “The Handke Project”, which is an international production, the award is a great assessment.

Not a little noise had made Serbian nationalist circles sound after giving the show in Podgorica. The nationalist media had immediately launched the propaganda for the chapter of threats for “trafficking, anti-Serb campaign or scandal” to the definition that this was a “attack” with a performance from “terrorist Kosovo”. Sensual headlines, such as that “Scandal in Montenegro! Albanians from Kosovo and Metohia in Podgorica organise anti-Serbian display”, of the picture “Alo.rs” were present. Serbian playwright Bilana Srbanovic, who has collaborated with the show team, is also targeted. Likewise, the economic institution of the show in the country's 2006 breakaway capital of Serbia, a NATO member and aspiring for the European Union, but often challenged by Serbian parliamentary parties, which in the programme also have the appeal of Kosovo recognition.

There have also been comments on reactions from the Serbian pro-government media, <x0 again guard, doing their propagandistic work”.

The descriptions of the show, such media have already had them, as with the same language they were attacking last June, when the show was also performed in Belgrade, at the “Bitef” theatre.

“Cirque travel paradarmatic projecto Handkeı, behind which the united forces stand, the second autosovist and fundamentalist Serbs, landed in Podgorica” wrote “Alo.rs”. The view gave the trick to some epithetics, and “found” and the goal that “is assicial”.

In this theatre project, with his questions, Handke doubts whether the Srebrenica massacre occurred in July 1995, where the Serbian state killed 8 thousand Bosniaks or is an invention of propaganda against Serbia. Handke knows reality, but he's struggling to change it. The irony goes to the extent Handke changes even the situations the world has seen shot. As in when Serbs force the Bosniak, named Ramo, to call his son Nermin, down from the hill “because it is safe with Serbs”. “The Handke Project” is production of Multimedia Centre in collaboration with “Mittelfest & Teatro della Pergola” (Italy) Dortmund Theatre (Germany); Sarajevo National Theatre and International Theatre Festival “Scene MESS” (Bosnia- Herzegovina). Besides Montenegro and Serbia, the show has also taken place in Italy and Germany.