Darkness on the Edge of Town

Darkness on the Edge of Town 

by Dario Bevanda 

Director:

Kathrin Mädler

Translator:

Atanas Igov 

Sound-Design:

Cico Beck

Set Design and Costumes:

Franziska Isensee

Cast:

Bilyana Petrinska, Zafir Radjab, Aneta Ivanova 

Dramaturgs:

Laura Mangels, Pavlina Doublekova 

“Well, everybody's got a secret...”
– Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town

On a strange winter evening, as the snow tirelessly falls and locks down the residents of Sarajevo underneath its whiteness, in a small apartment on the edge of the city, the cleaning lady Fikreta and her younger helper Betina struggle against the filth, disorder, and dust of time. 

The experienced Fikreta, who grew up during the war, cleans diligently and is completely dedicated to getting the job done. Betina, on the other hand, is more interested to sink and soar among the pieces of life that is lived or was lived in this neglected home. She comes across audio diaries, kept by the former tenant during the siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s, recorded on cassettes with disco hits. While he tells more and more about his daily life in that capsuled world, history and present begin to overlap, and Fikreta and Betina are also confronted by their own ghosts from the past.

How does a person and a community survive in a world full of brutality and isolation? Is it necessary for the past to be confronted in order to reconsider the present and future? And how do the marks left by painful abruptions of the texture of daily life, which major events like wars cause, last throughout the generations? – are among the questions, which the performance touches upon.

Dario Bevanda (b. 1985 in Saraevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is one of the rising stars of the contemporary theater scene in his country and the region. In April 2023, his text was awarded by an international jury at the NEW STAGES SOUTH EAST FESTIVAL at the Theater Oberhausen. Its premiere at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre in Sofia is the world premiere of the text. 

Kathrin Mädler (b. 1976 in Osnabrück, Germany) is the Artistic Director of Theater Oberhausen since 2022. Before that she worked as a leading dramaturge and director at Theater Münster and was director of the Landestheater Schwaben in Memmingen, which was awarded the Federal Theater Prize in 2019 under her leadership. 

Second Assistant-Director:

Irina Ivanova

Design of the poster:

Nikolay Dimitrov NAD 

The production is created in partnership with Goethe-Institut Bulgarien and the Theater Oberhausen. 

There is no additional age limit.