Actors of performance "KOSOVO BLOOD THEATRE PROJEXT - THE LAST SUPPER", by Markus Zohner and Jeton Neziraj, performances Lugano, 2010

These Portraits have been shot in 2010 in Lugano.
Our Company was presenting THE LAST SUPPER, a performance written by Markus Zohner and Jeton Neziraj, and directed by Markus Zohner.

We had created the performance in Prishtina / Kosovo, in a collaboration lasting nearly half a year, and we all were very happy being able to present THE LAST SUPPER during the International Theatre Festival FIT Lugano.

The Portraits were taken during the rehearsals il Lugano.

THE LAST SUPPER
by Markus Zohner and Jeton Neziraj

Welcome to a very unique performance.
THE LAST SUPPER is a play devised jointly by Kosovan and Swiss theatre artists.
On visiting Kosovo for the first time in december 2005 (touring with our performance HA!HAmlet and giving my first Master Class for Kosovan Actors) my knowledge of this region was limited to the actual information then being received in Central Europe.
I had an inkling about the conflicts brewing before the outbreak of conflict, naturally I had received some bulletins during the war, and I was roughly informed about the after war developments.
My contact with these seven young actors in 2005 changed my world completely.
Seven young people who had experienced this reality in seven completely different but somehow very similar ways. Seven young adults’ worlds, all still very young yet having gone through the hardest reality a human being could possibly experience.
I have been performing and devising theatre all over the world for many years. Directing performances in different continents, exploring the endless sphere of the human soul in all parts of the globe, is for me is the most wonderful and fascinating way of travelling through life.
Coming to Kosovo, I came up against a reality which I had never met before.
War in Kosovo has destroyed houses, villages, towns, infrastructure and families. But most of all, it has crushed to a bloody dust the deepest human values like hope, faith, love and man’s trust in life.
Now, after the war, life goes on. Reconstruction continues, and the funding of a new, independent state is gaining momentum. International politics is trying to help establishing structures. NGOs and humanitary organistations seek to give relief in financial, medical and social issues.
But the souls continue bleeding.

Seven years have elapst since the ceasing of conflict, and still people walk through town avoiding contact as much as possible, as if they had been flayed alive by the past.
Every contact provokes pain, and makes the raw flesh bleed once more. Even laughter hurts, and makes small beads of blood appear on the forehead.
My encountering these seven young actors was a revelation for me.
In the beginning, our approach was very slow. We all felt that we very much wished to come into contact, that we very much wished to work together, to discover new worlds, to discover our worlds amongst us, our worlds, to share. But the confidence had to grow slowly.
Nobody really wishes to talk about the war. To converse over what? What can one say? Anyhow- who could help? What could possiblyleft to say after the father and the three sons have been kidnapped and shot; first the sons- so the father could see; then the father? How can the human soul deal with issues which are not ,in a ‚righteous world’,meant to exist?
Step by step we went on. Confidence grew, and stories came were aired. Stories born out of fantasy, and stories coming out of so-called reality, of ‚rememberings.’ We learnt that getting into contact with the painful wounds connected to the stories was nothing negative. That the feelings connected to our imagination are part of being a human being, and that only being in contact with our wounds can give us the power to go on, to stand up straight again, to start to walk, to find new aims, to create new life.
One part of THE LAST SUPPER is composed of stories. Stories created out of fantasy, out of memories, out of dreams. Life’s fantasy transformed into theatre, reality transformed into artistic expression.
The other big part of the performance is related to the theme of revenge. Based on the KANUN, the main question emerging was about the possibility of forgiving.
Can we forgive? What are the prerequisites that enable forgiveness? Do we need the murderer's confession to be able to forgive him?
And we realized, that the murderer, by seeking to strengthen himself through his deed, in reality weakens himself existentially.
How can a man, after having raped women during war, ever embrace his wife again? In a human sense, he will be lost forever, if he admits it to himself or not. The weakness of the culprit has become a central point in our work (and maybe, in a real sense, a key point for gaining the power to brake the circle of revenge.)
In our performance, the murderer, in the end, through his contact with his victim's blood, realizes his deed and his deep fall from grace.
The victim's family now has no need to avenge him any more. The circle is broken.
The main aim of relationship between the two parts of the performance is to present the two worlds – on the one hand the 'warm' stories, which are somehow the result of aggression and are connected to the most intimate inner feelings, and on the other hand the vicious circle of KANUN, of revenge, and of the possibilities of forgiving.

We all hope this performance will touch you, as this wonderful and intense collaboration has touched everyone involved in it.
I am profoundly grateful for this incredible human and artistic experience, and I deeply thank all collaborators for making this project happen.
The Future is now.

Markus Zohner