Five Plays

Where are all those movements you made, those passions, those sighs, those sentences, those monologues? They're still here somewhere, in this air, in this space. Things like that don't just vanish. (from Shades of Babel) Goran Stefanovski (1952-2018) was an internationally recognised ex-Yugoslav playwright. Four of his five plays published here have never been available in English before. They all illustrate Stefanovski's characteristic use of source material, particularly folk tales and myth, to present a striking vision of the human condition, especially in the extreme circumstances of war, exile and political insecurity. Except for the elegiac Sarajevo, these plays are written in the playwright's favourite genre of tragi-comedy. The short scenes and robust dialogue mark them out as the work of a connoisseur of the language of theatre. The Black Hole, the first play in this collection, is considered by the Italian theatre director Paolo Magelli to be the best European play of the 1980s and is still regularly performed in theatres worldwide. The Conrad Press is proud to be publishing this remarkable, highly engaging, intensely dramatic collection of plays by a master playwright.