Vinko Möderndorfer    

Romeo and Juliet Were Refugees

Year of writing: 2017
It’s not just people who are running from war that are refugees. A refugee is anyone who lives in their own country but cannot live off their work. These people are refugees in their own nation, amongst their own people, in a system that used and discarded them, even though they played an important role in it. We live in times of global refugees. We are convinced that other people are refugees, but in fact we are, too.

grown-ups

drama
love, intertextual references, class and cultural criticism of the society, unemployment, dispute

The characters from Shakespeare’s tragedy become everyday people in Möderndorfer’s play. Moreover, their families are not enemies. It is the social environment and modern society that stand in the way of their young love just like they stand in the way of an entire generation of young people as the young people seem to be becoming aliens or refugees in their own country.

ROMAN: I waited for you.

Juna looks at him. Roman stares into the distance.

JUNA: It passed so quickly.

ROMAN: It didn’t pass so quickly for me.

Juna looks at him.

Roman stares into the distance.

ROMAN: I thought you would write.

Juna looks at him.

Roman stares into the distance.

ROMAN: For three months I thought you would come, that you would write.

Juna looks at him.

Roman stares into the distance.

JUNA: I couldn’t.

ROMAN: I wrote to you.

Juna looks at him.

Roman stares into the distance.

ROMAN: Everything I had, I used for stamps and letters.

Juna looks at him.

Roman stares into the distance.

JUNA: I didn’t get them. Mother always threw them away. 

Translations

Erica Johnson Debeljak

Romeo and Juliet were refugees

Language of translation: English Nikollë Berishaj

Romeo dhe Zhulieta ishin refugjatë

Language of translation: Albanian

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For the author's contact please write to sigledal@gmail.com.

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Awards, nominations, shortlists and recommendations

Slavko Grum Award for Best Play

The play Romeo and Juliet Were Refugees is subtitled ‘a romantic play’. The iconic classical characters from Shakespeare’s tragedy are reincarnated here as completely ordinary people, two young persons with contemporary names and backgrounds, modern dramatic subjects. Their families are not enemies, the entire social environment is an enemy to their honest young love. The play represents this environment with no embellishments, just like the situation is seen by the young generation: lawless, stuck between two millstones that are crushing the characters’ simple, reasonable wishes and wants. On one side hand is the ever growing bureaucracy processing any individual by systematically stigmatizing them, using algorithms to detect any errors or deviation which, of course, make the individual unemployable and worthless. On the other hand, they are in economic distress, a crisis of subsistence and existential agony. Despite their efforts to do good, the characters end up in circumstances that push them to the edge, to a life of crime, to the very bottom of society. Using relatively sparse means of expression and a clear structure, the play has a deeply shocking effect and reminds us of how a young person in their own / this country can become an alien, unneeded and useless. With its realistic tone, the play opens a universal room for ethical questions. It sensitises the reader to injustice and presents the theatre as a place of confronting the audience with the inevitable and cruel psycho-social image of the most vulnerable groups who are being cold-shouldered by their own home country.

2018

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