Print and digital material for the theater play “Beyond my Name”
Play Director: Mark Boldin
Creative Director: Bojan Mustur
Graphic Design: Bojan Mustur
Photography: Velija Hasanbegović
Production: Public Institution MES – International Theater Festival – Scene MESS and Sarajevo War Theater
Sarajevo, 2013

What connects 8 performers with 2 sheets, a bottle of water, a video camera, 8 spoons and a heavy black object? An idea! The idea started to form as we circled and closed in on the epitaphs we find on the medieval tombstones – stećci. As we walk the historical sites, the stone forests and graveyards become alive, vivid and tangible pictures of past lives appear around us. We witness their living and dying as we breathe the silence and in an act of identification the stories and myths of old become ours. The lines the stones reveal are poetic, philosophical, humane and often hilariously funny documents of themes that don’t differ from ours today. We enter a space somewhere in between – a space between life and death, a space where the past mixes with the future. Our memories, personal and collective, become theirs – their projections, hopes and dreams become ours. It’s a space where time is relative, where life happens in fragments, where logical line of thought is replaced by emotions of love and fear. This space in between is our space on stage where we revive and relive the memory of the stone. ‘Beyond my name / Sjećanje kamena’ is a place where the human being becomes the carrier of an idea. This idea doesn’t die, it lives on for centuries (eternity maybe?) in our hearts and memories. These are spaces that escape any form of definition though, even that of our own names, when we try to remember who we are. ‘Beyond my name / Sjećanje kamena’ speaks of death and dying, of living and love, of lost souls, of loneliness, of kindness and malice. In the neverending cycle of being born again, we always step into a new world, a new maybe empty space, but definitely carrying something with us…
Mark Boldin