Direction: Ales Kurt
Playwright: Dzevad Karahasan
Cast: Mirsad Tuka, Amar Selimovic, Tatjana Sojic, Senad Alihodzic, Aida Bukva
Production: The Chamber Theater 55, 2013

The play Concert of Birds by Dževad Karahasan, written as a kind of homage to Aristophanes and the Islamic mystic Fariduddin Attar, focuses on a very present issue of human need and quest for eternal youth on one hand, and the need to preserve what we love, in any way, at any cost. Whether it is health, youth, or an entirely average terrier. Female. The play is written as a sort of parody, in which the author is, in a very refined way, making fun of human vanity, desire for power, and the very core of our humanity, which, stripped and exposed, remains empty, vain and egocentric. The main characters, a President who became a Nightingale and his mother Ghalina who turned into Raven, in their great desire to maintain eternal youth (and the President’s dog, Pauline), agree to a genetic experiment which is, although successful in rejuvenation, slowly turning them into birds. When they liberate themselves from their humanity, they slowly realize what people are actually like, and invite a great ansembly of all birds in order to take power and liberate themselves from human tyranny. Soon after, they meet the poet and mystic Attar, who became the Hoopoe, because a long time ago he wrote about the birds and understood their essence. He takes them on a mystical journey in search of meaning and identity. Concert of Birds is a comic story about the quest for humanity, life and lost time.