THE BODY OF A WOMAN

AS A BATTLEFIELD IN THE BOSNIAN WAR

by

Matei Visniec

Translated from the French by

Alison Sinclair

Characters
KATE
DORRA

1
 Copyright  1987 by Matei Visniec
All performance rights, including professional, amateur, stock, motion
picture, radio, television, recitation, public reading, etc. are strictly
reserved. All inquiries should be addressed to the author's agent:
SACD (Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques)
11 bis, rue Ballu, 75009 Paris, France
Tel. 33 - (0)1 40 23 44 44 Fax. 33 - (0)1 40 23 45 58
E-mail: dsv@sacd.fr

First performed at the Studio des Champs Elysées, Paris, November 1997
directed by Michel Fagadau
Original title in French:
DU SEXE DE LA FEMME COMME CHAMP DE BATAILLE DANS
LA GUERRE EN BOSNIE
(published by ACTES SUD PAPIERS, Paris, France 1997)

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 SCENE 1

KATE reads extracts from her diary.

KATE: Slavonski Brod Hospital, Croatia, May 1994. (A beat.)

In inter-ethnic wars, the body of a woman becomes a battlefield.

Witness Europe at the end of the twentieth century. The penis of the
modern fighter is soaked in the screams of raped women, just as the
knight’s blade was once soaked in the blood of his enemy. (A beat.)

An attempt to apply psychoanalytical concepts to the autopsy of horror.

This inter-ethnic violence could perhaps be better understood by the
use of Freudian terms. Certain Freudian notions that belong to the
world of primal urges, can shed more light on this world of nationalist
violence than a more conventional terminology.

See if the following concepts can better explain the sources of ethnic
violence in Bosnia:

Nationalistic libido.
Libidinous nationalism.
Infantile ethnic sadism.
The fantasy world of a national minority.
Nationalist neurosis.
Narcissistic neurosis of the ethnic majority.
Obsessive neurosis of the ethnic minority.
The nationalistic imperative: the urge to dominate, the urge to threaten,
the urge to destroy.

SCENE 2

KATE enters DORRA’s room. DORRA sits motionless on a chair. She stares
vacantly.

KATE: Hello.
DORRA: …

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KATE: It’s me, Kate.
DORRA: …
KATE: It’s a beautiful day.
DORRA: …
KATE: Some people are walking in the garden.
DORRA: …
KATE: If you’d like to go into the garden, I’ll come with you.
DORRA: …
KATE: I’m not asking you to talk to me.
DORRA: …
KATE: But, if you’d like to go into the garden, I’ll come with you.
DORRA: …
KATE: Or you could go by yourself if you’d prefer.
DORRA: …
KATE: Do whatever you like.
DORRA: …
KATE: I’m going to open a window.
DORRA: …
KATE: Can you feel the Spring?

SCENE 3

KATE reads from extracts from her diary.

KATE: Doboj Camp, Bosnia, June 1994. (A beat.)

Are those ethnic groups who have never had their own nation state
most vulnerable to such atrocity? Are they more at risk than others of
becoming caught up in the primitive sadism?
Amazing parallels exist between nationalistic sadism, and Freud’s
description of infantile sadism. (A beat.)

Do members of ethnic groups who have never had their own nation
state react in a similar way to those people who have never
sublimated their sexual urges?
First thought: the manifestations of nationalistic frustration have much
in common with the manifestations of sexual frustration. Following
this logic, the nationalist explosion could be analysed from a Freudian
perspective, as an urge born frustration. (A beat.)

See if the following concepts can explain something:

Growing anxiety in the ethnic group.
Nationalist explosion. Nationalist depression. Depressive nationalism.

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 The neurotic phobia of ethnic groups who share the same territory.
The neurosis of destiny and the neurosis of failure.
The ethnic neurosis of abandonment.

SCENE 4

KATE enters Dorra's room.

KATE: I know you can hear me.

DORRA: …
KATE: I feel you can hear me.
DORRA: …
KATE: That’s why I’m talking to you.
DORRA: …
KATE: Because I know you can hear me.
DORRA: …
KATE: I’m not asking you to answer me.
DORRA: …
KATE: I’m not asking anything.
DORRA: …
KATE: I’m Kate.
DORRA: …
KATE: You’re Dorra.
DORRA: …
KATE: Hello, Dorra.
DORRA: …
KATE: I’m Kate. Hello Dorra.
DORRA: …
KATE: It's a pretty name, Dorra.
DORRA: …
KATE: What would you like for lunch?
DORRA: …
KATE: Would you like me to read the menu?
DORRA: …
KATE: There’s soup… zucchini soup… cream of vegetable soup… cabbage
lasagne… I like soup. I'm no totally vegetarian, but I do like
vegetable soups… I’ll leave the menu for you here on the table. You
can tick off the dish you’d like… And the dessert… Is that okay,
Dorra?
DORRA: …
KATE: Goodbye, Dorra.

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 SCENE 5

KATE reads extracts from her diary.

KATE: Modrica, Bosnia, August 1994. (A beat.)

And what if nationalism is nothing but a suicidal impulse?

Are there nationalities more disposed to melancholia?
Nationalistic hysteria. Mass hysteria. Defensive ethnic hysteria.
Identifying with the aggressor. (A beat.)

The frustrations of history. The distortion of a dream. Nations on the

brink of disintegration. The break-up of self.

The sexual impulse and nationalistic libido can be useful concepts

when we try to understand the incidents of rape that take place in
ethnic wars.

A portrait of today’s Balkan “soldier”. Literate, educated, often to the

level of high school certificate, even college. Fascinated by western
wealth. His dream: to move to Germany or the States. He speaks a
little English, can get by in German, knows a few words of Italian and
French, can have a proper conversation in Russian. He can be
obnoxious; he can be melancholic. He’s anti-communist, but also full
of nostalgia for the communist past because it was “stable”. Drinks a
lot: anything he can get his hands on. He feels depressed when he has
to admit to himself that he has no country, he hasn’t been given a
country, people have stolen his country from him, they’ve occupied
his country, amputated his country, humiliated his country. And the
West is always to blame: the West has forgotten him, the West hasn’t
kept its promises, the West has betrayed him, the West is a whore.

He fights in the name of his people, who have never had a country. But,
he doesn’t really know who his enemy is. He doesn’t have a clearly
defined battlefield.

Let’s see if these concepts can explain something:

Seeking refuge in horror.
Frustration inherited from his ancestors.
The fantasy world of the “soldier”.

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 The “soldier” finally finds his ideal conditions in frustration and, so, in
war. This is exactly Freud’s analysis in the case of frustrated subjects
who become ill just at that precise moment when they achieve the
object of their desire.

SCENE 6

Night. DORRA is alone, curled up in her bed, under the blanket.

DORRA: I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you…

She is silent for a moment. Then she sits up, gets out of bed, crosses the room,
goes to the bathroom, turns on the tap, pours herself a glass of water and
drinks it. She goes back to bed and covers herself with the blanket.

DORRA: I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you…

SCENE 7

KATE enters DORRA’s room.

KATE: Observation number 1. The subject is suffering from traumatic

neurosis. In German, this is called traumatische Neurose; in French,
nevrose traumatique; in Italian, nevrosa traumatica. The root cause of
this trauma is the rape to which she was subjected about two weeks
ago. It would appear that there was no neurological harm done.

The state of the subject: mental confusion, permanent exhaustion,

traumatic paralysis. The subject doesn’t respond to any external
stimuli. Her determined refusal to answer my questions makes me
think that she understands everything I say.

SCENE 8

DORRA kneels, as if praying. She speaks in a quiet voice.

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DORRA: I hate you… I hate you… I hate you…

No, don’t tell me that time heals everything. I don’t believe that time can
heal everything. Time can’t heal wounds that are unhealable. It just
can’t. Time can only do what time can do; nothing more.

No, Lord, you can’t deliver us from evil.

No, Lord, you can’t give us our daily bread.
No, Lord, you can’t forgive us our trespasses because we don’t ask to
be forgiven, because we can’t forgive you.
No, Lord, we can’t accept your will be done, because your will brings
only blood and fire and madness.
No, Lord, you are not the truth, because truth has been murdered,
truth has been buried along with heaven, which is dead like you;
because your house, Lord, is now a house of the dead, yes, a house of
the dead.
No, Lord, the evil does will never be punished and what’s more they will
go on to inherit the earth.
No, Lord, there is no victory of good over evil, of the weak over the
strong, of the poor over the rich, of the believer over the non-believer,
of life over death, of beauty over ugliness…
No, Lord, I cannot describe my suffering.
No, I don’t believe that we can speak about everything.
I don’t believe that we can understand everything.
I don’t believe that there is sense in everything we hear.
I don’t believe that there is any sense in what I am saying.

SCENE 9

KATE stands by DORRA’s bed.

KATE: Observation number 2. The subject is suffering an alteration of the ego.

In German, this is called Ichveränderung; in French, altération du
moi; in Italian, modificazione dell’io.

The subject seeks refuge in silence and offers positive resistance to every
attempt at communication from the outside world. This behaviour is
simply a defence mechanism. Every attempt to communicate with her
is perceived by the subject as an act of aggression. For her, the rape
continues.

SCENE 10

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DORRA, alone; night. She gets up, goes to the bathroom, turns on the tap, fills
a glass of water. She looks at herself in the mirror. She washes her face. She
sings to herself. The words are just about audible.

KATE enters. Throughout the following monologue DORRA continues to look

at herself in the mirror and to sing.

KATE: (To the audience) Communism: the force that obliged everyone to be
“brothers” is a time-bomb; this is the real powder-keg in the Balkans,
out of which has grown this national frustration. It’s the Freudian
revenge of peoples who have never had a country to call their own.

Nowhere does this ethnic hate manifest itself more strongly than in
the new “battlefield”. And what precisely is this new battlefield for
this new “soldier”? It is the body of the wife of his ex-neighbour, the
body of the wife of his old schoolmate, the body of the wife of his
best friend whom for nearly half a century he has called “brother”.
The body of a woman who is his ethnic enemy becomes a battlefield
in its own right, and he thrusts himself into it regarding rape as a
weapon of war. A woman’s body symbolises resistance, and the
modern Balkan “soldier” rapes the wife of his ethnic enemy in order
to smash that resistance and to strike a coup de grâce at this enemy.
For him, rape has the taste of total victory. He doesn’t have to expose
himself to the dangers of bullets, shells or tanks. He merely has to
expose himself to the screams of a woman, and these only inspire him
to serve his country to his last breath. In today’s ethnic conflicts, rape
is a kind of blitzkrieg; and nothing can destabilise the enemy more
than the rape of his women.

Having secured shelter for his own wife, daughter, mother and sister,
the “soldier” goes in pursuit of his enemy’s wife, daughter, mother
and sister; because today’s “soldier” prefers to destroy the sources of
his enemy’s strength rather than have a face to face confrontation with
that enemy. And, he knows what these sources are. Because once he
was the neighbour of his enemy, he knows all the members of his
enemy’s family, he knows his enemy’s habits. In short, his enemy
having once been his “brother”, he knows that the women
surrounding him are at one and the same time his enemy’s source of
greatest strength, and also of greatest weakness.

More than half of the women raped in ethnic wars are victims of
aggressors whom they know personally, or whose paths they have
crossed frequently within a radius of 60 kilometres or less. Around

9
 half the women whom we were able to question state that the men
who raped them came from the same village, or from a neighbouring
village. Almost a quarter of the women we questioned are able to give
the name, or names, of their violators. It seems that many women,
married to men from a different ethnic group, were raped by men of
the same ethnic group as themselves, as punishment for entering into
a mixed marriage.
So, these “soldiers” don’t rape for animal pleasure, or out of sexual
frustration. For them, rape is a form of military strategy aimed at
demoralising the enemy. In today’s ethnic wars, rape fulfils the same
purpose as the destruction of the enemy’s houses, his places of
worship, his cultural heritage and his values.

SCENE 11

KATE enters DORRA’s room. DORRA sits motionless on her chair.

KATE Hello, Dorra.
DORRA: …
KATE: It’s me, Kate.
DORRA: …
KATE: They’ve lit a big fire in the drawing room.
DORRA: …
KATE: Would you like to go down?
DORRA: …
KATE: If you’d like to go down, you know you’d be very welcome.
DORRA: …
KATE: Do you like an open fire?
DORRA: …
KATE: I think it’s really beautiful.
DORRA: …
KATE: We’re all down there.
DORRA: …
KATE: Do come down if you’d like.
DORRA: …
KATE: Or, if you’d rather I stay with you here, just say.
DORRA: …
KATE: You have a little bell here, Dorra. If you’d like me to come up and sit
with you, just ring. OK?
DORRA: …
KATE: I’m not a doctor, Dorra. I’m not here as a doctor. I’m not here to
force you to get better.

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DORRA: …
KATE: I’m here because I need you.
DORRA: …
KATE: Bye-bye then, Dorra.

SCENE 12

DORRA: (To the audience)The Balkans, it’s like this: an emotional time-bomb.
In the Balkans, we really know how to drink. Hey, we haven’t seen
each other for three weeks, that’s a long time, that’s unbearable, so
let’s go and have a drink. And you drink till the small hours. Because
- in the Balkans, if you’re mates - you can’t bear not to see each other
for three whole weeks. Any excuse to booze till five in the morning.
Haven’t seen you for a week; oh, dear; that’s a long time; let’s go and
have a drink. And you drink till midnight. To make the separation of
friends bearable, you have to drink, just a bit, every single day. So,
the thing to do is to go drinking every day after work, from about 6
o’clock till about 10 o’clock; then it’s OK, then you can go home, and
spend a few minutes with the kids. Or with your wife. Your wife who
is nothing but a childbearing machine. The only thing she knows is
how to nag her husband from the moment he comes in. And that’s
why the husband comes home late and goes out early. In the
mornings, he has a hangover. That’s really the best moment for his
wife to have a go at him. In the evenings, she doesn’t dare say too
much. In the evenings, a sense of honour is very strong in Balkan
man. In the evenings, if his wife oversteps the mark with her
nagging, he’ll just get angry and knock back another bottle. Or two.
Or three. Because, in the evenings, having spent time drinking with
his friends, Balkan man suddenly becomes sad. His soul feels pain.
He begins to get obsessed and tortured by great metaphysical
questions. You don’t understand the first thing about history, my
dear. No, she doesn’t understand anything at all. She doesn’t
understand that her man has been struck by a melancholia passed
down to him by his ancestors. She doesn’t understand why he
suddenly starts to question the meaning of life. Where do we come
from? Where are we going? The world is a shit-hole; a meaningless
shit-hole. In the evening, having knocked back several dozen bottles
of beer with his friends, Balkan man starts to despair at the sheer
inadequacy of language. All he can do is piss and cry. He pisses tears
of anxiety, tears of sorrow, tears for the helplessness of humankind in
the face of the mystery of the universe. And he’s going to vomit,

11
though not just yet, not till around 3 in the morning, when the pain in
his head becomes unbearable because those bastards have made the
beer with rotten malt. (DORRA becomes “Balkan man”.) And in the
world of business, everybody’s a crook, a swindler. If you want a
decent beer, it has to be foreign. And even then, you have to make
absolutely sure that the labels haven’t been faked. Because
everything is fake nowadays. That’s why this country will never get
out of the hole it’s in. Because everybody’s a crook, a swindler.
They’ve faked our history, they’ve faked our future, we don’t stand a
chance, we’ve missed the boat, we’re the scum of Europe, we’re a
nation of gypsies, we don’t even know where we really come from,
we’ve never been free. We’ve never had a proper country, we’ve
never been independent, we’ll never free ourselves of communism,
communism has changed us down to the very marrow, we don’t…
(“Balkan man” vomits.) Aaaargh… (Pause. DORRA becomes
herself again.) At 3 in the morning, he lays his head on his wife’s
breast. He needs her warmth, he needs her to caress him while he
sheds his bitter, transcendental, cosmic tears… He lays his head on
his wife’s breast because this breast, so warm and sweet and
welcoming, reminds him of his mother… Oh, his mother, the only
person in the whole world who always understood him, who always
loved him, who always had faith in him… In the arms of his wife
(though he thinks she’s a bitch) he hopes to find the security he felt
nestled in the arms of his mother. And his soul is bleeding, because
he hasn’t seen his mother since his sister’s wedding, because his
mother has grown old, because his mother is far away, because his
mother has been dead for two years, because his mother has been
dead for ten years, because his mother left him when he was only
five… Do you realise what kind of a childhood I had? Deprived of a
mother’s love from the age of five? (DORRA once again becomes
“Balkan man”.) Do you? Shit, you don’t understand at all, you don’t
care, all you want to do is take my pay packet every week and shut
me up in this house… (Change of tone.) Yes, at 3 in the morning,
Balkan man is a fragile creature, one you have to deal with gently,
otherwise his soul will be in danger of breaking into a thousand
pieces. But his wife can get at him later, when he’s getting ready for
work, as he shaves lethargically in front of the mirror in which he
doesn’t even recognise himself. That’s when she can get at him. Look
at you, you’re unrecognisable, you no longer even recognise
yourself… Look at the state you’re in, look at the state you came
home in, look at your shirt, look at your trousers all torn, look at the
stains, why are you doing this to me, me and the children, you don’t
care do you, why, why are you doing this to me? Because of his
hangover he finds it hard to answer, in fact he doesn’t answer. He’s in

12
 a stupor, as if in a bubble separating him from the outside world.
Then he drinks a coffee, very black and very strong, but he doesn’t
eat anything because when you’ve got a hangover like that you can’t
face eating… And then he goes off to work without saying a word,
without looking at his wife, hardly even looking at his children,
extremely uncomfortable in the shirt his wife has made him put on, all
clean and freshly ironed. All day this clean shirt will be his wife’s
silent reproach, a reproach that she has stuck to his skin, heavy to
bear, impossible to forget, a sort of cage which will remind him with
every move he makes that he is a prisoner for life and that he has all
those mouths to feed, not least his own.

SCENE 13

DORRA, KATE

DORRA: Do you want me to tell you how I was raped?

KATE: No, Dorra.
DORRA: Yes you do, you want me to tell you how they raped me.
KATE: No, Dorra, I don’t want you to tell me anything at all.
DORRA: Yes you do, you want me to tell you in detail how they raped me.
KATE: No, Dorra, I don’t.
DORRA: Yes you do, it’s for your report.
KATE: I’m not making a report, Dorra.
DORRA: Yes you are, you’re making a report for the Boston Psychiatric
Clinic.
KATE: No, Dorra, I’m not making a report for the Boston Psychiatric
Clinic.
DORRA: But you do work for the clinic. And you’re American. And you’re
called Kate.
KATE: I am American, and I am called Kate, but I’m not making a report
for the Boston Psychiatric Clinic.
DORRA: There were five of them.
KATE: I don’t want to know, Dorra.
DORRA: You come from Boston.
KATE: Yes.
DORRA: There were five of them.
KATE: I don’t want to know, Dorra.
DORRA: You come from Boston. Soon you’ll be going back to Boston.
KATE: Yes, I do live in Boston, but I won’t be going back there for a
while.

13
DORRA: There were five of them. But I don’t know if they were Muslims,
or Croats or Serbs. You see, in Bosnia, everyone speaks Serbo-
Croat.
KATE: I have to go now, Dorra.
DORRA: You have to put in your report that I don’t know whether they were
Muslims, or Croats or Serbs.
KATE: Good-bye, Dorra. You can call me whenever you want.
DORRA: (In tears) Go back home, Kate. Go back to where you belong.

SCENE 14

KATE: Observation number 3. The subject suddenly comes out of her state
of torpor. That doesn’t mean she’s getting better. She’s just trying to
come to terms with the world by means of aggression. It is absolutely
imperative that somebody is with her every single minute in order to
absorb her negative energy.

SCENE 15

DORRA, KATE.

KATE: Hello, Dorra.

DORRA: …
KATE: I’d like to talk to you, Dorra.
DORRA: …
KATE: I’d like us to be friends, Dorra.
DORRA: …
KATE: I’ve brought you some tulips.
DORRA: …
KATE: I hope you like tulips.
DORRA: …
KATE: May I put them on the table?
DORRA: …
KATE: I’d really like us to talk, Dorra.
DORRA: …
KATE: Tomorrow is the longest day of the year, and the shortest night…
DORRA: …
KATE: It’s the summer solstice…
DORRA: …
KATE: There’s going to be a party…
DORRA: …

14
KATE: Everyone’s going down to the lake…
DORRA: …
KATE: If you like, we could go for a walk by the lake.
DORRA: …
KATE: It’s a very beautiful lake. It’s called Lake Constance.
DORRA: …
KATE: Good-bye then, Dorra.

SCENE 16

KATE: (Looking at her collection of rare stones) Daddy, what is Europe?

It’s just a pile of old stones. Grandpa, what is Ireland? It’s a stone
country, a country made of stones scattered like this. (She describes
the horizontal plane with her hand.) Just stones, or old stones?
Stones that are good for nothing. But aren’t there stones that are good
for something? No, they’re all good for nothing.
Daddy, is that an old stone? No, that’s a lump of cement. So, what’s
an old stone like? Much bigger, and almost black…
Black like Betty?
No, not as black as Betty.
When I told Betty my nanny that Europe was full of black stones, but not
as black as she was, she started to laugh.
You’ve got a very smart daughter here, Mrs McNoil. You should
have called her Europe.
But I wasn’t called Europe. I was called Kate. Mommy, what does
the word ‘Kate’ mean? It doesn’t mean anything.
Nothing?
Nothing.
And I started to cry. How could my name mean nothing? Well, sure
it does mean something, it means Kate. And McNoil, what does that
mean? It means McNoil. And why did the McNoils leave Ireland?
What!?
Well, I know you left Ireland, but why? Why did you? Grandpa told
me that all the McNoils left Ireland.
Go and ask him and let me be!
Grandpa, why did you leave Ireland? Because there were too many
stones on my land. How many were there? One day I started to
count them. And I counted them for 10 years. Every day, I picked up
about 100 stones… That’s about 36,000 every year. After 10 years,
I’d picked up 99,999,999 stones. And that’s when I said stop,
enough; there are just too many stones.
Too many stones. And so we went to America.
Too many stones. That’s Europe.

15
 Too many stones, that’s Europe: one day, she will sink under the
weight of all those stones.

(KATE does her daily jog, running on the spot)

Actually, she has already begun to sink.

This was the first image I conjured up of Europe: a huge mountain of

stones, a sort of iceberg made of stones gradually sinking on the other
side of the ocean. But at the foot of this mountain there was
something else: a little garden with two or three little, withered
trees… and that’s where I used to imagine my grandfather, armed
with a pickaxe, on his knees, scratching out 100 stones a day from his
little piece of land.

I think it’s this image that made me go to Bosnia. When I was told
that I’d be helping specialist teams responsible for locating mass
graves and exhuming their contents, I was suddenly struck with this
image of my grandfather digging up stones. Every one of us McNoils
is a born digger. For me, though, it wasn’t stones; it was corpses.

SCENE 17

DORRA and KATE

KATE: Hello, Dorra.

DORRA: You lied to me.
KATE: I never lied to you, Dorra.
DORRA: You don’t need me.
KATE: Yes I do.
DORRA: You don’t.
KATE: I do, Dorra. I do need you.
DORRA: What do you want to know?
KATE: I don’t know.
DORRA: What are you trying to understand?
KATE: I don’t know. All I know is that I had a breakdown.
DORRA: Do you have children?
KATE: Two girls. And I haven’t seen them for six months.
DORRA: You’re mad.
KATE: No, I’m not.
DORRA: What’s Boston like?
KATE: It’s beautiful.
DORRA: Do you have any photos?

16
KATE: Of my daughters?
DORRA: No, of Boston.
KATE: Yes, I’ll bring them to show you tomorrow.
DORRA: I hate being interrogated, Kate.
KATE: But I’m not interrogating you.
DORRA: Yes you are. You’re all the same, you Americans: obsessed with
psychotherapy. And I hate being interrogated.
KATE: But I’m not interrogating you.
DORRA: You make it seem as if you’re not interrogating me, but what
you’re actually doing is torturing me with all your clever
techniques, your clever therapy.
KATE: I swear to you, Dorra, that I’m not here as a doctor.
DORRA: You’re all so obsessed with psychotherapy.
KATE: You have to go on living, Dorra.
DORRA: I don’t think I want to, Kate.
KATE: You have to, Dorra.
DORRA: Why should I care what you think. Don’t try and sell me all those
old clichés about a better life, blah, blah, blah.
KATE: No, Dorra, I won’t.
DORRA: Life isn’t the strongest force.
KATE: I’m not sure.
DORRA: Death is stronger.
KATE: I’m not sure.
DORRA: And it’s brute force that’s stronger than anything.
KATE: I’m not sure.
DORRA: Do you know why I’m still alive, Kate?
KATE: No… Yes…
DORRA: Because I discovered that God does exist.
KATE: Yes.
DORRA: And I hate him, Kate. Before, I didn’t believe he existed. But
after, I said to myself, no, so much evil, that only makes any sense
if God exists and this is what he wants for us: to feed us on a diet
of atrocities. And since then, even though I don’t really believe in
him, I hate him. And that’s what keeps me hanging on. I hate him
so much that I cannot let myself die. Quite simply, I can’t die
because hate is keeping me alive. Do you understand, Kate? Do
you believe in God, Kate?
KATE: I don’t know.

DORRA begins to methodically pull the petals off the tulips that KATE brought
on her last visit.

DORRA: You couldn’t force me to live if I didn’t want to, Kate. You and
your clever techniques, they just make me laugh.

17
KATE: I know, Dorra.
DORRA: You’re so naïve, Kate, that I’m actually starting to like you.
KATE: ….
DORRA: Yes, I really think I like you, Kate. And, because I like you so
much, I’m going to do something for you.
KATE: What?
DORRA: You know, Kate, I know exactly how I’m going to die. But, I
haven’t yet decided when I’m going to. Because you’re an
intelligent woman, Kate, you’ll understand why I can’t go on living
like this. And, because you’re so nice, I’m going to tell you, and
only you, when I’m going to die.
KATE: When?
DORRA: I’ll tell you soon, one day before…

SCENE 18

KATE: Observation number 5. The subject’s mood swings from outward

aggression to periods of complete self-absorption. These apparent
whims are actually a good sign, a sign that she is in fact capable of
entering into some kind of new relationship with the outside world.
It’s too early to submit her to questions about the circumstances that
provoked her trauma. At this stage, one can only assess her ability to
recall by patiently employing various psychological techniques.

SCENE 19

KATE and DORR.A.

KATE: Hello.
DORRA: …
KATE: How are you, Dorra?
DORRA: …
KATE: Do you know there’s a t.v. downstairs? You can watch it if you
want.
DORRA: …
KATE: I’ve brought some photos of Boston. Would you like to see them?
DORRA: …
KATE: (Putting the album on the table) I’ll leave them there. You can look
at them when you feel like it.
DORRA: …
KATE: Would you like me to show them to you now?
DORRA: …

18
KATE: I’ll show them to you whenever you want.
DORRA: Kate…
KATE: Yes…
DORRA: That lake, is it really Lake Constance?
KATE: Yes.
DORRA: Is that in Switzerland?
KATE: No, it’s in Germany. But the Swiss border is only a few hundred
yards away. You can actually see Switzerland from the window.
DORRA: Where?
KATE: Come here, I’ll show you.

KATE leads DORRA to the window.

KATE: Can you see those houses there, at the foot of the hill? That’s
Switzerland.
DORRA: Are you sure?
KATE: Yes. And here, we’re in Germany. On the left, that’s Germany.
On the right, that’s Switzerland.
DORRA: And what’s on the other side of the lake?
KATE: Still Switzerland.

A moment’s silence.

DORRA: Kate…
KATE: Yes, Dorra…
DORRA: How did I get here?
KATE: You were transferred here because you were very ill.
DORRA: It’s funny. I always wanted to see Switzerland… And Germany…
KATE: And now you can.
DORRA: Yes. I like this window. You can see Switzerland and Germany
from it. What is this place, a hospital?
KATE: It’s a sort of convalescent home.
DORRA: And why are the letters “USA” stamped on everything?
KATE: Where’ve you seen that?
DORRA: (Turns the chair round) Here. “USA.” There’s also an inventory
number: 6632D. So, America has sent a chair for me, number
6632D?
KATE: It’s because this used to be an American army medical centre.
DORRA: For the insane?
KATE: No, not for the insane, for the sick.
DORRA: Kate…
KATE: Yes.
DORRA: I want to leave here now.
KATE: …

19
DORRA: Did you hear what I said, Kate?
KATE: …
DORRA: Kate?
KATE: …
DORRA: Kate!
KATE: Yes…
DORRA: (Hysterical) I want to leave here now. I don’t want chair number
6632D from the Americans. I don’t want this blanket, number
32507F. I want to leave here now, this minute. (Tearful) I want to
go away.
KATE: Where to, Dorra?

SCENE 20

DORRA and KATE are eating together. There are flowers on the
table, and a bottle of rosé. The atmosphere is relaxed, they’ve both
got a bit tipsy and there’s a real complicity between them.

DORRA: (Eating) As soon as he’s had a drink, a sense of history is

awakened in Balkan man. In the seediest bar, wherever he can get
pissed, whether it’s in Zagreb, Tirana, Athens, Bucharest, Sofia,
Ljubliana or Skopje, Balkan man all of a sudden becomes an
internationalist, brimming with love for his nearest and dearest.
And he starts to judge the whole world using the philosophy of
“but”. But is the mirror of Balkan man’s thinking, it’s the key to
his soul, it’s the word that makes ordinary conversation take a
sudden turn into subtle diatribe.

Gypsy music. Or perhaps it’s DORRA who starts to sing a snatch of a gypsy
tune. In the following monologues, it isn’t really DORRA who speaks, but her
memories and her life experience. Each time, she really enters into the skin of
“the Balkan man” who churns out, year in year out, those same old clichés,
those same over-used insults and those same spiteful comments directed at his
“Balkan brothers” of another nationality.

DORRA: (As “Balkan man”) I do like gypsies; I’ve really got absolutely
nothing against them. Come on, gypsy, give me a song. No, don’t
get me wrong, gypsies are really great. They go back a long way;
they have something about them that’s deep and mysterious, but at
the same time light-hearted and joyful. But, let’s face it, they’re all
thieves; you can’t take your eyes off them for a minute; they steal
horses, sheep, chickens, children, and now, to top it all, they’re
even stealing our own sacred folklore, our own most beautiful

20
 songs that they bring out on western CDs, making millions of
dollars…

Their game continues. This time, it’s Albanian music.

I really like the Albanians. I’ve got an Albanian colleague at the

university. He’s quiet, keeps himself to himself, is careful with his
money: he’s done really well. Yes, they’re really good people, the
Albanians, especially those from the north, who are Catholics. No,
don’t get me wrong, I can’t say I’ve got anything against the
Albanians. They’re probably the oldest race in the Balkans… But,
let’s face it, my university colleague actually came from Kosovo,
so he’s not really Albanian at all, and you have to admit that in
today’s Europe the Albanians are the lowest of the low. Enver
Hodja really dumped them in the shit, and the whole world had
them knocking on the door: the Yugoslavians, the Russians, the
Chinese. Luckily, people fed them. But then they fell out with
everybody, and now they’re the poorest people in Europe; even
their ideas are poor, like wanting to annex Kosovo. I mean, look
what happened to that idea…

They clink glasses.

Cheers!
KATE: Cheers!

Bulgarian music. DORRA, letting herself go more and more,

clicks her fingers and sings.

DORRA: (As yet another “Balkan man”, speaking of his “Balkan

brothers”) The Bulgarians; oh the Bulgarians, they’re really nice.
They’re really good gardeners. My mother only ever bought
vegetables from a Bulgarian greengrocer. You should have seen
the gherkins he had, and the yoghurt. Bulgarian yoghurt really is
the best in the world. And the Bulgarians have great taste… and
their roses… they’re simply fantastic. And their rose petal jam,
have you ever tried it? It’s wonderful. Yes, don’t get me wrong, I
really like the Bulgarians… But, let’s face it, they’re a
disappointed and frustrated race. It’s they who started the Balkan
war in 1913. They wanted a country bigger than they actually
needed, those Bulgarians. They wanted the whole of Macedonia to
grow their gherkins in. And, even today, they say that
Macedonians are really Bulgarians. They’ve bulgarised the names
of all the Turks who live in their country. That’s the Bulgarians for

21
 you; you can only get along with them if you keep them in their
place. Cheers!
KATE: Cheers!

They clink glasses and kiss. DORRA starts the game again.
Turkish music. KATE fills up their glasses and enters more and
more into the spirit of the game.

KATE: It’s Turkish!

DORRA: Yes, it’s Turkish.
KATE: So, the Turks…
DORRA: (As yet another “Balkan man”) The Turks, now I do respect the
Turks. They really are a force to be reckoned with. One foot in
Asia, one foot in Europe; the Turks, they don’t understand the
meaning of the word “border”. Never underestimate the Turks!
This spring I went to Istanbul. It’s amazing what you can buy
there. And they still have a huge empire. They do most of their
business with us now, because the French, the Italians and the
English are too far away. Yes, the Turks are really good workers.
You’ve seen how many there are in Germany, and they’re all in
work. There are 4 million unemployed in Germany but not one of
them is a Turk. Amazingly every single Turk managed to get work.
Honest to God, a few months ago, a Turk opened a bakers’ shop
near where I live, and now I only ever eat Turkish bread, it’s really
good. The Turks will come back to the Balkans bit and bit, you’ll
see. I don’t actually have any Turkish friends myself; still – don’t
get me wrong - I do respect them as a people. But, let’s face it, it
can’t be right that they put our own bakers out of business. People
will think we’re no longer capable of making our own bread. And
the Turks just barge in wanting to show us how to do it. I’m not in
favour of that, them coming in with their electric cookers that
they’ve bought in the west with our money. And it’s those same
Turks who’ve looted our country for four centuries. Five centuries
actually. And on top of that, they’re not even Europeans, and yet
they’ve been accepted into NATO, and just you wait, they’ll soon
worm their way into the European Union.

They clink glasses and drink. Jewish music.

KATE: That’s…
DORRA: Jewish…
KATE: Oh, yes. I really like the Jews…
DORRA: Some of my friends are Jews, and once I had Jewish neighbours…

22
KATE: When I was little, I used to play with Jewish kids who lived near
us…
DORRA: Yes, personally, I think it’s a shame that the Jews have left our
country over the years. In the town where I was born, between the
two world wars, there were 5,000 Jews, 5,000 Germans, and there
were only 4,000 of us. Did you know that? But, personally, I saw
nothing wrong with that, because all the Jews were businessmen or
intellectuals. My history professor, at high school, he was a Jew,
and so was the dentist my mother used to drag me to; and when I
started to learn the violin, the woman who taught me was Jewish.
And then nearly all of them went to Palestine. No, don’t get me
wrong, the Jews are OK, and - what’s more - wherever they go the
economy flourishes…
KATE: But…
DORRA: Ah ha! You learn quickly… But, let’s face it, we mustn’t forget
that it was the Yids that crucified our Lord Jesus Christ. And, when
they saw that communism wasn’t really working in the east and
that the quality of life there was getting
worse and worse, they left en masse, not the least bit grateful that
those same countries had given them their nationality. Cheers!
KATE: Cheers!

Serbian music.

KATE: So what’s next…

DORRA: The Serbs…
KATE: Ah, the Serbs. Now I really like the Serbs…
DORRA: Actually my wife is a Serb. Of all the Slavs in the Balkans the
Serbs are the toughest. They have a very primitive, wild side to
them, that has often made the world quake over the centuries.
They’re bloody great drinkers, and they’re bloody great fighters.
And it’s strange how charming they can be, considering that by
nature they’re rather morose. They have a melancholy that’s been
in their veins for generations. But they can be hot-blooded. Their
blood sometimes literally boils. They always have to be on the
move, they’re always restless. So, don’t get me wrong, the Serbs
are actually rather attractive, and I should know, my wife’s a Serb.
They’re full of surprises, off the wall, unpredictable…..
KATE: But…
DORRA: But, let’s face it, they have an annoying tendency to exaggerate
everything; they exaggerate all the time. They’ve got no concept of
moderation, the Serbs, they’re nationalists through and through.
They’re completely crazy. All they

23
 think about is their empire, lost in the 14th century by the way, and
their martyred king, King Stefan. But they haven’t done much since
then. Now they’re just pig-farmers, dreaming of a Great Serbia.
I’ve had them up to here.
And what’s more, my ex-wife who was a Serb left me for a
mother-fucker of a Serb, for a good for nothing mother-fucker of a
Serb.

The women kiss each other, eat and drink. The game continues;
Croatian music.

KATE: (With her mouth full) That’s…

DORRA: (With her mouth full) The Croats…
KATE: The Croats, yes, I like the Croats…
DORRA: It’s lovely in Croatia. It’s so clean, so beautiful. You must have
seen the cathedral they’ve got in Zagreb, this shows they’re
Catholics, you can tell they’re part of the Roman civilisation, Latin,
the Pope, the Holy Roman Empire, the spirit of Venice. The Croats
have first-class minds, they’re sharp, they’re like the Adriatic Sea:
open, they have insight, they’re Slavs but they’re westernised.
They did well to get rid of the Cyrillic alphabet and start to write in
Roman letters; that put them a hundred years ahead of everybody
else. No, don’t get me wrong, the Croats are great, they’re like our
twin brothers…
KATE: (Stuffing her mouth) But…
DORRA: But, let’s face it, nobody can hurt you like your own brother.
That’s what they’re like, the Croats, they’ll stab you in the back,
they’ll betray you as soon as look at you. You saw what they did in
’41, they went over to the Nazis, all of them in the end, all except
Tito. They sided with the Nazis and massacred the Serbs. Because
that’s what they’re like, the Croats: bastard collaborators; ustashi.
And even today they’re thick as thieves with the Germans,
Germany’s their real country. Oh, the Croats… Here’s to us!
KATE: To us!

Greek music. DORRA makes dancing movements whilst still seated on her
chair.

Oh, I know that, it’s Greek.

DORRA: (Dancing) Ah, Zorba the Greek…
KATE: The Greeks, here’s to the Greeks, I adore the Greeks…
DORRA: You can really have a good time with the Greeks.
KATE: Have you seen them playing their crazy bazoukis?

24
DORRA: But they are crazy, the Greeks, crazy but beautiful. The second a
Greek becomes your friend, he’ll give you everything. And
they’ve certainly left their mark on history, the Greeks; they laid
the foundations of civilisation as we know it. So, don’t get me
wrong, I love the Greeks…
KATE: But…
DORRA: (She stops dancing) But, let’s face it, the Greeks nowadays have
absolutely nothing in common with the ancient Greeks, even
though they believe they’re the direct descendants of Pericles. Ha,
that makes me laugh. Have you seen those stupid little outfits their
National Guard wear…
KATE: Peasant costume!
DORRA: Ah, the Greeks, they’re just an unscrupulous nation of shopkeepers.
Now they’re starting to build motorways with money they
wheedled out of the European Union…
KATE: (Starts to open a bottle of champagne) No!
DORRA: Yes!

The sound of the cork popping. They start to drink the champagne. The game
continues; Hungarian music. The alcohol is clearly going to their heads.

KATE: The…
DORRA: The Hungarians…
KATE: Oh, I love the Hungarians…
DORRA: They’re real originals, the Hungarians. Have you heard the
language they speak?
KATE: It’s not like any other language at all…
DORRA: Right; you can’t understand a word. It hasn’t got any Latin in it…
KATE: It hasn’t got any Slav…
DORRA: It hasn’t got any Greek…
KATE: Certainly no Turkish!
DORRA: No German.
KATE: It’s all just… Hungarian!
DORRA: That’s the thing about the Hungarians, they’re not like anybody
else; they’re absolutely unique. They’re indomitable; born leaders.
You remember how they
had the audacity to rise up against Moscow in ’56? It’s crazy, but
they wanted to throw out communism as far back as ’56. They had
a bloody nerve, those
Hungarians. And they paid for it. Even so, after that, you know,
they lived better than we did, even under Janos Kadar: more
freedom, more small businesses, proof that big brother Russia had
more respect for his little

25
 Hungarian brother than he had for his other little brothers. That’s
the Hungarians for you, tough as old boots, throughout history…
So, don’t get me wrong, I admire their strength, their virility…..
KATE: But…
DORRA: … but, let’s face it, they’re profiteers, and megalomaniacs; and
actually they’re servants of the Austrians. What did they think,
these Hungarians, that their empire was going to last for a thousand
years? It’s their arrogance that ruined them, their unbelievable
arrogance, it’s…

The game continues; Romanian music.

KATE: Oh no, is there more?

DORRA: Well, you know, there are rather a lot of us in the Balkans. The
Romanians…
KATE: (Feigning exhaustion) I like the Romanians a whole lot…
DORRA: They’re the Latins here. When you hear them speak, you’d think it
was French, or Italian. And between the two wars, do you know
what they called Bucharest? They called it “little Paris”. I really
like the Romanians. And their women! It’s amazing what a hit
Romanian whores are now in Turkey. The Turkish whores are even
starting to learn Romanian so that they can pass
themselves off as Romanians in Istanbul. Yes, don’t get me
wrong, I really like the Romanians…
KATE: But…
DORRA: … but, let’s face it, they’re all doom and gloom, and they’re really
two-faced. They always somehow manage to pop up on the
winning side. And, actually, their language is riddled with Slavic
words. They say they’re not really Balkan, that the Balkans stop at
the Danube, but there’s nothing more Balkan than a Romanian,
take my word for it…
KATE: (Egging DORRA on to speed up the game) The Muslims…
DORRA: The Bosnian Muslims? They’ve really had their share of suffering,
you know. They deserve a country of their own. Do you
remember how they held out in Sarajevo?
KATE: I take my hat off to them.
DORRA: They’ve got guts, the Bosnian Muslims. So, don’t get me wrong, I
really like them…
KATE: But…
DORRA: … but, let’s face it, they’re actually just Slavs who’ve converted to
Islam.
KATE: So they’re traitors?!
DORRA: Actually, it’s hard to know what to call them. Last century, people
called them “Turks”. And then Tito came along, with his idea of

26
 inventing a Muslim nation, something that doesn’t exist anywhere
else in the world. At the time, the Saudis protested…
KATE: (Now completely drunk, and victorious) The blacks…
DORRA: Who?
KATE: The blacks…
DORRA: There aren’t any blacks in the Balkans.
KATE: Yes, but…
DORRA: But…
KATE: But, this but - it’s everywhere. Do you think this Balkan “but” is
really only found in the Balkans? No, you’re wrong there,
honey… Come to my country one day if you want to hear the
“Balkan but” sung to an American tune…. The blacks are great, the
blacks are really, really great. I like the blacks. Music seems to run
in their veins; it’s amazing. They invented the blues, the blacks did.
The blacks’ blues! And they invented gospel music. And they’re
terrific boxers…
DORRA: I like the blacks, too…
KATE: But…
DORRA: But…
KATE: But…
DORRA: But…
KATE: But the problem is… there’s “a black problem”.
DORRA: “A black question”…
KATE: Because, frankly, they’re not like us…
DORRA: (Pretending to “fall in” quickly) Because they’re black!
KATE: No. We have to be politically correct here… Because they are
“people of colour”… But they’re uncultured “people of colour”…
and they stink… and they’re violent… and they’re always causing
riots… and they’re trouble-makers… and they’re drug-dealers…
There! And don’t think it’s just the goddamn fucking niggers who
fuck us up… No… there’s also…
DORRA: (More and more drunk) The Indians…
KATE: That’s riiiight! The “Native American Indians”…
DORRA: Who are rather beautiful…
KATE: … with their feathers and things, very decorative…
DORRA: But…
KATE: But…
DORRA: But…
KATE: But it’s better when they’re deeeaad! A good Injun is a dead Injun!
DORRA: Shiiiiit!
KATE: Oh, yeah. And then there’s the Mexicans…
DORRA: Not in the Balkans…?
KATE: But…
DORRA & KATE: The “Balkan but” gets everywhere…

27
DORRA: So, what about the Mexicans? I like the Mexicans…
KATE: Yes, the Mexicans are nice…
DORRA: They wear big hats…
KATE: They’re called sombreros…
DORRA: And they have ponchos…
KATE: And guitars…
DORRA: But…
KATE: But…
DORRA: But…
KATE: But, they all want is to come and live in my country, the goddamn
fucking Mexicans, in my United States of America, those bastard
Mexicans. Every day, every single day, thousands of them sneak
across the border to come and work illegally in my country, taking
jobs away from honest Americans. And their bloody kids are a
burden on our education system and on our health system, and they
don’t even bloody try to learn our language… Oh, my God.
DORRA: Then there’s the Puerto Ricans…
KATE: Oh yes, the Puerto Ricans…
DORRA: I like the Puerto Ricans…
KATE: But…
DORRA: But…
KATE: (Now acting like a full-blooded racist, banging her fist on the
table) I’ve had the bloody Puerto Ricans up to here, they make me
puke!
DORRA: Then there’s the…
KATE: The…
DORRA: The Aztecs…
KATE: Oh, I like the Aztecs…
DORRA: Yes, they’re nice, the Aztecs…
KATE: Yes, but…
DORRA: But…
KATE: But…
DORRA: But they’re Aztecs! That’s the problem!
KATE: That’s it. That’s fucking it… They’re fucking Aztecs…
DORRA: Just like the…
KATE: The Patagonians…
DORRA: The Patagonians, yes…
KATE: The Patagonians… they’re nice the Patagonians…
DORRA: But…
KATE: But…
DORRA & KATE:They’re Patagonians! Shit!

Rock music. They dance, building up to dancing rock and roll.

28
 SCENE 21

KATE: When you open up a mass grave, there are certain techniques you
have to use. So, I took a course in the excavation of mass graves.
You can’t just go into one and rummage around. There are, after
all, laws governing such excavations. The person undertaking the
job is in the same position as someone who uncovers a murder. He
must, at one and the same time, dig up the body of the victim (or
victims) and yet not actually touch anything. If he is not perfectly
trained to do this work, he is in danger of covering up the very
evidence of murder that he should be uncovering.

He will discover not only the body (or bodies) but also, very often,
evidence of how the crime was committed, for example bullets if
the victim (or victims) were shot. Every single object found in the
vicinity of the victim (or victims) in a mass grave has a legal
significance, because it could help reconstruct the crime and reveal
the context in which the crime was committed. Consequently, the
person doing this work carries an enormous responsibility. Under
no circumstances must he separate the corpse (or corpses) from
personal effects that could help identify the victim (or victims). He
must make an inventory of every single thing, down to the last
detail, making sure not to damage anything.

He has to work in stages. The first stage is to survey the area, and
identify any potential mass grave. The second stage is to record the
layers of earth, and the way in which the various layers cover the
body (or bodies). Depending on how many layers of earth there are,
and on their composition (earth, sand, stone, concrete etc.) he has
to choose the right tools for that particular excavation. The third
stage is the excavation itself. The fourth stage involves the
preservation of the excavated materials. The fifth stage is the
interpretation of what’s been found.

This work is always done by a team. In every team there’s a

topographer, a photographer, an archaeologist, a doctor, a lawyer,
experts to examine the military context in which the victim (or
victims) were killed, and a psychologist. The psychologist is there
to make sure that the other members of the team don’t break under
the stress. If he notices that a member of the team is no longer in a
fit state to continue, he has to intervene and remove him from the
site, then he’ll make an evaluation of his mental state and advise

29
 him (or, it could be, her) to take a break from the excavation for a
while.

That’s how I came to Bosnia: to work as a psychologist with the

teams of people excavating the mass graves. And so I became an
excavator myself. Me, Kate McNoil, 35 years old, a graduate from
Harvard University, a specialist in obsessional neurosis and
psychoanalysis, author of a 770 page doctorate thesis on Freud and
his concepts of child narcissism, married and a mother of two
daughters, me, Kate McNoil, I should be ashamed of myself, I
haven’t seen my family for six months and I don’t have time to
think about them much because there’s now something else that’s
taken over my life: to excavate, excavate, excavate, to excavate
mass graves in Bosnia in the name of the United States of America,
in the name of the Allies, in the name of western civilisation, in the
name of the UN, in the name of justice, in the name of truth, in the
name of the past and of the future. It’s hard to carry such a burden
on your shoulders, Kate McNoil, but you’ll never be able to regain
your balance of mind unless you understand why.

SCENE 22

DORRA rings the bell. She rings several times, becoming more
and more desperate. KATE arrives)

DORRA: I want an abortion!

KATE: Yes, Dorra…
DORRA: Now…
KATE: Yes, Dorra…
DORRA: Now!
KATE: Whatever you want…

A moment’s silence.

KATE: But you’ll have to wait just a little.

DORRA: I don’t want to wait. I’m unclean. I’m unclean because of this
thing inside me…
KATE: Yes…
DORRA: Kate, I don’t want it to start moving.
KATE: It won’t move.
DORRA: It’s moving already! I can feel it.

Another moment’s silence. DORRA stares into space.

30
DORRA: I can feel it pushing. And I don’t want it to… I want someone to
get it out.
KATE: You just have to wait one more month…
DORRA: Kate…
KATE: Yes?
DORRA: I want something to drink.
KATE: Yes, Dorra.
DORRA: Something strong.
KATE: Yes.
DORRA: Some vodka.
KATE: Right.

KATE exits.

SCENE 23

DORRA, her belly swollen, lies on her bed, in a state of great agitation. She
shudders and trembles. And she’s sweating. KATE stands by the bed.
Everything she says resembles more a kind of therapy than a confession. So,
her tone is not a normal tone. She talks, hardly pausing for breath, trying to
console DORRA. DORRA barely listens to her. Or, perhaps, she doesn’t listen
at all.

KATE: Grandpa, what is America? America is a pile of stones built like

this. (She describes the vertical plane with her hand.)

(To DORRA) My grandfather used to tell us the story about when he first
came to the States at least two or three times every year, when the
family was gathered together at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, or at
New Year’s.

Tell me, Grandpa, how did you get to America? We came on a big
boat. As big as this? No, bigger. As big as this room? No, bigger.
As big as this house? No, even bigger than that. As big as the
house and the garden and the chicken-shed put together. As big as
the whole street. I don’t believe you. Look, look at this boat. (She
gets out an old photo) Here, here, on the third class deck, that’s
me. And that’s your great-grandmother. And that’s your father.
But it can’t be him, he’s even littler than me. Well, he was then,
even littler than you. And who’s that? It’s your Uncle Sean. And
that’s your Uncle Simon. And that’s your Uncle William. And

31
 that’s your Aunt Molly. And that’s your Aunt Elizabeth. And
that’s your grandmother who died last year. And why aren’t I
there? Because you weren’t born yet. And the boat? What about
the boat? Is the boat made of stones too? No, my precious, the boat
isn’t made of stones.
DORRA: (Almost delirious) No! No! No!
KATE: Once he got to America, my grandfather became a stonecutter.
The stones never forgave him. These stones from his land that he’d
gathered all those long years, as well as those he hadn’t, all pursued
him to the United States. He was always convinced that the stones
from Ireland and the stones from America had joined forces to trap
him.

A moment’s silence.

DORRA: This child doesn’t have a father.

KATE: Yes it does.
DORRA: This child doesn’t have a name.
KATE: But it will have. It’ll have your name.
DORRA: It will never be my child. I didn’t want it. Nobody wanted it. This
child doesn’t have a mother or a father. It doesn’t exist, Kate!
KATE: Yes it does. It’s moving inside you. You’re its mother.
DORRA: And its father? Who will be its father? If it ever asks me who its
father is, what will I say? Who is its father?
KATE: War. War is its father.
DORRA: I could never tell a child that. How could I tell it that? How could
you say to a child: “Listen, my angel, war is your father.”? No
child could understand that.
KATE: It will understand one day.

Another silence.

But you must let me tell you how my grandfather became a stonecutter.

She speaks in her grandfather’s voice.

First of all, we got off at Ellis Island. Then we had to go into the
Immigration Office. I knew that we’d have to look clean and neat
and make a good impression. As we were Irish and spoke good
English, we were accepted straightaway. So then we took the boat
to Manhattan. And the minute we arrived, I saw a man waving a
placard that said: “Woolworth Building Company. Good stone
workers wanted.”

32
 I’d never been a stone worker. All I wanted was to find a little plot
of land with no stones in it, somewhere in the west, and to work it
with my family.
DORRA: No! No! No!
KATE: But I only had 10 dollars in my pocket. I looked at my wife, and
my children, and my mother, none of whom knew where we were
going to sleep that night, and I decided to take my chance.
It was the first offer of work that I stumbled on when I got to
America and I was frightened that I wouldn’t find another one. So
I went up to the man and I said: “I like stones.”
And he asked me: “Have you ever cut stones?”
And I said “Yes.” And he said: “And where was that?”
“In my garden,” I replied. “In my garden.” And the man thought
my answer was good enough and he offered me the job at 50 cents
an hour. And I looked behind me and I saw that there was already
a queue of about twenty men who wanted to cut stones. And I said
“OK”. And I cut stones for twenty years, for every skyscraper in
New York. I worked on the Woolworth Building, which was 787
feet high. And then I worked on the Walter Chrysler Building,
which beat the Woolworth Building because it was over 1,050 feet
high. Then I worked on the Empire State Building, which was
1,246 feet high, and then the Irving Trust Company Building and
the Rockerfeller Centre and so on and so on… I cut thousands of
stones, for floors, ceilings, decorations, pillars, arches, stairs,
balconies, lobbies, terraces… That’s what I did. For thirty years I
placed like this (she describes the vertical plane with her hand) all
those stones I had picked up like that (she describes the horizontal
plane with her hand) in Ireland.

A moment’s silence.

DORRA: Kate!
KATE: Yes?
DORRA: It’s moving!
KATE: Are you sure?
DORRA: It woke me up.
KATE: There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll stay with you.
DORRA: It’s eating too much. It’s always hungry. It’s always hungry, the
little beast. It’s eating away at me, it’s devouring me from the
inside, I can hear it munching…
KATE: I’m here. I’ll stay with you.
DORRA: I can feel it pushing… It’s climbing up my insides… And it’s
hurting… I can’t stand it… I feel sick… You have to get it out,
Kate.

33
KATE: It’s too soon.
DORRA: I’m cold. It’s making me cold. It’s cold like a snake, and it’s
making me cold. I’m shivering. I can’t sleep any more. I’m the
size of a barrel… It’s taking up more and more space… I can’t
stand it any more…
KATE: Go to sleep. I’m here.

Another moment’s silence. DORRA is in a restless sleep. KATE continues

sotto voce.

KATE: When people asked my Dad where he worked, he used to say

rather enigmatically: for the emergency services at the biggest bank
on the East Coast! That was his little joke. He actually worked for a
donor bank! And they could wake him at any time of the day or
night, even at 2 o’clock in the morning, for the emergency transport
of a kidney to Springfield, or Worcester or Fall River or anywhere
else in Massachusetts. Sometimes, he’d get home just when we
were having breakfast. So what did you have to deliver last night,
Daddy? I had to deliver a heart, he’d say, staring into space. He
hardly ever got the chance to sleep a whole eight hours. Usually,
after every “delivery”, he only managed to get two or three hours
rest. He fell straight to sleep, with the telephone by his bed. All
through my childhood, I only ever saw him sleeping, or dashing
out, or coming home and sitting straight down at the table where
my Mom would give him something to eat.
So what did you deliver last night, Daddy? I delivered a “donor”.
A donor usually meant someone who’d been smashed to pieces on
the freeway or somewhere, one of whose organs was going to be
speedily sewn into some other poor creature who needed a lung or
a pancreas or a liver. The donor was either dead or dying, and the
quality of the organ depended on the speed at which the two
unfortunate people could be brought together in the same operating
theatre. Other days, my Dad would have to provide transport for
the “receiver”. I saved him, he would say at breakfast, and his face
reminded me of the face of a priest just after his Sunday sermon.
But there were, maybe two or three times a year, nights when
things were quiet. My Dad would look up at the stars and say:
Tonight it’ll be quiet. That meant that nobody would need him that
night; he wouldn’t have to go anywhere, not for a skin graft, or an
eye-transplant, a heart, a kidney, blood, marrow… But how do you
know that tonight’ll be quiet, Daddy? I just feel it, he’d say,
looking out of the window, into the black night, as if some unseen
messenger was giving him a secret sign that tonight everything
would be OK.

34
DORRA wakes up suddenly.

DORRA: I saw him!

KATE: What do you mean you saw him?
DORRA: In the darkness!
KATE: When?
DORRA: Just now. He was bending over me.
KATE: What did he look like?
DORRA: He didn’t have a face.
KATE: No face?
DORRA: No, just a…
KATE: A what…
DORRA: A mouth… He was just a gaping mouth.
KATE: Go to sleep, Dorra. I’m here.

SCENE 24

DORRA alone in the darkness.

DORRA: “I’m here.” Who are you? “It’s me”. Who? “Me”. I can’t see you.
“Yes you can”. What do you want? Go away. “I’m hungry”. So
what? “You have to give me something to eat”. You’ve already
eaten my flesh. What else can I give you? “You have to give me
something to eat”. I’ve given you every drop of my blood. What
else can I give you? “I’m hungry. You’re my mother. You have to
give me something to eat”. I’m not your mother. I didn’t want to be
your mother. I will never be your mother. You have no mother.
“Yes I do. You’re my mother, and you have to give me something
to eat.” I’ve got nothing left to give you. You’ve eaten all of me.
And you’ve emptied me. You’ve even emptied my soul. “If you
don’t give me something to eat, I’ll scream”. Scream then! I want
to hear you scream.

We hear a horrible scream. It’s the scream of a woman being raped.

No! No! Stop it!

We still hear the scream.

No! No! For God’s sake, stop it! Stop it!

These are perhaps the words of a woman being raped.

35
 No! No! Help! Help! Stop it! Just kill me! Kill me!

A few seconds of silence.

“What’s your problem?” Stop it. Stop it. “I’ve stopped. OK?” What do
you want? “I’ve already told you. I want something to eat. Either
you give me something to eat, or I’ll start screaming again.” No,
please, don’t. I’ll give you something to eat. I will. I’ll give you
something to eat…

SCENE 25

DORRA, sitting up in bed, hunched over a plate of food. She is devouring a

huge breakfast. She sobs as she eats. She eats, staring into space, her mouth
too full, with jam and butter on her lips and on her chin)

DORRA: “I’m here”. Who are you? “It’s me”. Who? “Me”. I don’t know
who you are. “Stop pretending. You know exactly who I am”. No
I don’t. I don’t know you. You don’t exist. “Yes I do. I do exist.
And it’s you who are going to bring me into the world”. No, I’ll
never bring you into the world. “Yes you will, you have to”. No, I
don’t; I don’t have to bring you into the world. “You don’t have
any choice. You’re my mother. And it’s a mother’s job to bring a
child into the world”. You don’t have the right to be brought into
the world. You’re a war child. You don’t have any parents. You
were born of horror. You are a child of horror. “Listen to me, if you
don’t bring me into the world, I’ll scream”.

The terrifying scream of a woman being raped. KATE enters.

KATE: I’m here.

DORRA: I don’t want to bring this into the world.
KATE: Dorra…
DORRA: I don’t want to bring this into the world… It’s asking me to bring it
into the world, but I don’t want to… Why is it screaming like that?
Tell it to stop screaming.
KATE: Dorra, if you don’t want this child, give it to me.
DORRA: All right, I will.
KATE: I’d like to have it.
DORRA: But take it now, this minute.
KATE: I can’t take it now. But, if you bring it into the world and give it to
me, then I’ll take it.
DORRA: No, take it now. If you really want it, take it now.

36
KATE: All right then, I’ll take it now. (She lies down next to DORRA. She
takes DORRA in her arms). Come on, let’s go to sleep.

SCENE 26

KATE is smoking. Her face looks twisted. We hardly recognise her. A diary
lies open on the table.

KATE: What do you do if you’re in a forest near Srebrenica and you find
the following objects in a clearing, scattered in the grass over an
area of about 10 yards:
two hundred and forty seven cartridges
a bicycle wheel
a teat from a baby’s bottle
a beret with the letters UN barely decipherable
pieces of a stretcher
three packets of Drina cigarettes
eleven empty cans of Croatian beer
a broken alarm clock
a squashed tube of toothpaste
a piece of barbed wire about three and a half metres long
a rifle butt
a plastic bag full of rotting potatoes
an Elvis T-shirt
a leather belt, burnt black, with the pouches where you keep the grenades
ripped off
a postcard of the Eiffel Tower with a few lines written on the back
which are completely illegible.

If you’re in a forest near Srebrenica and you find these things scattered
around in the grass, there’s a 50/50 chance that you’re in the
vicinity of a mass grave.

DORRA enters. Her stomach is now much bigger than when we last saw her.

DORRA: (Without looking at KATE) And is that why you had a breakdown?
KATE: Yes, that’s why I had a breakdown.
DORRA: But nobody knew anything about it.
KATE: No, because I was the team’s psychologist.
DORRA: After how many mass graves?

37
KATE: Sedamnaest. Seventeen.
DORRA: You could no longer bear to read the inventories they attached to
each body they dug up.
KATE: No.
DORRA: You could no longer bear to hear the sound of the pickaxes, the
trowels and the crowbars that were beating and digging and grating
and sweeping.
KATE: No.
DORRA: And the preservation of the “excavated matter”, the handling of the
corpses, the state of their decomposition, you weren’t able to deal
with any of that either.
KATE: No.
DORRA: And everything you’d learnt about excavating corpses made you
feel ashamed?
KATE: Yes.
DORRA: For example, rule number one for the excavator: you have to keep
the site clean, a frequent sweeping of the site is one of the best
methods for guaranteeing proper observation of an excavation…
KATE: (Smoking, on the verge of tears) Yes.
DORRA: (Coming towards Kate and taking her by the shoulders) So you
asked to be sent somewhere else. For example…
KATE: Yes.
DORRA: (Looking at KATE’s open diary; we have to know that DORRA has
already read it) For example, here: to apply a new method, your
cathartic method, in the psychotherapy treatment of women in
Bosnia who’ve suffered rape.

KATE is motionless, perhaps in tears. DORRA kisses her.

SCENE 27

DORRA is alone in the darkness.

DORRA: “I’m here.” What do you want? I’ve given you something to eat,
what do you want now? “I don’t know.” I don’t want to hear from
you again. I’ve given you something to eat. So, shut up. “I can’t
shut up: I’m frightened.” Shut up. Leave me alone. I need to rest.
“Yes, but I’m frightened.” I want to go to sleep. I don’t want to
hear you again. I want to rest. “I want you to give me a cuddle.” I
don’t want to cuddle you. I can’t cuddle you. I’ve given you
something to eat; that’s enough. “It’s not; I want you to cuddle me
a bit. I’m frightened, and I want you to cuddle me.” I can’t cuddle

38
 you. I don’t know how to. And I’m frightened, too. “If you don’t
cuddle me, I’ll scream…”

SCENE 28

DORRA is alone.

DORRA: Why do you want this child, Kate? Are you mad or something?
You’ve got two children already. Your own children. And you have
a husband. You’ve got a family. Your life is somewhere else. Why
do you stay here? You’re not responsible for this; you’re not
guilty. You weren’t born here. You’re American. You weren’t
even born in Europe. You were born in the United States. OK,
you have roots in Ireland; but Ireland, it’s just an island. It’s
almost not part of Europe at all; it’s a world of its own. Anyway,
it’s not up to you to come here, waving the American flag, beating
your breast with mea culpa. You’re not the President of the United
States. You’re not the Special Envoy of America’s guilty
conscience.

A moment’s silence. KATE enters.

Why do you want this child, Kate?

KATE: Because I do.

DORRA: Can’t you have any more of your own?
KATE: Yes I can.
DORRA: So it is because you love children?
KATE: Yes, it’s because I love children.

Another moment’s silence.

DORRA: Why do you want this child, Kate?

KATE: I don’t know.
DORRA: You’re mad, Kate.
KATE: No I’m not.
DORRA: Do you want it for your Freudian experiments?
KATE: No.
DORRA: Are you sure?
KATE: No.
DORRA: Stop acting as if you had the whole of America’s subconscious
guilt on your shoulders.
KATE: I’m not.
DORRA: So, why do you want the child, Kate?

39
KATE: Why?
DORRA: I’m not going to give it to you, Kate.
KATE: Why not?
DORRA: I’m not giving this child to the United States.
KATE: I’m not the United States. I’m not a representative of the American
government. I’m not the President of the United States. My roots
are in Ireland!
DORRA: I’d rather it died than give it to the United States.
KATE: (At breaking point) I want it! That’s all there is to it! After all the
corpses I’ve dug up here, in your country, I have the right to go
back home with this child!
DORRA: Stop it, Kate. You’ll never have it.
KATE: (Calm again, staring into the distance) Your belly is a mass grave,
Dorra. When I think of your belly, I see a pit full of corpses, dried
up, swollen, rotting… But, at the bottom of this pit, there’s
something moving… A living being… Amongst all the dead,
there’s someone alive… Someone asking to be let out… I’ll never
let you kill your child, Dorra. I came to your country to learn how
to excavate mass graves. And every time I excavated one, I had
the insane hope that I’d find just one survivor… This child is a
survivor, Dorra. And it has to be saved, it has to be pulled out.
That’s it… It’s as simple as that… We have to rescue it from the
mass grave…

The noise of an aeroplane about to take off.

KATE: (Speaking to and for DORRA, but not addressing her directly; a
suspended moment) How can I explain to you, Dorra, that nature
abhors a vacuum; that the laws of nature have nothing to do with
the impulses behind man’s barbarity, that nature doesn’t
acknowledge rape. So, your baby is a boy. As always seems to
happen after a war, there are more boys born than girls. Nature,
Dorra, is impervious to man’s stupidity, his inhumanity. She
pursues her work relentlessly, despite the evils perpetrated by
mankind. And her work remains, as it always was, mysterious and
full of beauty.
I’m going home soon, Dorra. I’m going back to my children.

SCENE 29

KATE(A letter in her hand):

40
 Dear Chief Commander,

I’m sending you, as requested, the report on my activities in Bosnia over

the past twenty-two months.

May I remind you briefly that I was a member of the mission evaluating
medical needs in Croatia and Bosnia, that I then became part of one
of the teams responsible for identifying the mass graves in the
Krajna and Srebrenica areas, and that at my request I was
transferred to a NATO medical centre in Germany.

I confirm that, as from the 1st of April, I would like to return to my post in
the Boston Psychiatric Clinic, in Massachusetts.

Thanking you for your understanding,

Kate McNoil.

A moment’s silence.

DORRA: (Speaking to and for KATE, but not addressing her directly;
another suspended moment) How can I tell you, Kate, that I hate
my country. That in fact I no longer have a country. That I don’t
want to go back there. That I no longer have a God. That all I
want is to get as far away as possible from this accursed nightmare
place, this hell… I don’t want to see my home again… Because I
don’t have a home. I don’t want to know if my family is still
living. Even if the war ends, this place will stay cursed for a long
time to come. It’ll be haunted by the cries of victims, by hatred
and by shame. For years and years, the people who live there will
rack their brains to try and understand how all this could have been
possible. Till the very end of time, they’ll ask the same questions:
Who started it? Who was responsible? Who was the most evil?
How could people, either collectively, or individually, sink to such
a level…

Another moment’s silence.

DORRA: (To herself) How can I tell you, Kate, that I hate my country?
KATE: One can’t hate one’s country.
DORRA: How can I tell you that I no longer have a country?
KATE: We’re all born somewhere.

41
DORRA: How can I tell you that I never want to go back there, where I was
born.
KATE: You will one day.
DORRA: How can I tell you that my country no longer has a God; my people
killed Him.
KATE: You will find the need to believe again, one day.
DORRA: How can I tell you that all I want to do is to get as far away as
possible from this accursed place, this hell…
KATE: One day you’ll see your home again.
DORRA: I don’t have a home anymore.
KATE: One day you’ll want to know if your family is still alive.
DORRA: There’s nobody left alive in my heart any more.
KATE: There must be an image of your country that you’ll always carry
with you.
DORRA: Do you want to know what image of my country I carry with me?
Do you? It’s the image of a drunken soldier, with a rather surprised
expression on his face, who wipes his dagger on his trouser leg,
puts it back in its sheath, then spits on the corpse of the man whose
throat he has just cut.
The image of my country is that of an old man leaving a column of
refugees to lie in the grass for a rest, grass that hides an anti-
personnel mine.
My country is a mother who notices that her dead son’s uniform is
missing a button. She hurries to sew one back on before he’s
buried.
My country is a father who spends all his time making a doll for his
7-year- old daughter, who’s been dead for 346 days.
My country is a grandmother who has to flee from the approaching
soldiers, and who - before leaving her house - kisses the porch.
My country is an old peasant who looks at the soldiers entering his
village and asks them: “Are you on our side?”.
My country is a residential district of Vukovar renamed “Burnt
Tank Avenue”.
My country is a soldier who mixes in his glass cognac, raki, wine,
whiskey, and any other alcohol he can put his hands on. The drink
is called a fighting cocktail. He knocks it back, then goes to take
his position in the trenches.
My country is a Muslim refugee, who dies in a village in Hungary
where there is no Muslim cemetery and where nobody knows how
to bury a Muslim.
My country is three soldiers pissing on the embers of a house they’ve just
torched.

42
 My country is the inscription you see all over the place in Sarajevo:
PAZI! SNAJPER! BEWARE! SNIPERS! And the taste of my
country is the soup handed out by the Red Cross.
My country is an 18-year-old soldier who, for a joke, writes: CUT HERE
on his neck, just like on those packets of instant soup.
My country is an American tv series that nobody wants to miss in
Mostar, even when the town is besieged by Serbs on one side, and
by Croats on the other.
My country is that young Karlovac who wants to become a sniper to
defend his people, but who can only get his hands on three rounds
of ammunition a day.
My country is a peasant who hides in the forest because “chetniks” or
Muslims “fighting for Islam” have arrived in his village. He’s
killed three days later when he decides to go home to feed his
starving cows, because he can no longer bear to hear their
bellowing…
My country is a soldier writing on a door with red spray-paint:
THIS IS SERBIA. Two weeks later, new words cover the old ones,
saying: THIS IS CROATIA. A few days after that, even newer
words say: IDIOTS, THIS IS A POST OFFICE!
My country is an inscription written on a tree in Sarajevo: HELLO!
I’M STILL ALIVE!

SCENE 30

DORRA writes a letter.

DORRA: Dear Kate,

I don’t really know what I’m going to do now. I’ve filed
applications for emigration at the Canadian, Australian and South
African embassies.
I don’t want to go to America.
My baby is fine. He weighs 13 pounds now.
When you last called, you wanted to know the precise moment at which I
decided to keep him.
I’ll tell you.
One day, just after you left, I went for a walk by the lake. As I walked, I
looked at the trees and the water… All of a sudden, a notice nailed
to a tree caught my eye. I went to take a closer look, and this is
what I read:

WE WOULD LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT THIS TREE IS DEAD.

IT WILL BE CUT DOWN WEEK COMMENCING APRIL 2ND.

43
 IN ITS PLACE, AND FOR THE ENJOYMENT OF ALL
VISITORS TO THIS PARK, WE WILL BE PLANTING A
SAPLING.

Signed: THE DEPARTMENT OF PARKS & GARDENS.

I read this once, then again, then several times more. And that’s
when I decided to keep my baby.

Ljubim-te,
Dorra.

THE END

44
Author's Note:
This play was written in residence at La Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lez-Avignon in
November and December of 1996. This play, inspired by the Bosnian crisis, remains
a work of fiction. The author has nonetheless made use of some eye-witness reports
(for example "Chronique des oubliés", Edition La Digitale, France, 1994, by Velibor
Čolić) both for the description of the uncovering of mass graves in Scene 26 and the
"image" of Dorra's country in scene 29, because, with horrors like these, reality
beggars the imagination.

45
 Address: 10, rue Watteau 75013 Paris FRANCE Tel. Fax. 33 - (0)1 47
07 31 89
Mobile. 33 – (0)6 19 66 05 98 E-Mail: visniec@yahoo.fr

Matéi VISNIEC

- playwright, poet and journalist, born 29 January 1956 in Romania, now settled in
Paris, working as a journalist at Radio France Internationale.

In Romania he studied history and philosophy before starting writing for the theatre in
1977. During the following ten years he wrote some 20 plays, but all of them were
banned by the Romanian censors. In September 1987 he was invited to France by a
literary foundation, and he asked for political asylum. Since then he has been writing
mostly in French, and he has received French nationality.

After the fall of communism in Romania, in December 1989, Matei Visniec became one
of the most performed playwrights in the country, with more then 30 plays put on in
Bucharest and other towns. In October 1996 the National Theatre of Timisoara organised
a "Matei Visniec Festival" with 12 companies presenting his plays.

His international audience as a playwright started in 1992, with the play "Horses at the
Windows" performed in France, and "Clown wanted" at the BONNER BIENNALE.
Since then, Matei Visniec has had more then 20 plays performed in France (Théâtre
Guichet Montparnasse, Studio des Champs-Elysées, Théâtre du Rond-Point de Champs
Elysées - Paris, Théâtre de l'Utopie - La Rochelle, Compagnie Pli Urgent - Lyon,
Théâtre Le Jodel - Avignon, Théâtre de Lenche and Théâtre de la Minoterie - Marseille,
Compagnie Nice-Théâtre Vivant - Nice, etc.).

- OLD CLOWN WANTED was performed in: France, Germany, United States,
Denmark, Austria, Poland, Russia, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Brazil, Romania, Moldavia.
- DECOMPOSED THEATRE, performed in: Canada, France, Belgium, Romania,
Moldavia.
- THE SPECTATOR SENTENCED TO DEATH, performed in: France, Holland,
Romania.
- POCKETS FULL OF BREAD, performed in: France, Germany, Morocco, Romania.
- THE STORY OF PANDA BEARS TOLD BY A SAXOPHONIST WITH A
GIRLFRIEND IN FRANKFURT, performed in: France, Great Britain, Belgium,
Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Island, Hungary, Romania, Moldavia
- THREE NIGHTS WITH MADOX, performed in: France, Romania, Hungary.
- HORSES AT THE WINDOW, performed in: France, Switzerland, Italy, Romania,
Russia.
- WOMAN AS BATTLEFIELD, performed in: France, Germany, Bulgaria,
Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, Romania.
- HOW TO EXPLAIN THE HISTORY OF COMMUNISM TO MENTAL
PATIENTS: United States, France, Moldavia.

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AWARDS

2002 - National Drama Award of the Romanian Ministry of Culture

2002 and 1999 - Drama Award of the Romanian Union of Writers
1998 - Drama Award of the Academy of Romania
1995 and 1996 - Award Avignon-off at the Avignon Theatrical Festival
1994 - Award of The French Society of Authors and Composers, for the play THE
STORY OF THE PANDA BEARS TOLD BY A SAXOPHONEPLAYER WITH A
GIRLFRIEND IN FRANKFORT
1991 - Award of The Romanian Theatrical Society for CLOWN WANTED, the best
play of the year in 1991 in Romania

Plays published in France by "Les Editions L’Harmattan", "Les Editions Crater" et "Les
Editions Actes Sud Papiers", in Belgium by "Les Editions Lansman", in Romania by
"Cartea Romaneasca" and "Expansion Armonia", in Germany by "Editions Palais Jalta",
in Hungary by "DUNA pART", in Poland by the theatrical review "Dialog", in Bulgaria
by the theatrical review "Panorama"

Plays by Matéi Visniec available in English

- Old Clown wanted

- Horses at the Window
- Pockets full of Bread
- Three Nights with Madox
- The Story of Pandas told by a Saxophonist with a Girlfriend in Frankfurt
- The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War
- How to explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients
- The Chekhov Machine
- The King, the Rat and the King's Fool

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