KNIVES IN HENS

Kamerni teatar ‘55
Festival Mess

David Harrower

Direction: Damir Zlatar Frej (Ljubljana/Umag/Zagreb)
Stage adaptation: Janja Bec Nojman (Darmstadt/Novi Sad /Sarajevo)
Music: Hrvoje Crnic Bokser (Zagreb)

Casts:
Mirjana Karanovic (Beograd)
Ermin Bravo (Sarajevo)
Edhen Nusic (Sarajevo)

David Harrower (1966) Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, studied English language, American literature. He washed dishes in restaurants, was an activist in the movement against stationing of nuclear submarines in Scotland, actively participated in discussions about the new division of land in Scotland. Harrower worked as a researcher in the project aimed at establishing the ways of division of the land in 18th century Scotland which paved the way to writing the Knives in Hens (1995), the play that was first staged at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1995 and transferred to the Bush Theatre in London with great success. Thomas Ostermeier staged Knives in Hens for the Baracke theatre in Berlin in 1997 (Ostermeier’s production participated at the Belgrade BITEF theatre festival) bringing the drama the European fame. The German magazine Teatar Heute (Theatre Today) awards the Knives in Hens the best foreign play of the year. His next drama Kill the Old, Torture their Young was written in 1998 and had its debut again at the Traverse Theatre. Harrower lives in Glasgow and writes for the London Royal Court Theatre and for the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.

Search for the World Within, Now and Here

Knives in Hens by David Harrower is a story about a remote village in Scotland from a long time ago, from 16th or 17th century where hate, envy and fear rule. Living in the village, a young farmer woman starts searching for the road to herself. “I am not like a field, I am only like me” she says to her husband, the farmer. He choses her saying: ”I have been watching you for years now trying to see who else would work like me, who would sweat like me, who would listen to me when I say what is right and what is wrong”. And she seems to be everything he wants. He never tells her she is beautiful and nice, that she makes a better part of this world. In a cruel world like that it goes without saying, those things are never being openly admitted. That is the reason why she leaves for a different world, with the help of the miller who writes to her and who represents change. The miller lives in other part of the world, under the sky where the sun does not set. Love gives the woman the strength to develop the best in her, opening for her the world of love, language, speech and letters, the world where she can be free and true to herself, the world where she finds power and love for life within herself.

The play Knives in Hens by Damir Zlatar Frej with its poetics and gentleness is not happening in a remote village long time ago in Scotland, but now and here in our place.

Janja Beč Nojman