The work of a master playwright from the Balkans, GoranStefanovski, is anthologized here. A charged family drama, Wild Flesh, opensthe collection, plotting the ideological rifts and baleful foreign intrusions thatgripped Yugoslavia in the advent of World War ll. The False Bottom follows as a work ofpure subversion. In three movements set in disparate years, 1911, 1983, and1999, a single character unsettles the powers that be, quakes the very ground —the fake premises — of the dominant order and frees the forces of life. TattooedSouls is set in America, played out in an emigree community. Though embroiledin a new world, they bear the telling imprints of the old. Casabalkan (afterCasablanca) is a gambling boat afloat in neutral waters wherein everyparty to the war can interact freely, a microcosm in which every element can intermingle.In the short Ex-Yu, a daughter is in pursuit of her father’s finalmoments. Grilling two witnesses, she attempts an orphic journey to the scene ofa suicide en route to battle. These plays speak bluntly to the human condition.Though set in the recent past, they track with the pressing concerns of ourtime and balance on the same precarity.
