The End of an Era

2012, Zagreb. Sanjin, Mak, Roza and Paško are L.O.S.E.R.S. Sanjin, who lost his leg in an accident and Mak, who might or might not be Sanjin’s boyfriend, are preparing dinner for Roza and Paško. The inseparable friends who, ever since they arrived in the city, have been confronting life and its challenges together. Sanjin doesn’t yet know that Roza is planning to leave for London, Paško for Berlin and Mak for America.

2018, Zagreb. After her lover’s death, Roza says goodbye to Berlin. She returns to Paško and Sanjin, who, with Mak, is enjoying the inferno of a listless relationship. They’re together again, and everything is like it used to be. An island of freedom and happiness at the edge of history – all around them, there are “fascists” on the rise, and the first “victim” of their march is Korana, an art gallery director. Roza, Paško, Sanjin, Mark and Korana are H.A.T.E.R.S.

2025, Zagreb? Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic and seven years after the playwright ended the play with the promise to the director: I’ll write to you again in five years. It will once again be about friendship. In the time when every last human being has grasped that the future isn’t bright, that the world is not turning towards the better and that nothing is clear anymore … Paško, Roza, Mak and Sanjin are here again. Four friends and the playwright who responded to the director’s invitation to write a new text. A round-up of the decade, a signature beneath the end of an era.

Dino Pešut is one of the most prominent and awarded Croatian playwrights. Despite the international success and the reception of the Slovenian translation of his novel Daddy Issues (2022) his only staged work was a student production Stadion Olympia trilogy (2019) directed by Maša Pelko (UL AGRFT and Glej). Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti, himself an author of several plays (e.g. Little Stars, SNT Nova Gorica, 2024), was the dramaturg and translator of the production. At his initiative, Pešut’s two older adapted plays and a new one will come to life as a drama triptych about leaving, returning and coming of age.

Korana: Everybody hates young people because they remind them of death.

_{Dino Pešut}