Between the Lines: Staging ‘the Balkans’ through Berlin (2001)

Abstract

Before engaging Between-the-Lines, a series of theatrically facilitated seminars and a subsequent performance installation with Balkan youth, I invite you to walk with me on a journey.¹ This chapter serves as a segue from Mostar to Jerusalem, via a slight detour through another city. Or cities.

It was us, the Eastern Europeans, who invented ‘Europe’, constructed it, dreamed about it, called upon it. This Europe is a myth created by us … unfortunate outsiders, poor relatives, infantile nations of our continent. Europe was built by those of us living on the edges.

—Slavenka Drakulić (1999: 212)

I think the first thing I need to do when I get back home is go for a longer walk.

—Macedonian participant at Between-the-Lines seminar