THE END OF THE WORLDS

When the script of the play called There Will Be No End of the World was being written in 2018 simultaneously with the play under the same title being staged at the National Theatre in Mostar, we used to live in a completely different world. Perhaps, it was not exactly completely different, but at least it was familiar to us, burdened by the problems passed from one generation to another; we were more or less habituated to live and deal with them in our everyday life or we could ignore them. We call it a normal world now although, then, not much of it could have been characterized as such. However, given the change the world has experienced over the last year and a half at the macro level, it is logical that the past seems normal to us. It’s just because the world has been affected by the global problem. Otherwise, if the pandemic did not have that scale, we would still experience this world differently, each of us from our own perspective: some of us would consider it normal, and some of us might think it’s extremely disturbed and abnormal. The proverb “Misfortunes never come singly” is evident in the growing number of natural disasters: fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes... As if the Earth has awakened, so it’s taking revenge on humanity for all its arrogance and selfishness. The phrase “The End of the World" has never been more present in the media, as well as in our everyday, ordinary conversations. The fear of general downfall of the planet seems to have made all those small, individual “Endings of the Worlds” insignificant.

Both the play and the performance are dealing with it exactly – the breakdown of intimate worlds. All three characters carry ruins of their own world under their skin. That is, the world they imagined for themselves, fought for it, built it, or thought it was waiting for them and the only thing they had to do is to meet it... Gathered under the roof of their house, where destruction of their common family world took place, they reveal their individual breakdowns to each other. More precisely, Masha and Nina face each other going through a lot of pain, mutual accusations and anger; while the Father, due to a serious illness, is emotionally and mentally completely excluded from reality – his world is broken and thus immersed in pieces in a completely different kind of reality, which neither he, nor anyone else, can control. As if they have survived the apocalypse. Masha and Nina are looking for a way out of the ruins of the old world so as to build a new one on its foundation. In order to do so, they have to remember, face with, and put aside all that their old world used to be. In that process, they will both have to “peel off their skin” and strip naked.
Sometimes, the only consolation is the fact that people can endure much more than they think they can. Nina and Masha have showed great strength in enduring hardships in spite of having to move on.

When the play script was being written in 2018, I could recognize the end of the world at every step of the way – as I would walk down the street, sit in a café or in the park, travel by bus or train, euphorically jump at a concert, dance in a club, or simply stand and watch. The end of the world seemed to me like a permanent process that goes hand in hand with development and progress. We all carry our own “end”. And that particular end is no less important than the end of the entire world. So, the history teaches us – the world will always exist in a certain form – with or without us. Therefore, while we still can, let’s tell stories about us – not only about our individual strength, but also about how much we need other people so as to create a new, stronger intimate world, in which we will not be afraid to talk about our breakdowns. They are here to give us the strength to start all over again.

Adnan Lugonić, Playwright