Vor solchen wie uns haben uns die Eltern immer gewarnt

Translated from Serbo-Croatian by Mascha Dabić

emma-theater
Premiere April 10, 2027

Mara, 45, and Milan, 17, meet at a public restroom. It’s covered in graffiti—crude sayings, declarations of faith and love, and slogans. As they talk, the two slip into different roles: They become a grieving mother and her dead son, an absent father and a daughter on the cusp of adulthood, siblings whose relationship goes beyond protection and care, and finally a woman and a much younger man who reflect on their entire lives while having sex.

Through her characters—who immortalize one another in their mutual recollections and descriptions much like the inscriptions and sayings in public restrooms—Tanja Šljivar depicts constricting systems such as capitalism, the church, and the family. Between concrete descriptions, explicit language, morbid humor, and universal relevance, a grotesque roundelay of images emerges that humorously teeters on the brink of the abyss.