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The star actor Alexander Moissi is made to leave Germany and arrives in Albania, where nobody knows him. Running out of money, he is forced to re-invent himself artistically and socially. Rumour has it that, after a few detours, he opened a nightclub with a couple of new friends and put on a very successful show called Mbretëreshat e klubit të natës.
Alexander Moissi (1879–1935), one of the highest paid internationally touring actors of the 1920s, was posthumously re-invented as an Artist i Popullit in the Socialist Republic of Albania, while disappearing into obscurity elsewhere. Of Italian and Albanian descent, with a cosmopolitan career and orientation, Moissi’s hybrid, cross-border biography and historical reception subverts any simplistic cultural, political or ethnic ascriptions. In the present context of increasingly drastic practices of forced translocation and rampantly aggressive nationalisms, , Bruch‘- speculatively imagines Moissi’s ‘remigration’ to Albania from Germany after years abroad in western Europe. Together with director Klaudja Piroli, we stage a farcical entertainment which, through the figure of the celebrity, unravels the patchy mythical fabrics of identity.
Credits
By, Bruch‘- and Klaudja Piroli
WITHRexhina Ibro, Matia Llupa, Paolo Kadillari, Ina Kollçaku
CONTRIBUTIONS BYKUNTHUG, Lorenza Longhi, Valentin Masé
Info
PREMIERE22 May 2024, Teatri Kombëtar Ekspërimental, Tirana, Albania
TOURINGTeatri Kombëtar Eksperimental, Tirana, 22–24 May, 29 May–2 June 2024 Prishtina International Theater Festival, 25 May 2024 Mediums – Tirana Contemporary Theatre Festival, 16 July 2024 Kosovo Albania Theatre Showcase, Tirana, 2 November 2024
SUPPORTED BYJury Preis des Körber Festival Junge Regie 2022
PHOTOS byMarjo Cani
DOCUMENTATION(link: https://vimeo.com/953042536/dd8678c691?ts=0&share=copy text: Full-length video with English subtitles)