The play “Beast on the Moon” by the American author Richard Kalinoski is a tragicomedy about the children of war. Adapting it for actors from Kosovo had a particular power, because each of them was a child of the last war in the country in 1998-1999. All the other artists who worked to realize this play were children who emerged from that war.

It was Vlora Nikçi’s idea to stage this tragicomedy at the National Theater of Kosovo. She began to develop it together with actor Armend Baloku, the two of them representing their own war pain through the characters in the play, Seta and Aram Tomasian. Their team was joined by the representative of victims of sexual violence during the war in Kosovo, Ms. Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman.

In performance, Vlora wore clothing which Kosovo-Albanian women and girls had been wearing during the horrific incidents they endured at the hands of Serbian policemen and soldier during the war in Kosovo – including throughout the scene depicting the character’s memory of rape. These costumes were left at the door of the National Theater anonymously, with the inscription: “Wear our pain and show it to the world.”

Every night, the audience included women and men who were victims of sexual violence during the war in Kosovo when they were children. “It was difficult when I heard sighs, cries, and long-forgotten screams of fear from women and men in the audience during my performance,” said Vlora Nikçi after the premiere.

“Beast on the Moon” thus became a catharsis of war pain for the Albanians of Kosovo and for the artists who created it.