The Powder Keg

»I want to tell you something. But I have forgotten what.«

»The Balkans are a barrel of gunpowder« – the Macedonian playwright Dejan Dukovski’s collection of scenes The Powder Keg, first performed in Skopje in 1996, provide a truthful description of a state of omnipresent violence and the apparently impossible desire for reconciliation, happiness or a new life. An explosive Balkan blues, a self-portrait in eleven stories of meetings between people which have no alternative to a fatal ending in a Europe unable to stop the war in former Yugoslavia. Dimiter Gotscheff, the great master director with a Bulgarian soul will create this new production with a dream cast from his acting »family« and the Balkan Orkestar conducted by Sandy Lopicic. The Balkans, today’s New Europe as it lives and breathes, become the setting in The Powder Keg for a revue in the form of a detective story telling of the explosive ridiculousness of violent people and life-threatening masculinity. The Powder Keg, a European co-production will have its premiere in Berlin at spielzeit’europa, tour to several cities including Venice and Belgrade and then from 2009 will take its place in the repertoire of the Deutsches Theater.