“Tired” Of Consuming Postdramatic Theatre (Contemporary Theatre Often Lacks Strong Dialogue)

An Interview with Ana Ristoska Trpenoska, a playwright, dramaturg, Vienna/Skopje, Austria/R.N. Macedonia. Interviewer Ivanka Apostolova Baskar.

Ana Ristoska Trpenoska (1984, Skopje) studied Dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Skopje and Theatre, Film and Media at the University of Vienna. She is the author of over ten plays, among which: Tag der Bären; Am Kanal; #TheBorder; Me, Somewhere Else; Couples; Let’s go, Señor!; 5:17; Great Expectations…

She was selected by the Theatre Biennale in Wiesbaden for the Playwrights’ Forum with Mark Ravenhill, won the competition for contemporary drama organized by the Hellenic Centre of the International Theatre Institute (ITI) and was twice awarded by EURODRAM, the European network for drama and translation. In 2025, she won the award for Best Play for her play Couples at the National Theatre Festival “Vojdan Chernodrinski” in Prilep, North Macedonia.

Her plays were staged at Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Schauspielhaus Wien, ODA Theatre Prishtina, Macedonian National Theatre, Drama Theatre Skopje, stage-read at Contemporary Drama Forum Athens, National Theatre of Northern Greece Thessaloniki, Kosovo Albania Theatre Showcase, Tirana and selected for Neue Stücke aus Europa, Festival Wiesbaden.

Ivanka Apostolova Baskar: Ana, in a local interview, you say that you are a good observer of other people’s emotions and stories. How do you notice them and how do you recognize their potential for drama, dramatic, and theater?

Ana Ristoska Trpenoska: I believe I am highly empathetic toward other people’s emotions and in some cases, I have to process them through writing. During the writing process, the stories may change, but the emotions remain and theatre deeply engages with emotion. I always write about what I know and feel most strongly.

IAB: In order for the international and global theater audience/readers to gain a basic narrative presentation, what is essential-undeniable for your play Couples/Парови, in story, in characters, in style, in structure… ?

ART: Attending the playwriting program at the Biennale in Wiesbaden, Germany in 2008 and later moving to Vienna gave me the opportunity to be influenced by the wave of new playwriting in the German-speaking world, which has been booming since 2000. As a result, I wrote my plays: 5:17; Let’s go, Señor!; Me, Somewhere Else, engaging with both postdramatic and dramatic aesthetics. At a certain point, I became tired of consuming postdramatic theatre and wished to return to traditional dramatic writing. I challenged myself to write a play using only dialogue and I wrote Couples. I think contemporary theatre often lacks strong dialogue, which I consider crucial to storytelling. In Couples, I use humour to explore serious issues, such as the modern challenges of being in a relationship.

IAB: In order to give a basic narrative presentation to the international and global theater audience/readers what is essential-profound for your play By the Canal (Am Kanal)?

ART: I wrote By the Canal (Am Kanal) on commission for Schauspielhaus Vienna, where I had previously collaborated on another project. This play is based on research conducted by the participants in the production, related to the Danube Canal in Vienna, where the premiere of the play also took place.

IAB: In order to give a basic narrative presentation to the international and global theater audience of what is essential for your dramas/your plays: Me, Somewhere Else; 5:17; Let’s go, Señor and Great Expectations, published by Bitola based publishing house Perun Artis, what is/where is that other place-that “somewhere else?” What does it mean 5:17? Who is that very Don Quixote Señor? What are your personal great expectations and what are they like?

ART: I borrowed the title Me, Somewhere Else from the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, who, particularly in this installation work, was questioning physical existence in the face of death. My play is based on a true story and explores themes such as filicide and depression, along with other intertwined societal challenges including the role of women in a patriarchal society, the pressure on individuals under liberal capitalism and migration politics.

5:17 marks the time when the catastrophic earthquake struck Skopje in 1963, and it is a play that deals with the city’s identity. This play was created at a time when the appearance of Skopje was completely transformed by the Skopje 2014 project.

Let’s go, Señor! is my most personal play, which I wrote after losing my father. The play explores the relationship between life, death, and theatre. My father, Kiril Ristoski, was an actor and his penultimate role was Don Quixote – a character he portrayed for the second time in his career. While preparing for the role and “fighting windmills” as Don Quixote, he was at the same time fighting cancer in real life. I like to believe that, on his last night, Sancho Panza came to him and said: “Let’s go, Señor!” And so, they set off on a new adventure.

My graduation play, Great Expectations, was selected in a competition and staged at the Macedonian National Theatre. With this work, I was also chosen to participate in the New Plays from Europe Festival in Wiesbaden, Germany. At that time, I was at the beginning of my career and in the play, I explored the fear of failure, which I probably felt.

Photo credit by Ana Trpenoska.

IAB: In order to give a basic narrative presentation to the international and global theater audience/readers what is essential-important for your play Day Of The Bears/Tag Der Bären?

ART: The Day of the Bears was created during the Green Inversions workshop with the theater collective les dramaturx, organized by the Macedonian ITI Center and premiered at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg. It is a research-based play that deals with political, social, and cultural issues affecting North Macedonia as well as the world. The play addresses topics such as religion, corruption, waste export, climate protection and survival in the ruins of capitalism.

IAB: In order to give a basic narrative presentation to the international and global theater audience/readers what is essential-crucial for your play #TheBorder?

ART: I wrote #TheBorder in collaboration with director Sovran Nrecaj and commissioned by the ODA Theater Pristina. The play is a theatrical exploration of migration, displacement and the politics of belonging. It confronts one of today’s most urgent crises: mass emigration from the Balkans, particularly Kosovo and examines migration driven by Europe’s restrictive policies and global inequalities.

IAB: In an interview, you say that Macedonian drama/plays should reclaim the space that belongs to it/to them? What is that space? Who took away the space of Macedonian drama? Why should its space be taken away at all? Who caused this and who allowed it?

ART: I speak about the problem with Macedonian contemporary drama on every occasion and this is not a new issue but one that has lasted for more than two decades. In theaters in Macedonia, new dramatic texts are staged only incidentally, rather than as a result of an institutional cultural strategy. We have a discontinuity in the development of our contemporary drama, which is the consequence of various socio-political factors and a lack of interest in stimulating the creation of new Macedonian drama by educational and theatre institutions.

IAB:  In the last 35 almost 40 years, as the only unique dramatic authors from Macedonia in Europe and the world, only the plays of Goran Stefanovski and Dejan Dukovski have been favored/known. They are excellent authors, but not the only ones. This is a very unnatural state of affairs because every 5 years it is inevitable for new dramatic generations/names to emerge through drama academies and other alternative systems. What is your view and opinion on this radical state of (local) imperial exclusivity at the expense of generations of anonymous dramatic talents?

ART: This question is closely related to the previous one. I do not think that there are mechanisms in Macedonia that stimulate dramatic writing. Our primary issue lies within Macedonia itself, as there are no new Macedonian plays in theater repertoires. Additionally, the situation of isolation and lack of communication with the region, Europe and the wider world is another challenge, affecting not only the authors but also the directors, actors and all participants involved in theatrical projects. Macedonian theater artists, until the 1990s, worked within a broader geographic, social, and cultural context-the Yugoslav context – and the opportunities and conditions they had for developing their careers, both within their own country and abroad, were different.

IAB: From this perspective of experiences – please provide a summary/conclusion/sublimation of your project experience with the independent theater Wonderland from Skopje?

ART: Collaboration with the independent Wonderland Theatre Skopje is always special because all of us who are part of it professionally take on every new challenge regardless of the conditions and budgets.

IAB: From this perspective of experiences – please provide a conclusion about the dramatic texts that you have encountered in domestic Macedonian institutional theaters as co-production or production – weaknesses and strengths?

ART: From today’s perspective, I can say that I regret that many wonderful performances we have created in Macedonia have not had the opportunity to be shown in the region, Europe, and the world…

Photo credit by Ana Trpenoska,

IAB: From this perspective of experiences – I ask you for a conclusion on the insights and methods you mastered and those that creatively provoked you through the playwright workshops of Mark Ravenhill and les dramaturx – a comparison and influences through their Anglo-Saxon versus German dramatic secrets, techniques, methods, skills? About their pedagogical approach versus the essence of your dramatic authenticity?

ART: Under the mentorship of Mark Ravenhill, I had the opportunity twice to develop texts, and with les dramaturx, besides developing the text, I also went through the process of creating a performance, which are definitely very important experiences for my growth as an author. I don’t see a difference regarding their different backgrounds. The workshops focused on specific themes: post (post)-communism and climate change, where together we sought to explore what writing for theatre means in the context of the challenges we face today.

IAB: What is your observation on all the differences and “similarities”/advantages and disadvantages between the contemporary German-speaking theater and performances (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and the contemporary Macedonian theater and performances – today, here and now, but let’s leave out the money, since creativity and innovation are not always initiated by money and budgets? Here-home, the alleged lack of money is often an excuse for everything that does not work.

ART: I believe that the differences are very significant in every aspect to make comparisons with contemporary theater in the German-speaking area. There is a variety of repertoire offered and there is an audience for every theater. The ensembles change and circulate. The theatrical institutions deal with something that currently does not concern us as a society at all. They struggle with the elitist nature of theater and create participatory programs, taking care of ecological issues and sustainability. They organize talks and debates where artists discuss current global situations and the common future. I would rather make a comparison with something closer to us, with the theatre that is being created right next to us, in Pristina. The performance #TheBorder, for which I wrote the text is performed several times every month with English subtitles at the ODA Theatre. It has also toured other theaters in Kosovo and applies to be shown at international festivals. The play has promotional materials in Albanian and English, a complete video recording and a short trailer. Four extensive theater reviews about it were published in their relevant magazines. Deutsche Welle Albania produced a report with the author team. On the day of the premiere, this cultural event was the main news story and the director appeared several times on cultural shows and gave interviews related to the performance. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the performances based on my texts that are currently in the repertoire of theaters in Macedonia.

Actress Dragana Kostadinoska. Photo from the performance Let’s Go, Señor!, MNT 2014. Photo credits: Kire Galevski.

IAB: How the domestic female/male directors read and interpret your plays compared to Austrian and German female/male directors? Do you view the stage productions more democratically as an open process without the need to intervene authorially in the production, or do you prefer to intervene, sometimes inevitably contradicting the director’s stage intention?

ART: So far, I have been fortunate to collaborate with people who are highly professional and for the processes to take place with mutual trust and support. I believe that directors and actors should be granted full creative freedom in the process, just as we authors have when writing.

IAB: Your plays have been published and translated as literary works in books and e-books. What are the opportunities that the Eurodram network opened for you? What did it enable you and what remained unchanged?

ART: I learned much later about the existence and work of the European network for drama and translation – Eurodram and so far, two of my texts have been selected and awarded by it: Me, Somewhere Else in 2022 and Couples in 2024. I believe the greatest benefit is visibility. The network has about 30 language committees and the idea is that by circulating the selected dramatic texts, potential translations and interest in staging can come about. Thanks to the Eurodram awards, a contract followed with a French publishing house for the publication of my play Me, Somewhere Else, in French.

IAB: After the stage productions of your dramas in Hamburg, Vienna, and Pristina, did new initiatives for productions (from abroad) emerge? How do things work when a Macedonian author starts to be staged in European and regional scenes? Or is there truth in meeting the right person, the right people and/or the right moment and circumstances, or is everything a matter of continuity with ups and downs and perseverance? Demystify it for us, in your own way.

ART: You are leading the Macedonian ITI Center and know how rare the opportunities are, as well as how the participation of Macedonian authors in international festivals, workshops or showcases works, sometimes through your recommendations, sometimes through direct invitations or through open calls. There is truth in the fact that once interest is shown in what you write, the chances for new collaborations increase. My advantage as an author is that I write in Macedonian, English, and German. I also collaborate with an agency that represents my plays in the German-speaking region. Currently, I have an invitation to develop a new drama in German.

IAB: Thank you very much, dear Ana.

ART: Thank you very much for your interest, dear Ivanka.

Skopje/Vienna, 2025