by AMY BARRATT

What would it be like to see the country you grew up in erupt into civil war?

It’s something that those of us born in Canada can barely imagine, but for many immigrants to this country, it takes no imagination at all— they’ve lived it.

Silvija Jestrovic is one such immigrant. The 32-year-old playwright fled the former Yugoslavia in 1994, in the midst of the Bosnian conflict. She brought with her a work-in-progress, Noah’s Ark 747, a play that has, in the intervening years, lived the immigrant experience along with the writer. It has changed languages, from Serbian to English, and changed its focus. “When I moved to Canada my context changed drastically,” Jestrovic has written. “And the need to make a political statement turned into a need for communication about the world.”

The Toronto-based Jestrovic will attempt that communication with a Montreal audience beginning tonight, Oct. 17, at the MAI.

Paulina Abarca, who is directing the Teesri Duniya production of Noah’s Ark 747, admits that, like many of us, she had a pretty shaky grasp on what had happened in Jestrovic’s country. But she’s been doing her research, and has got the members of the cast doing theirs too. One wall of their rehearsal space is adorned with a timeline of 20th-century history, hand-written by the cast in multicoloured marker.

What they’ve been discovering is a complex, very emotional situation, with historical roots that go very deep—so deep that many who have immigrated to Canada from the region are unable to leave the old ethnic tensions behind. Teesri Duniya has a tradition of holding talkback sessions during the run of a show, with panellists representing different sides of a debate. They even held lively discussions during the controversial Reading Hebron in 2000. This time, however, they can’t find anyone to participate. Many Serbs refuse to sit on the same panel as a Croat, and vice versa.

Jestrovic’s play is not all about politics, however. There’s a love triangle that’s very central to the plot. Katarina and Theodore are a professional couple living in Belgrade. Igor, an old lover of Katarina’s, comes to stay with them after escaping Sarajevo, a city under siege. Relationships become even more complicated when Igor becomes involved with a young student, Boyana. All four are waiting to hear if they will get immigration status to come to Canada. In the end, only two will get out. Hence the Noah’s Ark imagery that runs through the play in a darkly comic way.

“It’s a play that uses a lot of styles,” says Abarca. “From theatre of the absurd to heartfelt drama. But the absurdity grows out of an absurd social situation. It’s also about what people can get used to. In the midst of so much upheaval, and even under the watchful eye of the state, life goes on.”

Designer Robert Leader has come up with a set that suggests that sense of being unable to escape from prying eyes. Instead of walls, the apartment has black bars, so the characters are caged. The look of the show is deliberately sparse.

“We set ourselves the challenge of doing it as cheaply as possible,” says Abarca. “Because the characters have to make do. We’re trying to get the audience as close as possible to being inside Belgrade in 1994.” :

Noah’s Ark 747, to Nov. 3 at the
MAI (Wed–Sat at 8pm, Sunday at 4pm),
$15, 982-3386

>> Stage Listings