Balkan Syndrome
A theatrical performance has just started when a group of indignant theatregoers interrupt the act. They want the manager because they have caught someone stealing a woman’s purse in the auditorium. The thief claims he did it to attract attention and get a chance to share his problem with the audience. While listening to his confession, his captors feel sudden sympathy for his predicament. They themselves would also like to be heard in public! They have hardly finished telling their respective tales of woe on stage when a crowd of wedding guests storms the stage, led by the Best Man. The bride’s extended family floods the theatre – and with it an unleashed elemental Balkan energy, garish and vulgar, which mixes incongruously with the refined world of the theatre. As if that wasn’t enough, the stunned theatre manager is confronted with an extraterrestrial trying in vain to comprehend the logic of our earthly ways. How is it all going to end?