BEZ Tebe

The play WITHOUT YOU was created in 2022, written based on the idea by Isidora Pajcin, in collaboration with a third-year dramaturgy student at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, Arsenije Shtimac. It offers answers and poses questions that concern every person at a crossroads in life. The action takes place in a modest Belgrade apartment, where Teodora lives with an immobile and mute old woman, to whom, instead of rent, she pays with care. Although she was an excellent student, she cannot find a job in her field for a long time after her studies, leading to complete social isolation, loss of self-confidence, and entanglement in a web of lies with friends and parents. She spends her days painting her nightmares and leading an already learned hopeless life, spending her free time taking care of the old woman and talking to Iskra. The daily routine is disrupted by a meeting with a colleague from university Milan, whom she was once in love with during her studies. Our goal with this performance is to encourage people to remain consistent, dignified, and unyielding under the pressure of society, which often leads us to doubt moral and ethical values and duties. We believe it is very important to provide people, especially the youth, who are suddenly faced with questions of existence, questions of personal integrity and inevitable internal conflicts, with the sense that they are not alone in this. We believe the theme is relevant and truly necessary in this time. The idea to write this play, and later to stage it, came to me after noticing that I was encountering more and more young people who, overwhelmed by the fears brought by the uncertainty in which we live, began to feel shame about their own achievements. I believe that this phenomenon, among other things, dictates the false presentation of life, our parents' and families' expectations and fears, the weight of independence, the normalization of condemnation, and the general abuse of 'freedom of thought'. I want, as much as I can, to raise awareness about the increasing number of anxious, depressed, and unprotected young people, and thus encourage us to reflect more often on the way we communicate with each other, in order to break the dystopian chain and prepare the ground for healthier personality development. – Isidora Pajcin
ORGANIZER/SOURCE: Teatrijum Theatre