The Romeo & Juliet of Sarajevo premieres

A tale of lies, deceit, and most importantly love, The Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo is an imaginative play completely original to F&M.

 A new work written by Professor Brian Silberman and directed by Matthew Mazuroski, Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo tells the story of Admira Ismic, a Muslim, and Bosko Brkic, a Serb, who are casualties of the Bosnian Conflict of 1993—a violent civil war between the Muslim and Serbian populations of the former Yugoslavia. The show ran for two weekends, on April 17, 18, and 25. 

 The show is based on a real couple, nicknamed the Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo by onlookers at the time. Their bodies were discovered in No Man’s Land between borders, riddled with bullets, arms entwined. A symbol of harmony, the bodies were set on fire multiple times by Molotov cocktails and the like to try and destroy such evidence. For a heart-wrenchingly long amount of time, no one was able to recover their bodies for fear of certain death. 

 Silberman took this and crafted a creative, emotional story about the lives of the lovers and how the conflict affected everyone living in the area. Much of the story was told retrospectively by the spirits of Admira and Bosko, confused and in love, through snapshots of their emotional imprints after death. They switched between scenes before and after death, changing clothes on stage as other characters switched between past and future. This created a strong bond between the characters onstage and the audience. 

 Because of their nickname, Silberman also created a parallel with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, having the characters find an old copy and begin to read and act out certain parts, so entwining the stories that the actors’ names are listed as parts in the play and parts in Shakespeare’s play. 

 Highlights included the acting and strikingly inconsistent set. The entire play was read with a Slovakian accent, something that seemed to come easily to the small cast and lent incredible setting technique. The audience was more and more convinced of the environment, especially with the artistic construction of trash and earth piles that lent themselves well to costume changes on set and the easy change of scene. Background image projections fluidly gave information and scene contexts. 

 The wonderful cast was made up of Christopher Burgdorff ’12 as Bosko Brkic/ Romeo, Gayatri Rajagopalan ’11 as Admira Ismic/ Juliet, Tylar Dykman ’12 as Misa Cuk/ Dead Man/ Radovan Drobak, Hunt Eldridge ’10 as Celo/ Voyislov Charkich, Ian Steffy ’12 as Zijo Ismic/ Sniper/ Page , and Kristin Miller ’13 as Rada Brkic/ Sadika Ismic/ Chief Watchman/ Nurse. The entire cast was incredibly invested in the parts and the story on a whole, allowing their real emotions to fluctuate with the charactersí stories. This speaks to great playwriting on Silberman’s part—the emotions were so natural in the situation it seemed easy to slip into the realistically crafted roles. 

 The show was a workshop performance, and this gave it a unique flexibility. The performance set was recycled from A Piece of My Heart, and most of the props and costumes came from the Salvation Army. Silberman attended the first showing and made appropriate changes to be implemented the very next show, even though it meant that for a few scenes, actors went onstage with their script in hand. That is the true definition of a work in progress, and it allowed the F&M community to see the creative process and appreciate the work put into it that much more. 

 “It was beautiful,” said Elizabeth Meley, ’13.  “I like that it didn’t try to figure out the ‘real’ story, but rather presented one possibility of the truth that we can never know for sure.”

 The play as a whole portrayed an emotionally charged story that outlined when bad things happen to good people, and it made a real impression on all who watched. 

First-year Lauren Bejzak is a Layout Assistant. her email is  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it