Welcome to a conversation with Jeton Neziraj and Natasha Tripney. The conversation will focus on the performances  Negotiating Peace and The Handke Project both featured at this year’s festival.

Jeton Neziraj is the former artistic director of the National Theatre of Kosovo, and the founder and current director of Qendra Multimedia. He has written over twenty-five plays, which have been staged, translated into nearly 20 languages, and performed in over 70 productions throughout Europe and the United States.

As a playwright, he has worked with and has presented his work to various theatres in Europe and the USA, including La MaMa in New York, Volksbühne Berlin, Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Teatro Della Pergola in Firenze, Volkstheater Vienna, Vidy Theater in Lausanne, National Theatre of Sarajevo, City Garage Theater in Los Angeles, National Theater of Montenegro, Bitef Theatre in Belgrade, Turkish National Theater, National Theatre of Kosovo, Qendra Multimedia in Prishtina, Prague City Theatres, to name a few.

His plays have won numerous prizes and awards and have been performed at theatre festivals throughout Europe. The Handke Project is the winner of the prestigious French theatre award Journées de Lyon des Auteurs de Théâtre 2024.

Natasha Tripney is a writer, editor and critic based in London and Belgrade. She was educated at King’s College, London and the University of Warwick. She is the international editor for The Stage, the newspaper of the UK theatre industry, and editor-in-chief of SEEstage.org, an English language platform for theatre criticism in southeast Europe. She also writes the weekly European theatre newsletter, Cafe Europa. In 2011, she co-founded Exeunt, an online portal for independent and experimental theatre criticism, which she edited until 2016. She is a regular contributor to the Guardian and to BBC Culture, and has written for the Evening Standard, New York Times, Index on Censorship, Tortoise, and Kosovo 2.0.