Vain generals, mix-ups and Elvis: Kosovan play turns peace talks into farce

Jeton Neziraj’s Negotiating Peace is a frenzied comedy drawing on Bosnian and Kosovan wars

When political leaders present war as the only solution, it is up to artists to remind people that finding peace is still possible. That is the starting point for a Kosovo-based theatre company, Qendra Multimedia, whose new play returns to the last war in Europe before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and explores how it was stopped.

The lesson it draws, and the genre it chooses to present its findings, is unexpected: the Kosovan playwright Jeton Neziraj’s Negotiating Peace shows the diplomacy of peace as a farce, albeit a necessary one.