The performance WHAT’S ERASMUS TO US, OR WE TO ERASMUS? is the result of an artist in residency of the Serbian Theatre Director and Writer Zlatko Paković, who has been invited to work with local Bosnian diaspora communities across the Netherlands. Starting from the personal perspectives and stories of the Bosnian local community, the group explores the ideologies of tolerance and openness, as proposed by Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, in relation to increasing polarisation towards religion and minority ethnic groups in the Netherlands. Is Erasmus only a symbol of his birth city Rotterdam, or is his ideology still alive today? And what can we learn from communities that have experienced devastating consequences of polarisation in their personal lives, like the communities from post-Yugoslavian countries? Expect a thought-provoking and urgent performance in which personal perspectives and philosophy merge together to tackle one of the most important issues of our times: polarisation.
Zlatko Paković directed theatre plays across Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and in Serbia, mainly outside of institutional theatres, and is best known for his fierce political theatre. His work responds to and reflects upon the political contexts of former Yugoslavia, especially issues concerning censorship, state control, and imposed narratives of the victim/perpetrator divide during, and long after these conflicts. His work also discusses how the new countries that emerged from the collapse still bear the traces of the wars.