Death is not a bicycle (to be stolen from you)

A Word from the Author

I wrote the play “Death Is Not a Bicycle (To Be Stolen from You)” more than ten years ago, when my father was dying. The text was first written as a monologue, which I performed myself in the Viennese Burgtheater as part of the cycle "Kakanien. Neue Republik der Dichter" (New Republic of Poets). 
The play had its premiere in the German theatre Schauspielhaus Bochum, directed by Anselm Weber, for which it was also written, and in Belgrade it premiered at the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, directed by Slobodan Unkovski.
I have seen both plays only once (I tend not to watch my plays), I have never read the play again (I tend not to read my works), and I particularly and purposely avoided seeing the recording of my performance in Burgtheater. 
Everything I write - I write about myself, about my anxieties, traumas, pain, about my happiness even when it is fake, about my confusion. I should be crazy then to read that, shouldn't I?
For the first time in my 30 years of work, the National Theatre is staging one of my plays, at the proposal of Andrej Nosov. Andrej is my long-time friend and more than that - in Heartefact, which he founded and runs it, our artistic collaboration lasts fifteen years already, as we invent, imagine and create a different theatre and world. There is no one else who could make me go back to this play and hear it and see it again, face my pains again, except Andrej.
I said yes and it was worth it. 

Biljana Srbljanović

 Biljana Srbljanović

Playwright, tenured professor at the Department of Dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. She is the author of over 10 plays (“The Belgrade Trilogy”, “Family Stories”, “The Fall”, “The Locusts”, “Barbelo”, “Death Is Not a Bicycle (To Be Stolen from You)”, “The Glass Neck”, “Bears Are Endangered Species”). Her plays have been translated into about 25 languages, and played in over 100 theatres all over the world. For her playwriting, she won six “Sterija” Awards, as well as the “Joakim Vujić”, “Slobodan Selenić”, “Ernst Toller” Awards, the City of Belgrade Award and Premio Europa - New Theatrical Reality Award. For her activist work, she received, among others, the Winning of Freedom Award and Sarajevo Days Award. She is the creator of the “Open Doors” TV series and the author of the text of the sound sculpture as part of the art work on Zoran Đinđić monument made by Mrđan Bajić, with whom she is the co-author of the art work “New Belgrade 11070” as part of the “Unreliable Narrator” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. She has been a long-time artistic collaborator of the Heartefact Fund and Independent Production. She was a lecturer at the Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi in Milan, at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University in New York and the Faculty of Applied Arts in Vienna.  She is a Fulbright alumni and a recipient of the French Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres). 

 Andrej Nosov

He graduated from the Theatre Directing Department at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, and earned his master's degree at the DAS Graduate School of the Academy of Theatre and Dance at the University of Arts in Amsterdam. He founded and runs Heartefact Fund and Independent Production. As a theatre author, he creates shows based on contemporary plays, as well as on collaborative processes with actors, playwrights and other collaborators, opening up space for unusual language, forms, themes and ways in the local context. He used his engagement as a director of the plays “Bent”, “Hunger”, “Hinkemann”, “Ghosts”, “The Black Box”, “Kiddo (Balava)”, “Uncle Vanya”, “In the Jaws of Life”, “Little Things That Mean Life” and others, to talk about the problems that trouble a modern man, at the same time not giving up on their political and (po)ethical dimensions. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Ibsen Scope Award for 2022.