City Garage has gone all out to introduce the work of the Kosovo-based playwright Jeton Neziraj to Los Angeles. The avant-garde company headed by Frederique Michel and Charles A. Dumcombe honored Neziraj with a champagne reception, a book signing, and a guest panel discussion on the weekend of Nov. 8-10, 2019. And of course City Garage also mounted the world premiere of Neziraj’s latest play, Department of Dreams, which will run locally until December 8. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, following a brutal civil war in ex-Yugoslavia and after having been saved from extinction by NATO air strikes on Belgrade and Serbian military bases. Neziraj had no contact with theater until he attended university; now, at 42, he has written over 25 plays, some of which have been produced internationally. From 2008-2011 he served as artistic director of the National Theatre of Kosovo (in Prishtina). He was deprived of that job by the government, which complained that he was “making work that challenged the dominant political narrative.” Neziraj gets his own back in Department of Dreams, a play which is about as anti-authoritarian and anti-government as can be. It is set in a bureaucratic headquarters where citizens are obliged to deposit their dreams so that they can be analyzed and filed. Dreams which are discovered to have subversive or “dangerous” elements are red-tagged. The dreamers are then arrested and interrogated, with the worst offenders being tortured and even shot. Department of Dreams roughly follows the story of Dan (John Logan), a young, well-meaning functionary in the department of dreams. New to the job, he tries to make the department more humane and decent. He also has a timid love affair with an actress (Angela Breyer). By the time the play ends, poor Dan has had a nervous breakdown which leaves him shattered and disillusioned. The Department, you see, has no truck with ideals or kindness; all it wants is to control every aspect of people’s lives, even those who work there. “We will take revenge against those who refuse to deposit their dreams with us,” says Dan’s boss (Bo Roberts). Dan’s battle with the system—and with his own conscience—provides much of the play’s drama, but the narrative is broken up by bizarre interludes in which the actors suddenly impersonate such public figures as Angela Merkel, The Pope (who is revealed to be a pederast), Vladimir Putin, and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan (who confides that he’d really like to act). All this blackly humorous action takes place before Anthony M. Sannazzaro’s towering video projections, which show (I think) microscopic images of the brain. The brain is the target in Department of Dreams: the authorities do everything they can to try and control its workings. The department, as Dan learns, should really have been called The Department of Nightmares.
