From I Went To Albania
We’ve just come out of the
museum. We’ve seen a Chinese tank and exquisite Orthodox icons. Photographs of
Zog – and a partisan jacket with a bullet hole. Embroidered traditional
costumes – and a section of the communist border fence. The lists of people
Hoxha had killed...
And in the corner of every
room, an assistant sitting at a desk with a Bakelite telephone and an ashtray.
It’s a museum where you can smoke ... And then, in the gift shop, Sam notices
something. He’s lost his baseball cap. The Bakelite telephones start ringing –
and before you know it every assistant in the museum, every curator of Illyrian
artefacts, every expert in bourgeois reactionary monarchists is up on their
feet. They’ve squashed out their fags, and they’re advancing through the
priceless exhibits. They’re like lines of Highland beaters flushing pheasants
from the heather... Even the woman at the front desk has abandoned her post to
shout at the gardener – who’s weeding the treads of the Chinese tank in the
yard – and get him looking for my son’s baseball cap. Everyone in the museum
has dropped everything to look for my son’s baseball cap. Imagine the National
Gallery grinding to a halt while the entire staff go in search of a Japanese
tourist’s daughter’s friendship bracelet. They won’t give up until ... Ah, here
it is. Here’s the baseball cap. Found underneath a sofa ...
The thing is, it’s like this
everywhere we go. It’s as if everybody’s expecting us. I get the feeling the
gunmen in Durrës would understand this better than we do.
'I Went To Albania' was first performed during Ferment at Bristol Old Vic. It's currently in development with Ferment and director Andy Burden.
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