About the work
Die Brücke von Mostar is the German version of Old Bridge, the first full-length play by British-Bosnian playwright Igor Memic, translated by John Birke. The text won the Papatango New Writing Prize in 2020; Papatango Theatre Company staged the world premiere, directed by Selma Dimitrijevic, from 21 October 2021 at the Bush Theatre in London. Anne Bader directed the German-language premiere at Theater Oberhausen on 15 September 2023.
Plot
As an older woman, Emina remembers the summer of 1988 in Mostar, when she was still called Mina and watched with her friends as young men leapt from the Ottoman Old Bridge into the Neretva. Mili's first jump goes wrong but earns him a meeting with Mina; the two become a couple and, together with Leila and Sasha, form a friendship across religious lines. When war breaks out in 1992 this world falls apart: supplies run short, familiarity turns into hostility, and in the end the bridge that linked the Muslim and Catholic parts of Mostar is destroyed as well.
Cultural significance
In 2022 Old Bridge won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, and the same year Memic was named Most Promising Playwright at the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards (jointly with Zadie Smith) and at the Off West End Awards. After Oberhausen the play was also staged at other German theatres, for instance at Stadttheater Gießen and at the Vaganten Bühne Berlin with students of the Berlin University of the Arts.