Department of Dreams: Recent Dystopian Plays from Across the World

These dystopian dramas envision and interrogate scenes of extremity on the planet and within the social order. They depict a world that is inundated; a world deprived of water; a world that feeds on scraps, that runs on vestiges; a world that is devoid of any natural habitat; and foresee the furthermost assault of authoritarianism. Scattered among the scenarios are acts of radical selfishness. One text invents a stratagem that depends on radical love.

Jeton Neziraj is the former artistic director of the National Theater of Kosovo, and the founder and current director of Qendra Multimedia. He has written more than 25 plays that have been translated into many languages, including French, Italian, German, English, Spanish, Turkish, Kurdish, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croat, Slovenian, Macedonian, and Montenegrin. They have been presented at festivals and been performed by a great number of theaters and acting companies, such as Volkstheater (Vienna), L’Espace d’un instant (Paris), Teater de Vill (Stockholm), Festival Vie (Modena), Schlachthaus Theater (Bern), Gerald W. Lynch Theater (New York), Gare au Théâtre (Paris), Theater Heilbronn (Heilbronn), Bitef Theatre (Belgrade), Theater Nomad (London), Markus Zohner Theater Company (Lugano), Istanbul Municipal Theater, The National Theater of Wales (Cardiff), City Garage Theatre (Santa Monica), Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden (Wiesbaden), Yale Drama Coalition (New Haven), La MaMa ETC., (New York), The National Theater of Montenegro (Podgorica), and International Theatre Festival MESS (Sarajevo). In 2018 the office of the European Union in Kosovo conferred the European of the Year award, and in 2021 he was presented the International Theatremakers Award by Playwrights Realm in New York. His play, The Handke Project, was given the prestigious Journées de Lyon des Auteurs de Théâtre prize of 2024, and he won Kosovo’s National Drama award, “Katarina Josipi,” in both 2023 and 2024.

Ebru Nihan Celkan began her acting education at Sadri Alişik Theatre in Istanbul in 2005. She appeared in productions over the next two years, and in 2007 her first play, From Heaven to Hell was staged as part of the Sadri Alişik Theatre Festival. She has since written more than nine plays, as a well as a short screenplay ― works which treat such subjects as domestic abuse, workers’ safety, PTSD, transgender issues, environmental dystopias, and political assassination. They have been widely performed throughout Turkey. For example, both Triggerman and Shells with Surprises have been included in the repertoire of State and City Theaters; Home! Sweet Home! was staged continuously for two seasons in Istanbul and toured many Turkish cities; It Was the Day after a Day in which No One Died played for three seasons in various cities in Türkiye. In 2011, she founded the theater company, BuluTiyatro (Cloud Theater). Honors and awards include Best Playwright of the Year in the 7th Direklerarasi Audience Awards of 2012; an invitation to the Emerging International Playwrights Seminar by Sala Beckett – L’Obrador Dramaturgy Institute in 2011; and the screening of her film, 10, 9, 8 . . . in the Aksanat Short Film Festival. In 2017 she was one of four international playwrights invited by the Literary Colloquium Berlin, the Maxim Gorki theater, the New Institute for Dramatic Writing, and the Robert Bosch Foundation to participate in the “War in Peace” project. She was a Jean Jacques Rousseau Fellow of the Academy Schloss Solitude Stuttgart in 2019. In the same year, her play Will You Come with Me? had its European premiere at Schauspiel Stuttgart, and in 2022 it was staged by PlayCo in New York.Her most recent work, “Loop” premiered in 2024 at the 28th Istanbul International Theater Festival and continues to be staged in Türkiye. 

Karen Malpede is author and director of 20 plays and co-founder with George Bartenieff of Theater Three Collaborative. Other Than We follows Extreme Whether (La MaMa, New York, 2018; ArtCop21, Paris, 2015; Theater for the New City, New York, 2014); the shorts Dinner During Yemen (Signature, New York, 2018), Hermes in the Anthropocene: A Dogologue (University of Iowa, Iowa City, 2019; Reed College, Portland, 2015); the revival of her 1995 The Beekeeper’s Daughter (Theater for the New City, New York, 2016), Another Life (RADA, London and Theater for the New City, New York, 2013; Irondale, Brooklyn, 2012; Gerald W. Lynch Theater, New York, 2011), Prophecy (English Theatre Berlin, 2007 (reading); New End Theatre, London, 2008; 4th St. Theater, New York, 2010), the docudrama Iraq: Speaking of War (Culture Project, New York, 2007; CUNY Grad Center, New York, 2006). Her most recent play, Blue Valiant, written for Kathleen Chalfant, had its debut in 2021. She is author of the anthology Plays in Time: The Beekeeper’s Daughter, Prophecy, Another Life, Extreme Whether, lead editor of Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays, and author of an anthology of early plays, A Monster Has Stolen the Sun and Other Plays. Her short plays, fiction, and essays on ecofeminism, climate crisis, a new green Federal Theater, bearing witness, the Iraq war, the U.S. torture program, etc., are published in The Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, Dark Matter, Howlround, Transformations, Torture Magazine, New Theater Quarterly, TDR, New York Times, and elsewhere. She was an adjunct associate professor on the Environmental Justice and Theater faculties at John Jay College, City University of New York; McKnight National Playwrights’ Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts; Vogelstein fellow; and a member of PEN, Dramatists Guild, ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and Ecology) and of Brooklyn for Peace.

Bosco Cayo Alvarez trained in acting, directing, and playwriting at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and in psychology at the Universidad de La Serena. He is a member of the theater companies Compañía Limitada, Teatro Sin Dominio, and Teatro la Mala Clase, and has taught in drama schools throughout Chile. His play Negra, la enfermera del General (Negra, the General’s Nurse) was selected by the Royal Court Theatre, London, as part of its 2013 New Plays from Chile season. His other works for the stage include Limítrofe (Herdswoman of the Sun), Leftraru, La dama de los Andes (The Lady of the Andes, winner of the 2017 Chilean National Council for Arts and Cultures literary award for best play), El Dylan, Plan Vivienda 2015-2045 (Housing Plan 2015-2045), Los despertares de Marín (The Awakenings of Gladys Marín, 2019), José Desierto (winner of the 2020 Chilean Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage playwriting award), Evangelista (2020), and La Belleza de Judith (The Beauty of Judith, 2021).

Wei Yu-Chia holds an MA in playwriting from the Department of Drama and Theater, National Taiwan University. She won the 2014 Taiwanese Literature Award for Playwriting with A Fable for Now, which was performed by Creative Society in 2016. Other plays include Mama/Popstar (nominated for the 2015 Taipei Literature Award for Playwriting), A Child from Nankoku (nominated for the 2017 New Taipei Award for playwriting), YouTube (The Deadend Flowers, 2015), and Big Zoo (Tainaner Ensemble, 2018).