“Damir Karakaš, a prose writer by vocation, is a unique figure in Croatian theatre and culture. His dramatic writing is incisive and distinctive – uncompromising in its provocations, captivating in its intensity, and confronting us with key social traumas. Although Sniper belongs to his early works, the play sounds just as relevant and powerful today, in a time of growing violence and the erosion of democratic values.

The story follows three members of a lost generation. Muki and his pregnant girlfriend Sunčica are planning an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate in order to secure enough money to escape to Paris – a mythical place of a better life, set against the hopelessness of reality and the feeling of living in a ‘nation of losers’. Their plan draws in the Caretaker, a resigned pacifist and a marginalised figure within the system, whose conciliatory attitude reveals only remnants of his former rebellion.

Idealism, the need for change, personal interests and deep frustrations converge around the motif of the sniper rifle, which becomes a metaphor for settling accounts with society, but also with oneself. Sniper is an intimate political drama about marginalized people in a country marked by the legacy of war, corruption and social disintegration, where society as a whole is the culprit.

The performance takes place within the interior of an apartment, creating a naturalistic sense of intimacy and authenticity, with natural lighting and sound produced entirely live, within the performance space itself.” — Dino Mustafić, director