Balkanized at Sunrise [13+]

A comic thriller: a sci-fi author pens a biography of a Croatian President. The book is later banned by the government.

In these excerpts from the one-man show staged at Dixon Place Theater in NYC, EMMY-award winning filmmaker and author, Joe Tripician, relates his 1997 adventures in the Balkans where he was assigned the task of writing then President Franjo Tudjman's biography for U.S. consumption.

Although not a historian, Joe had written one previously published (humor) book: "The Official Alien Abductee's Handbook", which made him unconventionally qualified to write a biography of an authoritarian Balkan leader.

After months of research and travel, Joe completed a 400-page manuscript titled "In Tito's Shadow" which remains unpublished after the Croatian government took offense at the author's depiction of the now deceased President and his actions.

In bringing this story to the stage, Joe recounts navigating between toadying government aides, lying politicians, harassed dissident journalists, and Croatian and Bosnian women looking for a quick visa. The effect is an often darkly comic, and sadly tragic, tale of deception, danger, death and desire, where guilt abounds, but responsibility remains elusive.

While a guest of the Croatian government, Joe surreptitiously met with opposition leaders and human rights activists in an attempt to uncover the truth of Tudjman's reign. The party then ruling Croatia, Tudjman's HDZ party, was involved in a massive public relations effort to refurbish the tarnished President's image after the war of the '90s produced the largest number of atrocities and death since WWII.

The International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague looms large in the one-man May 2nd show at Dixon Place, New York's celebrated performance space that has showcased such talents as John Leguizamo, Wallace Shawn, and Meredith Monk. "In my experience," says Joe, "many of the Serbs, Croats and Muslims I met in the Balkans expressed outrage over the crimes committed against their own ethnic group, but few would ever name any of their own as guilty. Tudjman personally told me that his own soldiers could not be blamed for any alleged crimes they committed; that after suffering at the hands of the Serbs, they could not help themselves."

During a trip to Sarajevo, Joe met with an anonymous source: a high-ranking member of the Bosnian Croat Federation who detailed the Zagreb government's designs on partitioning Bosnia. "This man warned that extremist Muslim forces were already at large in Bosnia," relates Joe, "and that if better cooperation with the moderate forces in Sarajevo did not happen quickly, the West would soon be paying the price."

"Balkanized at Sunrise" dramatizes many of Joe's experiences and interviews, often with dark and absurd humor. Several scenes depict Joe's encounters with Balkan women, and his narrow escape from amorous indiscretions. "Someone described my show as 'Graham Greene meets Woody Allen'", says the playwright, "and although it is an innocent abroad story with sexual escapades, I believe that the moral and political overtones speak to today's climate."

These excerpts from "Balkanized at Sunrise" were recorded on May 2, 2002 at Dixon Place Theater in NYC.

More info at: www.joetrip.com