The play “If I Were a Bird” tells the story of a young married couple who, together with their daughter, flee from besieged Sarajevo in the late 1990s.
With only two bags in hand, they arrive in Vienna, where they must create and rebuild their lives from the ruins of war and try to find happiness.
Their fate is just one of many similar ones from our region, where displacement or (in more recent years) economically motivated emigration has, in one way or another, marked nearly every family. That is why this play has broad resonance—it can reach a wide and diverse audience, who will easily recognize themselves and people from their own lives in the characters and destinies of Mirna and Amir.

The play speaks of two kinds of love: the love between a couple, which changes and wears away under the pressure of circumstances and time; and the love a person feels for their homeland—the place they come from, where they know every “corner and entryway.”
What makes a place truly ours? What fades with time—from the place itself, from us, and from our lives in foreign lands? And what new things begin to grow in its place?

The script for the play was written by dramaturge Nikolina Bogdanović.
It is based on the personal experiences of Bosnian refugees collected through interviews and is further enriched by the personal experiences of the creative team, whose own life stories are closely connected to the themes and motifs of the play.

Though it tackles a serious subject, the play approaches it with appropriate weight, as well as with the typically Bosnian sense of humor that finds a reason to laugh even in life’s hardest moments.
“If I Were a Bird” is a play that will make audiences laugh and cry, taking them on an intimate journey through Bosnia and a deeply personal love story between two people.

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