“How I Learned to Drive” by Paula Vogel is a play often described as a “Lolita” told from a woman’s perspective – through the voice of adult Li’l Bit, who reflects on her childhood.

In working on this text within the intimate, chamber setting of Hartefakt House, together with actress Marta Bogosavljević and actor Svetozar Cvetković, as well as all our collaborators, we tried to find a gentle theatrical language for this complex, deep, and delicate script – one that does not attempt to compete with the reality we live in every day. That reality is far more terrifying, unfolding all around us, and it feels discouragingly unstoppable – so through this play, we chose to move backward, step by step, exploring a problem that most people who read this text have likely encountered at some point in their lives. The relationship between these two characters, Li’l Bit and her uncle, is full of ambivalence: love, tenderness, curiosity, teaching, trust, the shaping of authority, mistakes, and consequently: boundary-crossing, grooming, and harm, all the way to the point of self-destruction. A great strength of this text lies in the author’s empathy for both characters, which opens up an important and controversial tone—not just about the consequences, but the causes of such a relationship. This is a play about forgiveness, even without the awareness that forgiveness might be impossible. I hope this play will awaken people and make them even a little braver—because that alone would be more than enough in a society that often leaves them ashamed and silent.

— Tara Manić, Director

**“Horrible things happen every day, and we’re shocked when we hear or read about them. Then we go on with our lives. That’s normal and natural.
But those horrors we read about, argue over in the comments, often lasted a long time. Sometimes years. And someone lived through them—day by day.
What makes us ask, ‘How is this possible?’ is completely clear to them from every angle. Because to them, it’s not ‘horror’—it’s life. This play is about that.
Without sensationalism, without asking ‘big questions,’ without offering simple answers to enormous problems. This piece was written a quarter of a century ago. Some things haven’t changed since then. Others have. But the strength of this text doesn’t lie in its relevance to ‘horrors’—it lies in something much deeper, more complex, and at the same time more simple:

It is about a woman remembering her life. A life full of trauma scars, but also a life full of love and driving lessons.

And that’s the problem. Nothing in this story is simple.
If ‘horrors’ were easy problems to solve, they’d already be solved.
‘Smash the patriarchy’ sounds great, but it’s just the first step.
Support matters—but at the end of the day, everyone falls asleep alone. And wakes up alone.

“How I Learned to Drive” is a play born out of the deep commitment of two incredibly brave actors and an exceptionally talented director. The three of them spent two months living, breathing, and thinking about the worst things that can happen between people, with the hope of creating something that offers the audience what theatre has provided for millennia—catharsis.

A catharsis about ‘horrors.’
So that we might move, even slightly, beyond ‘How is this possible?’”**

— Vuk Bošković, Dramaturg