War and Peace. Women and Men. Sex and politics.

They accompany us from morning till sleepless nights - in a vicious circle. Ever since Zeus, the god, the angry thunderer who hurls lightning at us, that god who "rules and decides" deceitfully abducted (and raped) beautiful and innocent Europa. This god engaged in numerous affairs, including those of a sexual nature, but in fear of his wife Hera, he visited his chosen ones, as we know, in various forms. He deceived Europa by transforming into a bull with golden horns. And since then, that Europa, once happily bathed in the Mediterranean, having lost her innocence, has become a theater of wars motivated by various causes, ravaged by their shared senselessness. And so, unfortunately, it has remained until today. Theatre, as a still sacred place, a site of discussion and questioning, a kind of oracle, the Delphi of our time, provides us with a space that offers a search for truth. On this very stage, four sharp pens have converged around the same theme for this performance - war. Aristophanes, who first wrote a Greek comedy with a female character in the lead role: "Lysistrata," whose name signifies the one who dissolves wars, is considered the earliest text in Western civilization that addresses the issue of the marginalization of women, but within the broader pacifist message that still ensures its relevance today. Aristophanes knew that sex and politics are the two most powerful catalysts not only in social but also in male-female relationships. We witness that in conjunction with money, in today's life, politics and sex play a crucial role. Despite the lascivious exposure to satirical blades with which we will target you and the fierce mockery of specific phenomena, our goal is to open the path to utopian ideas of transforming society into a world without conflicts, hatred, and wars, both between nations and between genders. Homer connects scenically with parts of his "Iliad" created during the "period of deepest darkness" following the invasion of the Dorians into Greece. This epic about the last year of the Trojan War brings descriptions of victims, myths, and the truth, heroism and the senselessness of it all, exposing and demonstrating the tragic and the comic, action and philosophy. Lucić's poetry, a gem of anti-war poetry, is the amalgamation of the theatrical events and the driving force behind the idea of this anti-war theatrical adventure. Matišić, without any hint of pathos, vividly portrays the tragic way in which the horrors of war continue to define contemporary life, persisting in the people who went to war to defend their country but couldn't escape it. And we laugh at all of it. Truthfully, bitterly. We laugh because in their schizophrenia, in their search for justification of their own existence, attitudes, and decisions, in that absurd discrepancy, we recognize the gap of (im)possibilities in which we are all trapped together with them. The interplay of these different manuscripts, opposed by time and civilizations, yet united by the theme - through their dialogue, ensures the space for theatrical exploration, revealing the illnesses of society, unraveling the problems of our worried existences - it is the dramaturgical mode of this staging. Witty, poetic, but without mincing words and harsh. What do we dream, and what remains as reality? Are we alive, or did we perish long ago without noticing?