Two chairs, three conversations, and one absence. From this simple, stripped-down stage setting emerges a drama about the limits of language, missed opportunities, guilt and forgiveness.
Structured as the reconstruction of an intimate, therapeutic and impossible dialogue, the play follows three intertwined conversations: one between a daughter and her father that actually took place; one between the daughter and her psychotherapist after his death; and one between the daughter and her father that never happened, though it is precisely this unspoken exchange that shapes the very need to speak. The play focuses on Ena — daughter, author, and witness to her own trauma. Through language, she seeks to understand and come to terms with her father’s decision to end his life.
Pičman does not view suicide as an isolated act or merely an expression of personal will, but as a radical rupture in society, language and memory. By portraying the guilt, shame and burden that remain with the living after suicide, the text poses an unbearable question: would anything have been different had we known how to speak when it mattered? At the same time, it raises questions on the limits of intimacy and on
how close we can truly come to another person, how far we can go in expressing love and attachment. Is it not, perhaps, the unspoken that at times becomes the final and most truthful form of love?
In its enclosed minimalist form, reduced to two chairs and two performers, in claustrophobic proximity to the audience, the play establishes an intimate relationship between performers and spectators. This closeness is not only spatial but also ethical: the audience is not shielded from the confrontation, but rather becomes a witness and participant. The stage becomes a space of intense focus, while the duration of one hour — the average length of a therapeutic session — becomes a measure of genuine presence before the other.
Dora Šustić’s play Pičman was awarded the Marin Držić Prize (First Prize) in 2024, and its world premiere will be directed by the author herself.
