The title of the play is the quote from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden. In it, among several other different subjects, he explores the lives of people working in the offices in Frankfurt’s skyscrapers, these symbols of German market and prosperity. Aber die Stadt hat uns geschutzt will be a play about Frankfurt am Main, the play written in SerboCroatian, but also with parts written in broken, immigrant German. The city would be the main character of the play, the city on the big, calm river, the city with all its citizens, with all the different smaller cities inside the big one, with its communities and its immigrants, with its skyscrapers, and Bosnians in one of its bars, with the Euro symbol, with the Euro sculpture on the Willy Brandt Platz, with the Euro statue besides Schauspielhaus Frankfurt, with the Euro statue besides glass theater, and besides glass, tall buildings, where people are producing money, and where people are producing conditions in which the Europeans are living today, with its monetary symbol of Europe, with its symbol under which people protested, protested against capitalism, in the very core of the capitalism, protested and then, of course, stopped protesting, with its Euro symbol under which I have been drinking white wine after other people’s premieres at the Schaspielhaus Frankfurt.

Author Tanja Šljivar Born in Banjaluka, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1988. She holds both BA and MA degree in dramaturgy at Faculty of drama arts in Belgrade, Serbia. She wrote plays Pošto je pašteta? (How much is Pate?), Grebanje ili Kako se ubila moja baka (Scratching or How my grandmother killed herslef) and Mi smo oni na koje su nas roditelju upozoravali (We are the ones our parents warned us of), which were publicly read and produced in professional theaters in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. She also writes short stories, radio plays, screenplays for short films and theater-theory texts. She won several awards for her playwriting in Bosnia and Serbia, and her plays have been translated in English, German, Macedonian, Polish, Hungarian and French. She is currently attending MA course in applied theater science in Giessen, Germany.

Production companyLAminimAL Teatre Direction Daniela De Vecchi Acting Cris Codina, Esperança Crespí, Toni Figuera, Andrea Hernandez, Damià Capella, Anna Berenger, Litus Cruces, Xavier Pàmies Music Athur Guidi Technical coordinator Ignasi Bosch Acknowledgements Carles Bosh, Albert Pijuan i Espai ERRE Translation from catalan by Pau Sanchis Ferrer

The sky is a very heavy thing. It is held by a man-made structure ending up on a chair with multiple legs. People live under this gigantic chair that should never be moved. Their daily job is holding the chair legs. The schedule is kept religiously. This is a tightly-knit community surviving with the knowledge one’s mistake will be fatal on everyone. The mantra of responsibility and commitment to the all encompassing goal of constant salvation is reiterated daily.

If anyone’s feet go shaky, if they lose their grip of the chair, the world will fall apart on their heads. Helping out someone during her shift is a deviation. No one wonders about the condition they are living in. No one questions it. Or almost. In the past there have been one or two cases of people voicing some concern but no one really knows what happened to them. Parts of the heavy sky fell on them, that must be it, surely.

In one of the workrooms a GIRL is not so sure they know the truth. She dreams of what owning your arms and legs must be like. She (GIRL) questions the condition they live in. Why do the hands and legs of the people have to belong to someone outside themselves? Her grandmother(WOMAN) is worrying over her granddaughter’s sudden awakening and tries to talk sense to her. But the girl is determined to spread the word. After them there will be more people living like this. They should get to know there are possibilities to live differently.

A father(MAN) is worrying over his son’s (BOY) future in the given regime of slavery. Looking at his son (BOY) holding a chair leg and beginning his shift overwhelms him. What he used to dream of when his son was a baby was so different to this. Can his son fit in this world?

A man in power (MAN ABOVE) is worrying over his losing authority. He can feel something is moving, about to change and it must be what people are thinking. He needs to find a way to turn the situation around to his benefit.

AuthorMaria Tranou Born in Greece, she studied Writing for the Stage and Broadcast Media at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. Her plays include Cows, (Theatro tou Neou Kosmou, Athens, 2007), Rebirth (Heraclion City Walls, Crete, 2009), New Dad (Battersea Arts Centre, London, 2010), Mammal, love, (staged reading by the Factory Theatre, 2010) and scripts for Dimitris Fotiou’s online works Dystypia and This is Your Home Now and Roof (Festival of dramaturgy on the crisis PIIGS 2014). In 2006 she was awarded the Greek Ministry of Culture 1st prize for writing Where Liromions Grow, a play for children. Published work includes two poetry books (Mandragoras Publishing House, 2008 & 2013).

Production companyCia. Sargantana Director Jordi Pérez i Soldevila Direction assistant Marilou Roqueplan Acting Carla Vallès, Nathalia Sócrate, Manu Gómez, Carles Garcia-Llidó, Muisès Colinas, Alba Rosa