Sarajevo is an intense psychological thriller delivered beautifully by a formidable cast

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS editor

If you would like to witness the psychological damage caused to people in a society at war, people that are both directly involved in the war and those not, this is it.

Sarajevo is no ordinary play. It not only portrays a society in turmoil during a raging war, but other spectacles that happen in society caught up in the bigger spectacle, that is the war itself.

Sarajevo is clearly not for the fain-hearted, or theatre novices as the play will challenge you both intellectually and emotionally. It will get you to see what a society at war looks like, feels like and how ordinary people in society during a war navigates the complications of their lives. You will be carried straight into the streets of Sarajevo and made to feel that you are witnessing the war and its damage on the psyche o0f those affected, the ordinary people and the soldiers. The violence that is portrayed on stage just to show you what a picture of a country at war looks and feels like will make you cringe. The rape seen drove the point home –that war is not an option as it leaves society at large traumatised and broken both physically and psychological.

It has been a long time for me to witness on stage the magic of theatre as a tool to tell, not only a powerful, story of a country at war, and tell it so beautifully that the pain of those affected by war becomes your own pain as an audience member. The actors are so good at what they do on stage to deliver the story that you will leave the theatre thinking so hard about what damage war does to a society.

I recommend this play to those who would like to see what good theatre feels and looks like. I left Theatre on the Square at Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, emotionally drain and intellectually challenged and energised at the same time. This play is really good theatre that anyone who takes themselves as theatre patron must go watch before the curtains come down on October 18, 2025. Sarajevo is an intense psychological thriller.

And so what am I talking about?

Sarajevo is essentially a play about love, friendship, and the war that tried to erase them.

Written by Aimée Mica Komorowsky and directed by Thorsten Wedekind, the production brings together an ensemble of celebrated South African and international talent.

About Sarajevo:

In every war there are bodies counted, cities destroyed, and histories disputed. Theatre however reminds us of what statistics cannot: the fragile miracle of being human together.

Sarajevo is that reminder. A haunting play about three childhood friends, bound by love, fractured by war, and remembered by the lens of a foreign journalist, until even the camera itself becomes complicit. It is a story of neighbours turned strangers, of friendship stretched across fault-lines of faith, and of the human cost of borders drawn in blood.

Though rooted in the collapse of Yugoslavia, the play speaks to themes that cross borders and generations: identity, betrayal, loyalty, and the stubborn longing to hold onto something slipping away. It bears witness to how conflict reshapes memory, how relationships fracture under the weight of ideology, and how history continues to haunt the present.

Born of Wounds, Written in Witness

The play’s journey began in lived trauma. In the final year before Yugoslavia’s disintegration, playwright Aimée Mica Komorowsky bore witness to a world unraveling. Out of fragments of memory and grief, out of unanswered questions, grew a work of theatre capable of carrying both intimacy and history.

Over a decade, Sarajevo has evolved, from personal wound to global testimony. In 2018, it was invited to the international symposium 21st Century Reflections on Sexual Violence in Wars and its Transgenerational and Transnational Impact. Since then, it has travelled stages from Austria’s Strawantz Festival to Cape Town’s Alexander Bar, bearing witness, resisting forgetting, and creating space for collective mourning and reckoning.

Now, Sarajevo steps into its next chapter: Johannesburg, before journeying onward to Toronto and Edinburgh.

In Memory

The production honours Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob (1951–2016), the South African author, UN officer, and journalist who lived through he Bosnian War and chronicled its horrors in her memoir Sarajevo Roses. Her words echo still:

It also remembers Paul Lowe (1963–2024), the award-winning photojournalist who documented the Bosnian conflict with unflinching honesty, reminding the world of the faces behind the statistics.

The Ensemble

Sarajevo gathers an ensemble of remarkable talent:

• Jeremy Richard – multi-award-winning actor, returning to a role he first inhabited years ago.
• Alistair Moulton Black – versatile stage and screen presence, from The Crown to Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians.
• Ivan Nedeljkovic – actor and model, stepping into the layered role of Slobo.
• Aimée Mica Komorowsky – playwright and performer, at the very heart of the story she birthed.
• Louise Saint-Claire – legendary actress, voice artist, and dialect coach whose craft spans four decades.
• Thorsten Wedekind – director, actor, casting director, and industry veteran guiding this chapter of the play’s journey.

Details

Date: 9th – 18th October 2025
Venue: Theatre on the Square, Johannesburg
Ticketing: Available via Webtickets or directly with the theatre.