Photograph by Katherine Bish
After accepting the job from Avalon Theatre to write a play about St. Louis’ Bosnian community, playwright Cristina Pippa considered the fact that maybe she, being extremely unfamiliar with the subject, wasn’t the best person for the job.
“How can I write about another country’s tragedy?” she asked on her blog, referring to the conflict that took place from 1992 to 1995 in Europe’s Eastern bloc.
“You’re an outsider,” a friend encouraged her. “You have perspective.”
Though Pippa had grown up in St. Louis during much of the Bosnian emigration, she had not spent time in the community. “I had to figure out why it had to be me writing it,” she says. “It was my responsibility to see it all and find out what was happening.”
Nearly two years ago, Larry Mabrey and his wife, Erin Kelley, Avalon’s founders, sat down with Pippa to discuss the piece, which Mabrey himself had envisioned when moving back to St. Louis after being gone for most of the ’90s. The production, as Mabrey saw it, would act as an outlet through which Bosnians could tell their story—one Mabrey felt has gone
largely untold.
“I wanted a play that would resonate with both Bosnians and Americans,” he says. “I wanted to show people what it means to give up one’s homeland and not go back.”
Kelley adds to Pippa’s benefit: “She’s taken on a Herculean task, because she’s incorporated so many elements and made it so accessible. She’s included the history of—without lecturing—the local element of St. Louis and, in Bosnia, the generational differences … it includes all these elements, but so seamlessly.”
As part of her research, Pippa met with many Bosnians in the city, some of whom were unwilling to talk about the genocide, rape, killing, destruction and deportation that occurred in their war-torn country, and some of whom were more than willing to share their experiences. She traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she shared meals with families who told tales of love affairs and the poison of nationalism. “Is it really possible that I am in St. Louis?” she wrote after going to the clubs on Gravois. “This is what has become of South City … a new culture is thriving.”
The stories Pippa heard were not about how the Bosnians have integrated into society and become Americans—they were about their differences, their traditions and how they’ve maintained their own identity while living as the minority.
“I hope people feel this is a story about the immigrant experience in St. Louis and that they identify with it and connect with each other,” she says. “Once you realize that people are like you, it’s much easier to connect with them.”
What Pippa created, based on hours of interviews, is Little Bosnia, a fictional story about Faris, a Bosnian who has spent his adolescence in St. Louis, who travels to Bosnia to reclaim his family’s apartment—from a Croatian woman.
“It isn’t about the war,” Pippa says. “It’s about now, about an immigrant that lives here—he’s American.”
Pippa says immersing yourself in the lives and culture of a foreign people, attempting to become an authority on the subject and do it justice, is pretty challenging.
“I wouldn’t call it easy,” she says. “I’d call it fascinating.”
Little Bosnia will feature a score by Dan Rubright and a cast of both Bosnian and American actors; it debuts April 11 and will run through April 20. For updates and more information, visit avalontheatre.org or call 314-351-6482. See more of the playwright's thoughts at cristinapippa.com.
