Heartefact brings No Apologies! to the Balkans — a live collision of music, memory and performance

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This June, No Apologies! arrives in the Balkans with performances in Prishtina (June 3), Skopje (June 6) and Belgrade (June 9), bringing a live, shifting work of queer and trans storytelling into three distinct city contexts. Presented by Heartefact, it blends theatre, live music and performance into an unstable form that changes with each encounter — shaped by audience, space and presence in real time.

At its centre is a direct and uncompromising focus on identity through queer and trans experience. The piece uses Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged concert as a starting point, not as nostalgia but as material to be broken apart and reassembled into something immediate. Memory, voice and cultural fragments are pushed through performance, where theatre, autobiography, sound and ritual collide between concert intensity and intimate, exposed storytelling.

Created and performed by Emma Frankland, the work treats identity as something constantly in motion — not explained, but enacted and rewritten live. It resists fixed structure, building itself through interruption, rupture and reconfiguration as it unfolds. Following its international recognition at the Edinburgh Festival 2025, it continues with direction by Harry Clayton Wright and an original score by Keir Cooper, produced by Marlborough Productions.

Ultimately, No Apologies! asks how queer and trans identity is made visible and lived through performance, and how theatre can hold both fracture and connection without resolution. It insists on presence — the shared, unrepeatable moment of something happening between performer, sound and audience.

A Heartefact guest performance of Emma Frankland, is produced by Marlborough Productions, supported by the British Council.

No Apologies is commissioned by Marlborough Productions. Supported by Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, The Old Electric, Northumbria University and Arts Council England. No Apologies – The Balkans is supported by the Art in Action programme of the British Council, which aims to build connections between the Western Balkans and the UK through creative and cultural cooperation.

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From April 24 to 27, 2025, the first seminar of the “Voices from the Margins” program was held in Ub, Serbia. The program aims to empower emerging human rights defenders from local communities across the country. The seminar brought together eleven participants from various cities and communities who, over an intensive four-day program, had the opportunity to strengthen their capacities for human rights work through lectures, workshops, and discussions.

Open Call: Beldocs Festival (Kosovo-Serbia Visiting Program)

Heartefact invites young people from Kosovo to apply for a four-day visit to Beldocs – the International Documentary Film Festival taking place in Belgrade. The visit will be organized from May 22 to May 25, 2025 (Thursday to Sunday), during the festival’s official dates of May 21 to May 27 2025.

Call for Project Proposals: Artistic Grants for Implementation of Cultural and Artistic Projects

Jana Milivojević at the residency in France as part of the Playground project

Our young author Jana Milivojević stayed in France, in Pont-a-Mousson, where during the one-week residency she developed and publicly presented her text “We don’t have a camper, and even if we did, we wouldn’t tell you”.

A seminar was held for the new generation of the Human Rights Leadership program

Heartefact, in partnership with the Slovenian 8th of March Institute, from March 27 to 30, 2025, organized a seminar within the project Human Rights Leadership. The goal of the seminar was to empower 18 activists from different parts of Serbia who were selected through a public call to participate in this one-year program.

Nađa Mišković at the residency in Romania as part of the Playground project

Our young playwright Nađa Mišković spent last week in Romania, in Targu Mures, where during her residency at Teatrul Ariel she worked on her text “Will we see the sun?” based on the motifs of the Turkish folk tale “80 eyes”.

Sarajevo successfully hosted the beginning of the Atelier program for young playwrights

Last week, Sarajevo successfully hosted the first module of the Atelier program workshop for young playwrights as part of the new Sarajevo Theater Showcase/New Theater Market project, funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe program.

Sarajevo Theatre Showcase – open call for the inaugural atelier for playwrights

Sarajevo Theatre Showcase announces an open call for the inaugural Atelier for Playwrights. We invite participants from the following countries to apply Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, Slovenia, and Serbia.

The new Sarajevo Theatre Showcase launched in Sarajevo as part of the European project New Theatre Market

Today, a press conference was held in the Sarajevo War Theater (SARTR) on the occasion of the start of the New Theatre Market project, the crown of which is the newly established Sarajevo Theatre Showcase, which will be held in the second week of September in Sarajevo. The leader of the project is the SARTR theater with partners: Heartefact from Serbia, Ulysses Theater from Croatia, Binario Vivo from Italy and Para Film & Theatre from Norway.

The Festivity of Otherness was held in Paris

From January 9 to 11, 2025, the Festivity of Otherness was held in Paris. After the Zagreb version of the festival in November, when three plays created as part of the Eclectic of Otherness project co-financed by the European Union were shown on the theater stage of the Arterarij organization, Heartefact House hosted the Belgrade version of the festival in December last year. Lavoir Moderne Parisien hosted the Parisian version of the festival, rounding off the first three editions of the festival.

Heartefact Fund is looking for the Financial and Administrative Grant Officer to support the implementation of the Culture for Development project in North Macedonia

Heartefact Fund is looking for the Financial and Administrative Grant Officer to support the implementation of the Culture for Development project in North Macedonia. Funded by the Swiss Agency for the Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Culture for Development project will be managed by the Heartefact Fund and is launching in January 2025 with a four-year duration.

Heartefact Fund is looking for the Program Grant Officer to support the implementation of the Culture for Development Project in North Macedonia

Heartefact Fund is looking for the Program Grant Officer to support the implementation of the Culture for Development Project in North Macedonia. Funded by the Swiss Agency for the Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Culture for Development Project will be managed by the Heartefact Fund and is set to launch in January 2025 with a four-year duration.