[The Encyclopedia of the Dead]

Encyclopedia of the Dead — an online theater performance that premiered live in 2021, right in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic — transformed forced digital isolation into raw, electric theater. Streamed in real time, actors scattered across screens confronted mortality in a world already half-dead from disconnection. The pulse of paranoia runs through every scene: defiant monologues in city streets, Bosnian trauma dripping with looming death, a figure lost in shadowy catacombs finally surrendering to the irrational abyss. Almost every character “sees” their own death — trapped, grotesque, puppet-like in a danse macabre, or chasing illusory freedom. The director weaponized the pandemic’s online curse: physical absence becomes aesthetic poetry. Characters “find” each other yet stay eternally apart, screens dividing souls like graves. “When we are dead, we are together in the cemetery, but each in their own sacred bed.” This Pirandello-sharp parable grips you with urgent questions: Are we truly present in life? Does fear of death hide fear of truly living? Amid dystopian fog, spirituality slips away — yet revolt against the inevitable flickers defiantly through the screen. A bold, layered cry from lockdown isolation, reminding us how theater, even virtual, can pierce the heart and make the invisible scream.