Jeton Neziraj has clear views about the role of drama. “Theatre should be on the side of those who have no power, on the side of victims, on the side of minorities,” he says. Arguably Kosovo’s leading playwright, he attacks his country’s political issues head-on. His 2018 play The Hypocrites, or The English Patient, savaged the dire state of the healthcare system and was inspired by a bribery scandal. He published one of his plays – in which Serbia and Kosovo fight it out for the EU spot vacated by the UK – under the pseudonym “a Kosovar cynic”. His 2017 play, 55 Shades of Gay, which played at New York’s LaMaMa theatre this year, dealt with the bureaucratic and social fallout when a gay couple register to marry in a Kosovar town. His new play, Department of Dreams, an Orwellian comedy set in an autocracy, is currently at the City Garage theatre in Los Angeles. A fable-like drama set in a world where people are obliged to deposit their dreams in a large state-controlled bank and “would-be dictators want to control all aspects of people’s lives”, the play is applicable to more countries than just Kosovo.

Neziraj is dizzyingly prolific – he has written more than 25 plays – and his work has been performed all around Europe, though not yet in the UK. The plays are raucous, irreverent and absurdist. They invoke Ibsen, Molière and Kafka, while raging against corruption and injustice, forcing the audience to confront the wounds of a country that only gained its independence in 2008, and where the war and its aftermath are still being processed.

Neziraj studied playwriting in the 90s, though it wasn’t possible to see much theatre at the time as state institutions were under Serbian control. In 2002 he helped set up the production company Qendra Multimedia. It started out producing children’s theatre but soon expanded its remit to include adult plays and a literature festival, Polip, to promote cultural exchange between Serbia and Kosovo. This year they launched a graphic-novel festival.

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From 2008 to 2011 Neziraj was the artistic director of the National Theatre of Kosovo. He believes his contract wasn’t renewed because of his anti-nationalist stance and his unwillingness to let the theatre be used as a tool of the authorities. This prompted a shift in his writing: he decided to make work dealing directly with the country’s most pressing political issues. “In Kosovo,” he explains, “there are issues that we, as artists, have to confront on stage and as part of the public discourse.” The first play he wrote in this vein was Yue Madelaine Yue, about the experience of the Roma in Kosovo. He also wanted to make work that could be staged internationally and compete on the European theatre market, to tell Kosovo stories in universal terms, be it through retooling Ibsen or employing international composers and designers to address the inadequate training and support of local artists.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘If we make one compromise, we will be pressured to make more’ … Jeton Neziraj. Photograph: Armend Nimani/AFP via Getty Images

Neziraj is surprisingly laid-back for someone so busy, and behind his warmth lies a dry sense of humour. But he believes wholly in theatre’s importance. “We try to determine what is the story that needs to be told now, that cannot wait for next year. We won’t compromise on the content. This is difficult but necessary. We know if we make one compromise, we will be pressured to make more compromises.”

It is fair to say this approach is not appreciated by everyone. His company have had people storming the stage and defacing their posters. They’ve angered war veterans and there have been threats. Several of his premieres have required a police presence. “Beyond the fear we feel from time to time, I think this is excellent grounds for theatre,” he says. He believes that “theatre cannot and should not try to accommodate the interests of every group.” If his work upsets fascists, nationalists and homophobes, he’s fine with that.

His latest – and perhaps most moving – play, In Five Seasons: An Enemy of the People, opened at the National Theatre (his work falls in and out of favour there depending on who’s in charge). The play tackles the unchecked illegal construction that has seen the city of Pristina grow rapidly in the years after the war. When one architect, Rexhep Luci, made an attempt to instil order, he was killed. After that, says Neziraj, “no one dared confront the issue”. Ibsen’s Dr Stockmann, the man who takes a stand, at great personal and professional cost, by exposing the contamination of the spa water in his town in An Enemy of the People, felt like an obvious parallel. Like many of his plays, the production was directed by Neziraj’s wife, Blerta, one of the country’s leading directors. They have a good working relationship, he says, though as opening night approaches, things can become tense as “discussions move from the theatre to the dinner table”.

Kosovo is the youngest country in Europe, though its statehood is not recognised by all countries (Spain, Russia and, of course, Serbia are among the countries that do not), which means obtaining visas is laborious and financially prohibitive – or, as Neziraj puts it: “Hell, hell, hell.” This makes touring difficult and inevitably results in cultural isolation. But he won’t let that deter him. Theatre, he says, is a vital tool of opposition. “It should challenge the official discourse that’s promoted by the government and the media. Theatre has that potential.”