When Bisera goes to see a play, she takes mental notes. She tries to notice when the director deliberately added an element to foreshadow that something will happen. She wonders how the actors changed the play each time they rehearsed, until it was a finished product, ready for her eyes. And then she goes home and tries, in writing, to analyze what she saw and clarify its meaning.

On the surface, these are roughly the steps taken by every theater critic. But this process is the primary way Bisera experiences the world – not just during plays, but in her everyday life, too. She’s curious “how someone got to an idea I like, because I would like to have an idea like that one day.” In pursuit of these ideas, Bisera acts, directs, writes, and does a lot of chatting.

While a lot of 16-year-olds (read: Bobo in 2014) might not know a lot about cultural events happening around them, you can find Bisera at just about every performance in Skopje. She hopped on our Zoom call shortly after the year-end concert by her friends, students at Skopje’s music high school. She finds out about everything that’s happening because she’s quick to make friends: she starts conversations on the bus or at concerts in the park, and she goes to places where she knows she’ll find good conversations. (“You go to a theater to find lovers of drama. You go to the Youth Cultural Center to find musicians. You go to the debate club to find debaters.”)

After she fills up her vault of ideas, Bisera returns home and starts thinking. She’s got three journals: one for reviews/critics, another for life thoughts, and a third for drawings. Sometimes she’ll try to create something original, like some of the playwrights she appreciates the most. So far, she hasn’t been thrilled with her work. (A play she wrote was, in her words, “experimental” and “badly planned”). But she continues to develop – at least by consuming every theater, art and music performance in and around Skopje – and keeps striving towards an original idea.

I asked her what field she sees herself in when she grows up. She says maybe theater, but she isn’t happy with the stuff she’s written so far. Maybe acting, but she’d like to create something new, rather than reinterpret somebody’s work. Movie criticism? Law? She’s not sure, and she doesn’t have to be. She has two whole years at UWC, where she intends to study literature, theater, and – if they really insist on it – math. 

Bisera will be the first Macedonian student at UWC Waterford Kamhlaba in Eswatini, a small country in the south of the African continent. Because the College is in the Southern Hemisphere, classes start in January, which gives Bisera an entire semester to watch shows and listen to concerts. After that, she’ll fly to Mbabane for one truly original experience.

July, 2023
Bobo Stankovikj