A play

By Adnan Lugonić

Adnan Lugonić’s play The Last Piano Lesson is an intimate story about the relationship between two women who come from different, contrasting worlds—one inhabited by those who, protected and distanced from harsh realities, live in denial; the other belonging to marginalized individuals who, despite carrying the burden of personal trauma, persist in their struggle for a dignified and peaceful life.

Although these worlds stand in opposition, Lugonić avoids simple polarization. Instead, he crafts fully realized, delicately nuanced female characters between whom closeness and trust develop—an honest relationship that transcends (or attempts to transcend) the fact that the protagonists, shaped by different circumstances, carry different life experiences.

With subtlety and restraint, the author skillfully constructs a chamber drama, constantly oscillating between quiet tension and direct emotional expression, culminating in a powerful moment in which the characters are stripped bare in their vulnerability.

At the same time, this duodrama—through the portrayal of an apparently simple everyday situation confined spatially within the walls of a German apartment and temporally within a single piano lesson—raises questions that resonate with contemporary global crises: issues of identity and belonging, solidarity, attitudes toward Nazism, as well as the possibility of finding refuge and beginning a new life after war.

Tamara Baračkov, Dramaturg