From war-torn Croatia to life in Ireland – as a lap dancer

Arts Week with Judy Murphy – judymurpy@ctribune.ie

A one-woman show about a young woman who left her life in war-torn Croatia and ended up working as a lap dancer in a Dublin club will be staged at the Town Hall studio space on September 29 and October 1 as part of the Galway Theatre Festival.

Broken Promised Land is written and performed by Mirjana Rendulic, and directed by NUIG drama graduate Aoife Spillane-Hinks. Having already been staged in Dublin and Limerick as well as at this year’s Electric Picnic, it comes highly recommended, with the Sunday Times having described it as ‘captivating’ and awarding it a four-star review.

The play dispels easy assumptions about exotic dancers, she says in her perfect English, adding, “there is so much in it that it’s hard to summarise”.

Croatian born Mirjana has been living in Ireland for 10 years, having never really intended to come to this country. Growing up in Zagreb, she was heavily influenced by American TV programmes such as Beverly Hills … and dreamed of moving to the USA.

Zagreb at the time was part of former Yugoslavia, which was communist, but not communist in the closed way that Russia experienced it. Its citizens were exposed to American television and she was seduced by it.

But then Yugoslavia was broken up into individual states and after that, in the early 1990s came the Balkans War that ravaged Croatia.

There weren’t many opportunities for people during that time, she says.

Stefica, the character in Broken Promised Land is based on Mirjana’s own story, although the show is not entirely autobiographical, the author explains. Stefica is working in a shop when she replies to a newspaper ad in a bid to improve her lot.

As a result, she ends up moving to Italy, Japan and finally to Ireland, working as an exotic dancer, as indeed did Mirjana. It seems like a strange journey, not least on a geographical level.

Mirjana laughs as she agrees. “Italy was easy because it is next door to Croatia. And Japan was random but that was where the demand for lap dancers was at the time – it was booming there, she says. She came to Ireland via tourists she had met in Zagreb.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.