The Fall of Masada
Is it worth giving one’s life for an idea, no matter how much it is connected to national, patriotic, revolutionary or any other ideological honor? That is the central question posed by this unusual collage – drama, composed of six dramatic images from different historical eras in which an act of suicide took place. Opening these questions already in the first scene, which deals with the famous heroic mass suicide committed by the Jews besieged in the legendary fortress of Masada, so that no one fell alive into the hands of the Romans, the drama begins with a recitation of ancient tragedies, and continues with a trivialization of the concept of the ancient sublime. This is followed by a scene of mass suicide of a group of commies from Macedonian history, in which all but one committed suicide so as not to fall alive into the hands of the Ottomans. The next scene is a collective suicide of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun and his closest associates. As the scenes continue into modern times, the decline of the ideal of heroic suicide and its trivialization is noticeable: today people kill themselves for women and money, but not for the nation, the state and the revolution. Even when terrorists hijack a plane in one scene, they are greeted by an unexpected story in which the victims are bigger terrorists than the hijackers themselves. In that sense, “The Fall of Masada” is a drama about the decline of morality and “sublime and heroic” values from ancient times to the present day, when everything is reduced to the trivialization of reality and values. – Venko Andonovski, author