THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE

Form: Theatre
Year: 2024–2025
Roles: ProducingDirectingPlaywritingActingInternational collaboration
Collaborators: Netzwerk Münchner Theatertexter*innen (NMT), under Theresa Seraphin and Denijen Pauljević
Status: Reading, documentary presentation and public talk, 1 July 2026 — seeking co-producers and touring partners

THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE is a collective, multilingual writing and performance project. The play is performed in English, German, Serbo-Croatian, Ekegusii and Kiswahili, centering the agency and voice of the writers' background.

This play features three key players with different perspectives. Stevan, a former Yugoslav photographer with a mysterious 'Camera Absurda'; Pete, an ambitious middle-class Kenyan with big dreams to chase; and Kathi, a German investor with a white guilt complex to heal.

All three characters want to use the camera to produce the preferred image of themselves. But in doing so, the result is a true and unwanted mirror. Through the characters' journeys, key themes of international solidarity, colonial continuities and neo-colonial questions are explored in their complexity without easy resolutions.

A performer dances in front of a backlit screen, her shadow thrown large across it, beside the Camera Absurda on its stand

Two performers in hats face each other under a spotlight, one pointing as she speaks

Three performers on stage mid-scene: a man in a waistcoat and two women, one laughing, one gesturing in surprise

Black-and-white photograph of a performer standing among a packed audience, one hand raised as she speaks

Photographs — Tobias Zangl

Workshop

Englisch, meine Muttersprache!

This workshop explores language, identity, and creative expression in writing and performance development. Using excerpts from THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE, we will reflect on multilingualism, the "ownership" of language, and belonging, and test our own methods through discussion.

Open to all artists, writers, and anyone interested in playing with language.

Open for programming within language seminars, learning institutions and festival workshops.

Elsewhere

Reviews

“…through witty and clever adaptations and surprisingly moving twists, the big questions [emerge] — questions that the creative collective of Seraphin, Gisemba, and Pauljević has dared to tackle in their playful dialogue, and which are portrayed on stage with touching realism by their three very different characters, Pete, Kathi, and Stevan. (…) A valuable, lasting experience.”
— Literaturportal Bayern

“It's in this chasm that the universality of the human experience comes to light. We get to reflect how the way we frame each other dictates our differences, and the kind of future we can build. In this space THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE is able to make political points without slipping into didacticism — interrogating us rather than delivering a lecture.”
— Tony Ogwa, Sinema Focus

All works

Beneath the Surface