How well do we really know the people we live with?

There is one illusion that easily settles into long relationships: after enough years we start to believe we know the other person almost completely. We know how they drink their coffee, what they will order in a restaurant, which story they will tell in company and what face they will make when we say something they do not like. We learn the habits, the reactions and the small rituals, and it starts to seem that there is not much room left for surprise. And then comes a question, a sentence or an unexpected wish, and suddenly we realise how large a part of the other person remains theirs alone.

That thought came back to me while I was thinking about the play "Ljudi odozgo", which we are bringing to the Volkshaus Zürich on 19 September. At the centre of the story are two married couples and a dinner that begins as a perfectly ordinary evening among people who know each other, and then takes a turn nobody expected. One proposal opens a conversation about desires, boundaries, marriage, jealousy and everything we may find far easier to talk about in theory than when it suddenly turns up at our own table.

While we watch the characters negotiate, defend themselves, provoke each other and try to work out what the other one really wants, we are already taking sides inside ourselves. We think about what we would say, where our own boundary would be and how we would react if our partner said something we had never expected from them. Theatre becomes a small laboratory of relationships: without consequences, we can observe a situation we might never want, or dare, to test in real life.

Long relationships are full of assumptions. Over time we stop asking about certain things because we think we already know the answer. In many ways that is a sign of closeness. It is lovely when someone knows us well enough that we do not have to explain who we are every time. But closeness can also become a trap if we forget that people change.

The person we have lived with for ten or twenty years is not entirely the same one we met. Ambitions change, and so do fears, the body, work, friendships and the idea of what we want from the rest of our lives. Some of those changes we go through together, while others stay inside us for a long time. That is why I find it an interesting question how often, in a long relationship, we truly get to know the person beside us again, instead of talking to the image of them we formed many years ago.

"Ljudi odozgo" opens this theme through comedy, which I particularly like. Humour lets us approach questions that, in a serious conversation, might put us on the defensive straight away. When we laugh at someone's jealousy, vanity or insecurity, it becomes easier to recognise our own small versions of the same feelings. On stage will be Sergej Trifunović, Aleksandra Tomić, Aleksej Bjelogrlić and Iva Ilinčić, and the play was directed by Patrik Lazić.

For me, a good comedy is at its most interesting precisely when laughter and discomfort end up very close together. We laugh at a situation, and then realise that the question it raised is not superficial at all. How much freedom do we leave our partner? Do we want to know every single one of their thoughts? What does faithfulness mean to us, and what does trust? And finally, are the boundaries we consider firm really the same once we stop speaking hypothetically?

On 19 September, when we sit down in the Volkshaus and the lights go out, what will interest me most is what the audience takes home after the laughter. Perhaps someone will start a conversation with their partner on the tram that they have never had before. Perhaps they will simply laugh a lot and retell their favourite scene. Either one is a lovely reason to spend an evening at the theatre.

— Evica