"Did the two of us make history?" Roko Prč, a waiter, a revolutionary, and later a hotelier, will ask his wife Anđa at some point. The question is, of course, rhetorical; he merely wants to emphasize their inalienable right to shape the past according to their measure and derive from it the privilege of shaping the future. After all, every war—or, more broadly, every conflict—is fought for this reason: to acquire the right to write history. When a militant believer and a combative atheist confront each other, they de jure clash over abstract concepts or vague questions about the origin of man and the world, but de facto, it's all about the right to write history. If the believer prevails, God's will becomes the measure of all things; if the atheist lasts, the only thing that matters is the will of man.

Miljenko Smoje is usually presented as a great Dalmatian chronicler, although he never wanted to be counted among the writers of history. He knew there was quite a crowd there, so instead of dealing with grand truths, he wrote about ordinary people. From this marginal, out-of-the-way, skewed perspective, he managed to penetrate, to the very core, to the ultimate questions and answers that persistently elude those without an ear for nuances or an interest in marginal phenomena and people. That's why Smoje's work is no less alive today than fifty years ago.

His characters are in excellent health, extraordinarily vital, just as narrow-minded, exclusive, and driven by the desire for dominance as they were before. Of course, some stand on the sidelines and have chosen to witness the comedy rather than participate. You will see both groups on the stage tonight, but also in the audience; they will be sitting near you. Perhaps you belong to one of them so that you won't be watching a theater performance but stare into a mirror.