The last scene of the play "Lonely Planet" takes place in front of the main entrance of the Belgrade theater Atelja 212, near a busy street.
While the passing trolleys and cars make noise, the authors of the play, as well as the actors, toast with brandy with seven spectators.
Due to the ban on the gathering of more than ten people indoors and outdoors, only seven people could watch the performance.
"I am under the impression, I will need time to process myself, I feel as if my stomach has tied up," says Nikola Marković, one of the spectators.
Others in the audience, some even in tears, applauded the authors for a long time.
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What is the play about?
"Lonely Planet" is performed around and in the theater building, deliberately avoiding the classical stage space, i.e. the stage itself.
The artists lead the audience members, who are at a distance all the time and with masks on their faces, through a tourist tour through the landscapes and roads of the transformed future that awaits us after the "threat that has come to stay" - the corona virus pandemic.
"In addition to the desire to say something related to all this, we wanted to show that the theater can work even in these circumstances," Maja Pelević, the author and one of the performers, a playwright, told the BBC in Serbian.
Loneliness or how the virus brought us back together
"Even before the pandemic, we were lonely and I think that in some bizarre way we have returned to togetherness," says Pelević.
She claims that she has a much greater need to really communicate honestly, regardless of the fact that she was isolated and saw fewer people.
"That's how this play came about," she says.
It seems to her that this virus with isolation has brought us closer than we were before.
"I didn't have to communicate with people who didn't interest me at all, I got rid of superficial communications and something sincere and high-quality and meaningful was born from that," says Pelević.
Art can also be created during a pandemic
Theaters were the first to close their doors at the beginning of the pandemic, due to the impossibility of gathering large numbers of people in public closed spaces.
Social distancing should not and should not mean the abolition of the public sphere, as well as the practice of performance, notes Pelević.
Olga Dimitrijević, one of the authors of the play, points out some, as she says, illogicalities in public life during the pandemic.
"When we talk about why the theater doesn't work and everything else does - that's an illogicality within the system," she says.
He adds that during the performance of the play they follow all regulations and believes that "all theater companies will reorient their artistic decisions in that direction".
One of the authors is Dimitrije Kokanov, who states that they will continue to play for seven people, if the situation does not change in the coming period.
"If a provision is made that even fewer people can gather in one place, we will play for one person," says Kokanov.
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Theater in the "new normal"
Kokanov says that it is also possible to play Shakespeare's entire opera with people standing separately and at a distance of two meters.
However, it must be a decision for poetic reasons, not for pandemic reasons, he claims.
"If it was a classic play, you would have to re-direct it and it can be done, but it must be the initial need of the author and the creator, not the need of the pandemic," explains Kokanov.
Olga Dimitrijević believes that it is not possible to talk about a new normality, "as if everything was fine before".
"The world can't be normal with this amount of social inequality, destruction of the planet, hatred of minorities," she says.
He adds that the theater has been struggling with budget cuts for years, so there is a fear that with the "new normal" it will be even easier to declare itself unprofitable.
Dimitrijević states that until we live with the virus or until it becomes less dangerous, theater companies, especially those in Serbia, will have to fight for budgets and jobs.
"Social aid or humanitarian aid in the form of minimum wage will not solve any problem, and after all, these are our jobs - we have to protect them," she concludes.
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