Then there is the architect’s daughter (played with aching restraint by Verona Koxha), a UN interpreter who returned from a refugee camp in Macedonia. She sees her father struggle, then unravel. In one unforgettable scene, Meti hands her a package for her father; inside it, a revolver. “A gift,” he says. And you know exactly what’s coming.

The murder isn’t symbolic. It happened.

On September 11, 2000, after leading a three-day workshop about his urban plan, Luci was gunned down, shot six times in the back outside his apartment. No arrests were ever made. UNMIK’s police detained three men. But no one was charged. The case faded from the headlines.

They named a street after him. They named a construction regulation after him and then they moved on. But the city didn’t. The city paid the price.

Today, Prishtina continues to drown in concrete. According to data from the municipality, millions of square meters of construction permits are issued annually. Air quality levels regularly rank among the worst in Europe, exacerbated by overbuilding, traffic and lack of regulation. Deaths on construction sites remain alarmingly high, as safety rules are flaunted or ignored. And still, the skyline rises. But with it rises a question: for whom?

This was the question we posed when I, on behalf of the Atlas Institute — an organization promoting sustainable development and environmental change — joined Neziraj’s team to provide the data: How many people had died on construction sites since the war? What was the environmental toll of unchecked urban growth? How many green spaces had been erased? The numbers were stark. But they weren’t enough. It took theatre to bring them to life.

The data on illegal buildings, environmental degradation, and their impact on public health were woven into the play, not as abstract statistics, but as narrative turning points. They helped illustrate what happened to Prishtina after the architect was gunned down: a city consumed by lawlessness, stripped of planning and suffocating under cement.

Neziraj took those statistics and turned them into characters and into scenes. Into moral dilemmas that unfold on stage like a court trial with no judge. The architect becomes a lone figure, fighting against a system too entangled to fight back. One of the most haunting lines comes during a televised interview scene, censored by the UN official, distorted by Meti and the media. “What’s the difference between the UN and the mafia?” Luci asks. “The mafia is better organized.”

Blerta Neziraj, the play’s director, leads a politically charged production, guiding the actors through a process that is half-play, half-public inquiry. The cast doesn’t just act; they testify. They speak not just as performers, but as citizens. In the final moments, one actor breaks character and says, “Rexhep Luci was the dam. When they killed him, the flood began.” That flood, he says, is still rising.

This is what makes “Prishtina: The Premeditated Killing of a Dream” more than art. It’s an autopsy. Of a man, a city and a system. It doesn’t ask who pulled the trigger. It asks who profited.

It’s easy to think of Luci as a martyr now. But what the play reveals is that he was not trying to be one. He was a man doing his job. A professional trying to restore order to the chaos. He might have believed, perhaps naively, that the institutions, local and international, would back him. That the people would rally to his side.

They didn’t.

Because cowardice comes in many forms: the silence of those who knew, the excuses of those who governed, the rationalizations of those who benefited. And yes, even the pragmatism of those of us who, for too long, filed these stories as policy cases instead of human tragedies.

But there is one thing theatre can do that no memo or white paper can: it can make us feel again. And in feeling, perhaps begin to see that Prishtina isn’t just overbuilt; it’s been betrayed. Unless we start telling the truth, not just on stage, but in the streets and in our policies, we risk repeating the same script, one where courage is punished and concrete wins.

Twenty-five years after Luci’s unsolved murder, if “Prishtina: The Premeditated Killing of a Dream” succeeds in anything, it’s this: it refuses to let us forget what was lost. And maybe, just maybe, it can help us find the courage to finish what he started.

Editors’ note: Prishtina: The Premeditated Killing of a Dream” will premiere on May 23, 2025 at ODA Theater.

Feature image: Agron Demi / K2.0.

The murder of a dream: Prishtina’s lost vision

How a play exposes the cost of corruption and concrete.

Agron Demi

The murder of a dream: Prishtina’s lost vision

How a play exposes the cost of corruption and concrete.

Agron Demi