In Tea Alagić’s Zero Hour, time and place don’t really matter. Cities, towns, train stations, and apartments are layered on top of each other. Years fast-forward and rewind in front of our eyes. Actors exit and enter in minimal costume changes to portray an array of vastly different characters. Despite the shifting nature of scene and setting, the play clings to one message that reverberates strongly — war is a destructive, life-changing force. 

Zero Hour, written and directed by Alagić, an acclaimed director, actor, playwright, producer, and professor of drama at The New School’s College of Performing Arts (CoPA), follows the journey of a young woman named Dea as war breaks out in her home country, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The play is based on Alagić’s real life, and weaves together three storylines — Dea fleeing the war, interviews between an older Dea and her mother after the war has ended, and current-day Dea editing her son Rocco’s essay about Dea’s mother’s life in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The multi-temporal quality of the production gives a breadth of opportunities for intergenerational dynamics to unfurl. We see Dea ask the same questions of her mother that Rocco asks of her: how did you do it? Were you scared? As answers are passed down through generations, we see how stories shift, pain lingers, and choices to leave or stay are reckoned with.

Zero Hour began as Alagić’s thesis project at Yale School of Drama in 2007. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she revisited the project and realized she had more to say. Informed by her own experience of motherhood, she wrote in the storyline involving Dea’s son, Rocco. This addition set the tone for the show’s ever-evolving nature, and consequently, the process of putting on this production of Zero Hour at CoPA was deeply collaborative. “[New School Students] are able to improvise very fast, they’re able to suggest a lot,” Alagić said.

On stage, this collaboration was obvious — the supporting cast buoyed the story, greasing the wheels of the complex, emotional central storyline with humor and brevity. 

The production faced a significant hiccup days before opening night — Kari Ergmann, originally supposed to play the role of Mama, contracted COVID-19, and Leslie Martinez, Student Assistant Director, filled in. She took to the stage with a red notebook containing the script, but aside from the extra prop, she fell into the role seamlessly. Martinez gave a striking performance, imbued with heart, made more impressive by the impromptu switch. “Life happens,” Alagić said. 

As with many New School productions, the production design was a shining aspect of the show. In scenes between Dea and her mother — portraying the 2006 interviews that were the real-life basis of the show — Dea’s mother’s face is projected larger than life onto the stage. This technical trick succeeds in flattening time and layering it with place and person in order to bring the core aspects of the narrative forward — namely, the love and tension between a mother and daughter, separated by war and choice. 

Dea and her mother dip in and out of the narrative, bouncing between 1990s Bosnia and Herzegovina and Dea’s home in modern-day New York City, trailing throughout Europe as Dea becomes a refugee of war, and interviews that take place in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. These interviews take place off the stage, unstuck from place and time, with minimal lighting — the sole focus is Dea and her mother’s words. The instability of each character’s role reflects the fractured identity Dea is left to contend with as a refugee. Occasionally, the scenes shift too quickly to sit with the feelings brought up by the environment or the point in time. However, this structural choice conveys a key message. “[War] can happen anywhere,” Alagić said — it’s difficult to reconcile your idea of home with your idea of a war-torn place.

The current political climate of the United States serves as an amplifying backdrop to this weekend’s production of Zero Hour. The story of refugees, borders, violent war, and a country divided in two feels close to home — and that’s exactly the intention. As Dea reminds her son Rocco at the end of the play, although this war happened somewhere else to other people, it doesn’t mean it can’t happen here, to you.

Not only can war happen anywhere, but it also permeates every aspect of your life. As Dea travels from train station floors in Slovenia and Salzburg to a cramped apartment in Munich, to life as a mother in New York City, the effects of war remain in her body and life. Memories of war bleed into her relationship with her son, her relationship with her mother, and her relationship with the city. Zero Hour reminds the audience that whether you leave or stay, war isn’t something that’s left behind.