The productions nominated for the Grand Prix of the 2025 Nová dráma/New Drama festival
The productions nominated for the Grand Prix of the 2025 Nová dráma/New Drama festival
Alžbeta Vrzgula: Happy End
(directed by Alžbeta Vrzgula)
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Peter Lomnický: The Wheels
(directed by Jozef Vlk)
Slovak Chamber Theatre Martin
Stefan Zweig – Júlia Rázusová et al.: Outcast
(directed by Júlia Rázusová)
The Tears of Janko Borodáč
Pavel Vilikovský – Dušan D. Pařízek: A Dog on the Road
(directed by Dušan D. Pařízek)
Slovak National Theatre
Franz Schubert – Peter Mazalán: Schwanengesang D957/Swan Song
(conceived and directed by Peter Mazalán)
A team of authors: Slovaks Will Revive. An Anthem for the 21st Century
(directed by Adam Dragun, Silvia Vollmann, Júlia Rázusová)
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Jana Wernerová, Tereza Trusinová: A Sad Report from a Sad Country
(directed by Jana Wernerová)
Theatre on the Platform
Maja Zade: Status Quo
(directed by Marián Amsler)
City Theatre Žilina
Dominik Tatarka – Dávid Paška: Tatarka
(directed by Dávid Paška)
Slovak National Theatre
Magdaléna Žiaková, Juraj Mydla, Ema Benčíková, Anka Sedlačková: The Life, Miracles, Ecstasies, and Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin, Sister Juana de la Cruz
(production team: Magdaléna Žiaková, Juraj Mydla, Ema Benčíková, Anka Sedlačková, Jakub Ťapucha, Ivo Dobrovodský, Verona Stepanović, Petra Balíková)
Batyskaf
The Nová dráma/New Drama Festival was established at a time when Europe was “shaken up” by the wave of new drama, when nearly every country that did not have its own festival of contemporary drama immediately sought ways to have one. Several years prior to the establishment of the festival, the Theatre Institute supported new drama through a competition for best drama written in Slovak known as “Drama” (since its first year in 2000 the competition has successfully continued until today). The Institute’s multimedia space Studio 12 was used to nurture the spirit and essence of new drama – premiering new productions, holding lectures, organizing conferences, doing stage readings. In parallel, a print edition of New Drama was started and the concentric circles seemed to require the largest, all-embracing circle to surround them all – a drama festival.
The essence of Nová dráma/New Drama is not just to present existing productions in the main competition programme, but also to stimulate creative writing (through the above mentioned Drama competition). For example, the creative writing workshops run by the Theatre Institute throughout the year in collaboration with Slovak theatres resulted in stage reading sessions. The festival’s image is completed by lectures and workshops held by international experts in new drama and performance art (Hans-Thies Lehmann, Aleks Sierz, Árpád Schilling, Aleksandra Jovićević, Viliam Dočolomanský, Justina Jaworska), playwrights (Gianina Cărbunariu, Maxim Kurochkin, Olya Mukhina, Yelena Isayeva, Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk, Dušan Jovanović, Jibbe Willems, Goran Stefanovski, Dea Loher, Ivan Vyrypajev), as well as by theme exhibitions (set design and new drama, costume art, theatre photography).
Audiences reacted positively when in 2007 the festival programme was extended by a special section called “Focus” which was designed to present European theatre cultures with which Slovakia might cooperate in the future (Romania, Russia, Serbia, Finland, Slovenia, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina). The Focus section offers a truly focused view of international theatre which allows to compare global theatremaking with contemporary Slovak drama and theatre, creates space for discussion and provides the audiences with a taste of international theatre. Usually, Focus is made up of one/two productions, lectures, stage readings of contemporary plays, interviews with playwrights, an exhibition.
One of the advantages of Nová dráma/New is the fact that its essence is the phenomenon of current drama which keeps changing and thus never allows the festival to stagnate and be inactive. Thanks to this, Nová dráma/New Drama is different every year. To program it anew forces the organizers to listen carefully, to follow European trends and to harmonize them with Slovak particularities. The aim is to model a festival that will always surprise and, perhaps most of all, confirm the meaningfulness of presenting and promoting new Slovak drama.
Vladislava Fekete
Director of the Theatre Institute and director of the Nová dráma/New Drama festival
