CROATIA / 2022
Tomislav Zajec – The Vanishing
This text excerpt was proposed by the Croatian National Theatre to the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
Through several narrative lines that intertwine with each other in a non-linear arrangement of time, in The Vanishing we are gradually revealing the truth about the terrible crime that is committed against Marko, a six-year-old hearing-impaired boy.
In this play Tomislav Zajec does not console us and does not seduce us with sentiment, he does not moralise. With his dramatic score he invites both individuals and the wider social community to break the wall of silence.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYPORTUGAL / 2022
Miguel Castro Caldas – The Frailty of Togetherness
This text excerpt proposed by São Luiz Teatro Municipal was selected by the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
The Frailty of Togetherness stems from a desire to discuss – dialogically - the most pressing and complex challenges Europe and the world is facing today: the (re)rise of populism and authoritarian models. By participating in this current dialogue, this play proposes to look at key concepts such as democracy, liberalism, capitalism and marriage. What do they mean? Do they still matter today?
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYSLOVENIA / 2023
Milan Ramšak Marković – A Rainy Day in Gurlitsch
This text excerpt proposed by Prešernovo Gledališče Kranj was selected by the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
A Rainy Day in Gurlitsch is inspired by a wish to play with road-movie dramaturgy in theatre. Beginning as a benign dialogue play showing a dinner party in a charming middle-class home, we slowly turn to the central theme of the play: a fragmented trip through a traumatic feeling of loss that we recognise as common in today’s Western liberal culture.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYSLOVAKIA / 2021
Tereza Trusinová – Right to Die
This text excerpt was proposed by the Slovak National Drama Theatre to the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
Right to Die examines the right to voluntary death in three independent cases - a young Mongolian prostitute in Japan, a man who drunkenly killed his young child and, even after serving his prison sentence, decided to commit jingoistic suicide by slowly reducing his food intake (sallekhana), and finally, a lonely 83-year-old woman who decides to commit suicide by gas inhalation.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLY
CZECH REPUBLIC / 2023
Marie Nováková and Tomáš Loužný – White Caribou
This text excerpt was proposed by the National Theatre Prague to the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
Eva and David, a wealthy Czech couple, arrive at a luxury hunting lodge in northern Canada for their annual trophy-hunting holiday. This year, they bring their children, introducing them to the hunting lifestyle. The family is attended to by a discreet Inuit maid, responsible for satisfying their high demands impeccably.
White Caribou serves as a generational response to climate grief. It explores the despair one can feel and the imperative to seek solutions and actively engage.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYFRANCE / 2018
Mariette Navarro – Zone à étendre
The play was proposed by La Mousson d’été / France for the ETC Drama Committee
We first follow a group of people walking side by side along a forest path. They get to know each other as they progress through the forest and share pieces of their history, their convictions, their doubts and hopes, while the forest revives feelings buried within them in an immemorial relationship to legends and magic. All these people have a different reason for joining the march, but that they are all doing it to take a step aside from the power in place, a power they no longer identify with or they no longer want to support. They are, in fact, on their way to a clearing where a community they wish to join has been established.
Download an overview of the play and the author below, including an extract in English and the full play in the original language.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYMONTENEGRO / 2023
Rajko Radulović – Domaš at Crossroads
This text excerpt was proposed by Royal Theatre 'Zetski Dom' to the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
Domaš at Crossroads is a documentary fiction inspired by the real events that played out in the wake of the Yugoslav War, specifically concerning Montenegrin resistance and opposition to the deployment of the Montenegrin troops which participated in the Siege of Dubrovnik in 1991.
Domaš becomes a political scapegoat after leading an anti-war protest with a song. He finds himself harassed by the government and the police, as well as his neighbours and the ordinary people of his hometown, while abandoned by his fellow protesters and friends.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYTHE NETHERLANDS / 2022
Magne van den Berg – Snackbar
This text excerpt proposed by De Toneelmakerij was selected by the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
Snackbar (translation: Cafeteria) deals with the harsh realities of child sexual abuse and incest. This is a profound and disconcerting play about the courage it takes to stand up for yourself and others. More than focussing on the physical horrors of sexual abuse, the play investigates the horror of silence and celebrates the strength of those who dare to break it.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYCYPRUS / 2020
Antonis Georgiou - In Critical Condition
The play was proposed by Cyprus Theatre Organisation (THOC) for the ETC Drama Committee
Written in the contemporary Cypriot dialect, Antonis Georgiou’s play is a sequence of twentytwo monologues and twelve multi-character scenes, unfolding outside a hospital intensive care unit. Five characters are going through emotions of expectation and an underlying absence, as two of their loved ones are confined in the ICU beds in critical condition. One of them is Paris’s mother, Zoe, while Chrystalla and her two sons (Christos and Andreas) and Elena, are worried about Marios, their son, brother, and partner. The space of the hospital gradually transforms into a rink on which an endless battle takes place, a space where suspended sorrow reveals the characters’ exposure to the fragility of existence. Each one of them fights their own struggle, experiencing unexpected circumstances and manifesting behaviours revealing their own vulnerability. Five micro-stories within a familiar, everyday environment; with death as the epicentre.
Download an overview of the play and the author below, including an extract in English and the full play in the original language.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYSPAIN / 2023
Jokin Oregi – Where are the Children?
This text excerpt was proposed by Teatro Arriaga to the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
In Where are the Children? we find ourselves facing a story that narrates an unusual event – the death of an eight-year-old girl. The evidence points to suicide as the cause of death. In this spatial-temporal mosaic what appears to be a story centred around an absent girl becomes a choral portrait of the adults living in relation to the children in the play.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYUNITED KINGDOM / 2022
Teunkie Van Der Sluijs – Tikkun Olam
This text excerpt was proposed by Young Vic to the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
Black, Jewish, and chronically online: influencer LEAH, twenty-something, has a large following and is a savvy voice in politics and current events. But she is fiercely guarded about her personal life, which she protects from her social media activities. That becomes complicated when she’s thrown into the centre of a media storm in British politics between advocates and opponents of a proposed Holocaust memorial near London's Houses of Parliament.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYITALY / 2022
Nalini Vidoolah Mootoosamy – Lost&Found
This text excerpt proposed by PAV was selected by the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
Lost&Found is a play on the right to freedom of movement. A right that often becomes a privilege based on “who we are” and “where we come from”. On one side, we follow the story of two tourists (A and B) who, thanks to the privilege of their European passports, can move more freely in non-European countries and visit places they consider to be their “dream places”. On the other hand, we witness the misadventures of X, a migrant without the right documents, to reach and stay in his “dream place”: the European fortress.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYSLOVAKIA / 2001
Roman Polàk – Scenes from the Life of Director (Ingmar Bergman)
The play was proposed by Slovak National Drama Theatre / Slovakia for the ETC Drama Committee
Ingmar Bergman is one of the most important and influential theatre and film directors of the twentieth century. Drawing not only on his own memoirs and scripts, but also on the recollections of his collaborators, the play captures him directing a theatrical production. The story touches on the very essence of artistic work and theatre, the nature of the director's profession, and his efforts to exorcise his own demons, while trying to name the demons of the whole society. The play intertwines the director's personal problems with his parents, partners and collaborators with the problems of artistic work in the creation of a theatrical work.
Scenes from the life of the director (Ingmar Bergman) reflect, through Bergman's life, the profession of the director, or the artist as such - the motives that lead one to this profession, the relationship with the actors, the search for the meaning of theatre, the relationship between creation and life, etc.
Download an overview of the play and the author below, including an extract in English and the full play in the original language.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYBULGARIA / 2023
Anna Petrova – Everyone Neighed After His Neighbor’s Wife
This text excerpt was proposed by the Theatre and Music Centre Kardjali to the ETC Drama Committee in 2024.
Everyone Neighed After His Neighbor’s Wife is a bittersweet symphony with unexpected twists and turns. Every attempt by the heroes to achieve intimacy is destroyed with sarcasm. A clash between The Man and The Woman rife with love and power. They both hurt each other to hide their vulnerability. They fight with irony and sarcasm, but there are no winners in this war.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYSLOVENIA / 2019
Simona Hamer – Everything OK
The text proposed by Slovensko Narodno Gledalisce Nova Gorica / Slovenia was selected by the ETC Drama Committee in 2022
Everything OK, by Slovenian playwright Simona Hamer, explores the topics of (un)employment, (im)migration, discrimination and racism, patriarchy, mental health, ageism, and loneliness through three intertwined storylines. The author explains: “For me, the play Everything OK is an x-ray of all the broken bones of today’s society and an invitation to recovery.”
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLY
