SLOVENIA / 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 ONLYUKRAINE / 2021
Evangelos Kosmidis – Alaska
The text proposed by Dakh Theatre – Centre of Contemporary Arts / Ukraine was selected by the ETC Drama Committee in 2022
Alaska, by Greek stage director and author Evangelos Kosmidis, is a play and work in progress performance created as part of Dakh Theatre/Gogolfest’s Marathon of International Residencies in Mariupol (Ukraine) in 2021. While the play’s idea originated in Greece, it is only after arriving in Mariupol that the author managed to realise it, through research, interviews and devising work with his actors, members of the first theatre school-studio of Mariupol. While written before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mariupol has been a city marked by war, near the front zone since 2014.
The play includes real thoughts and comments from the children and teenagers who faced the war, who went through all the horror, the children who lost their relatives and lost the opportunity to see them. Their monologues about love, friendship, loneliness, war… are combined with texts by Roland Bart, John Green, Sibylle Berg, Elise Wilk, Jorge Bucay, Maria Polidouri, Kostas Kariotakis, Pinelopi Delta and Evangelos Kosmidis himself. The author adds: “Alaska can be a message of peace and a warning to the world”.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYGERMANY / 2021
Patty Kim Hamilton – Sex Play
The text proposed by Deutsches Theater Berlin / Germany was selected by the ETC Drama Committee in 2021
Patty Kim Hamilton’s SEX PLAY portrays with talent the increasingly complicated topics of human sexuality and gender identities, as well as the stress, frustration and sometimes violence these topics carry. Its contemporary composition and structure give a voice to an undefined number of characters in a series of situations and conversations, in which the author combines a very delicate balance between poetry and realistic, humorous writing, with organic and believable dialogues.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYCZECH REPUBLIC / 2021
Ondřej Novotný – The Father Watches Over the Daughter
The text proposed by National Theatre Prague / Czech Republic was selected by the ETC Drama Committee in 2021
Ondřej Novotný‘s Father Looks After Daughter is a play built around a young father taking his pre-school daughter for a walk in a park and to the playground. The play tackles intergenerational dialogue, with dynamic situations and very natural interactions between the different characters. The diversity of those characters and the polyphonic structure of the play contribute to creating a particular atmosphere, while the insertion of the main protagonist’s lines brings a subtle and well-mastered touch of poetry.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYTHE NETHERLANDS / 2021
Casper Vanderputte – Sweet Sixteen
The play proposed by de Toneelmakerij / The Netherlands was selected by the ETC Drama Committee in 2021
Casper Vanderputte's Sweet Sixteen is a powerful play on a most relevant and difficult subject, suicide at a young age. It is convincing in concept, structure and language, with well-written dialogues. It speaks from a unique perspective, thus creating a magical, but still vivid story-world. It has been written for a young audience as a classroom play but can certainly be adapted to different settings and captivate adult audiences as well.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYMALTA / 2022
Simone Spiteri – Wolf/Sheep
The play is part of the Pipelines project, and was created in collaboration with Teatru Malta
The fuel industry is fueled by corruption, corruption fuels the fuel company. Corruption fuels us all and we fuel it back. Even if we don't think we do, or refuse to accept that we do. Wolf/Sheep is a play about this vicious cycle: a massive iceberg, not its tip ... we all know who those people up there are, but its base is Us. You. Me. And how we all, by doing nothing or thinking there is nothing to do, have allowed these things to happen. Things of all sorts: the trivial, the inconsequential, but the horrific too.
Malta loves a nationwide blackout. Despite very recent state-of-the-art new fuel storage systems. But lack of actual light every now and then is not the only thing keeping us in the dark. Allegorical, satirical, political ... the play evaluates, observes and pushes the limits of a country (perhaps a world?) that can be as surreal as it is confused, noisy, passive, passionate and chaotic. Ultimately, we are all anesthetized, by the wolf, maybe? But the real question is what kind of fuel is our new opium and who are the real wolves and the real sheep?
The play will premiere at Teatru Malta in the season 2022/2023.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYALBANIA / 2021
Elsa Demo – Grayish Green Into Black
The play is part of the Pipelines project, and was created in collaboration with the National Theatre of Albania
One winter day, an oil well bursts, in the triangle between the houses, the village cemetery and the ghost cinema. The house, the cemetery, the cinema, come as witnesses of a time that is older than the one the contemporary family lives in. Thus times join the wings, the past echoes the present, places echo people to say that the need for survival controls and challenges the spiritual needs within people of same kin, who are also the miniature of a polarized society.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYAUSTRIA / 2022
Magdalena Schrefel – What ignites, what burns
The play is part of the Pipelines project, and was created in collaboration with Schauspielhaus Graz
In the subsoil of Europe, a branched circulatory system of crude oil is relaxing. Pipelines run through the continent like lifelines and fuel our hunger for energy. Despite all efforts, global oil production has increased continuously over the past fifty years. Nothing, it seems, can stop the catastrophic cycle.
"What ignites, what burns" is about two young women who try anyway. The Kleist Prize winner Magdalena Schrefel has taken on the Austrian part and designed a theatrical road movie along the Adria-Vienna pipeline. It shows the journey of its two heroines across Austria and the endless expanses of the Internet and describes their encounters with climate activists, various eccentric figures of the fossil age and their radicalization: How can narrative means blow up a pipeline?
The play premiered in Schauspielhaus Graz in January 2022, staged by German director Marie Bues.
DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLYAUSTRIA / 2019
Svenja Viola Bungarten – Garland
The play was proposed by Schauspielhaus Graz / Austria for the ETC Drama Committee
It could be Mars. An area outside Madrid. The Mojave Desert. Or the Sahara. But let's not forget where we are. We are in Germany. In America near Penig, district of Central Saxony, to be precise. And the catastrophe is everywhere: the country is a blazing oven, the earth is withering, houses are burning down, there has been no wind for months. And there is no tornado far and wide to save the crisis-ridden characters from their fate.
But there is a girl named Dorothee Sturm, and she has set her mind on nothing less than saving the world. Too bad she seems to attract misfortune. Em and Henri can tell you a thing or two about that. They are not the parenting type, they are the farming type and lost first their dignity and then their farm in a fire. While the desperate policeman Gus Brandt sets out on the trail of the suspected arsonist, he in turn is sought by his brother, the filmmaker Salvatore Brandt. He is interviewed, overworked and underpaid, by Lorna Luft, host of the radio programme HOT TIMES. How a gigantic truck comes into the game and why Judy Garland, of all people, shines behind the counter of a petrol station - GARLAND also tells about that.
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 ONLYSLOVAKIA / 2019
Valeria Schulczová, Roman Olekšák – The Island
The play was proposed by Slovak National Drama Theatre / Slovakia for the ETC Drama Committee
The Island used to flourish with life, but nowadays only four native inhabitants live there. It is a family, which consists of a man, daughter, son, and neighbor - the Loner. During the storyline, the secret of the dark history is completely revealed. The island had been evacuated and they stayed there illegally. The sea level is alarmingly rising every year, so the government decided to move all the inhabitants to coast. At least that is what they think until the arrival of a couple – Man and woman. Part psychological drama, part criminal story, the play does not lose its magical, mythological elements.
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 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 ONLYTHE NETHERLANDS / 2020
Abdelkader Benali – Hamlet
The play was proposed by De Toneelmakerij / The Netherlands for the ETC Drama Committee
Abdelkader Benali and dramaturg Paulien Geerlings situated 'the ultimate revenge tragedy' within the context of a (fictionalized) highly-segregated neighbourhood in Amsterdam New-West, where the local people are juxtaposed against the real estate elite.
Shakespeare's classic was thereby interwoven with the modern world of influencers, climate critics and criminal money. The text, however, closely follows the dramaturgy and plot development of the original. Hamlet returns from his private school, to his old migrant neighborhood and finds himself in a new world. The streets of his childhood have been swept away by the world of money. Values have been replaced by status. His father has ‘disappeared’ and his mother has remarried his uncle. An enormous construction site makes up the physical centre of this polarized environment and social housing has to make way for a sky-high luxury building for the rich and famous which his uncle is building. In doing so, he will only further widen the gap between people of different classes and cultures.
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 ONLYCZECH REPUBLIC / 2021
Marie Nováková – Landscape with Warehouses
The play was proposed by Narodni divadlo - National Theatre Prague / Czech Republic for the ETC Drama Committee
The border area in the westernmost part of the Czech Republic is a turbulent place where people didn’t get a chance to stay for any longer period and put down roots.
Maciej from Poland thus finds a close soul in Greta, a dead German girl who fell victim to the hostility of the Czechs towards the Germans in the post-war period. Marika, an elderly prostitute who is seeing a Bosnian worker, Danilo, at the barracks, finds among the workers a child born twenty-five years ago of whom she lost track after his placement in a care home. The annual gathering of retired border-guard soldiers is interrupted by a ghost of their former comrade, who mercilessly destroys their long-developed cover legend about brave guardians of the republic. Danilo, broken down and tortured by the heavy work, is freed by a horde of Bashkirian warriors who died in a prison camp during WWI and are buried underneath the logistics warehouses. But Christmas is coming, and the workers must keep working so that gifts are delivered in time.
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 / 2014
Elena Alexieva – Phantom Pain
The play was proposed by Theatre and Music Centre Kardjali / Bulgaria for the ETC Drama Committee
The Armless Woman has lost both her arms in an accident. After the amputation, she lives in her modest apartment struggling to manage with her new, hopeless life. She is tended by Maria and Maria’s son, the Boy. In an attempt to kill time, the Armless Woman starts to paint with her mouth.
A stranger to art, she is aware that her paintings are weird and poor. However, her case is taken up by a TV journalist, who promotes the Woman and her art, and gradually, the Armless Woman becomes a celebrity artist. The popularity of her works grows. She is even labelled an intellectual. And yet, she cannot sleep at night due to the phantom pain which she tries to fight through painting.
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 ONLYITALY / 2022
Melania G. Mazzucco – Dulan, the Bride
The play was proposed by Teatro Stabile de Torino / Italy for the ETC Drama Committee
Dulan, the bride could be described as a noir story. The play is about a troubled middle-aged couple, they are just married but they are somehow hounded by the ghost of a girl who was found dead in the pool of the building where they are going to live. Dialogue after dialogue, some disturbing questions emerge: who was that young woman? Did the man know her? Was it a suicide or an act of violence? In this spiral of questions and conjecture, the image of a young foreign woman stands out, a victim of oppression and male violence.
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 ONLY
