Croatian ITICentre
International Drama Colony
FROM TEXT TO PERFORMANCE
Motovun, 2008
June 29 – July 6, 2008
Co-organizers:
Belgian ITI (French speaking)
Swedish ITI
Italian Institut for Culture inZagreb
AIMS OF THE COLONY
The International Drama Colony is considered among one of the most attractive programmes of the Croatian Centre ITI. It was launched in 1999 with the ambition of exploring and promoting foreign and domestic texts through staged readings.
The Croatian team presents young and unknown playwrights, offering them an opportunity for staging their texts with professional actors and directors, which should enable possible further official productions of their plays.
The staged readings are all the more intriguing and attractive being set in the becoming milieu and environment of the medieval Istrian town of Motovun. The “shows” are performed without any settings or costumes, while the actors read from the scripts.
RECIPROCITY
The basis of such cooperation of Croatia with other countries is that of reciprocity. Therefore, thanks to this Colony, our contemporary playwrights and their works have already been presented in the USA and Greece (Miro Gavran), in the Czech Republic (Lada Kaštelan), in India and Chile (Filip Šovagović), Slovakia (Tena Štivičić), Chile andMexico (Elvis Bošnjak), Chile (Ivan Vidić, Dubravko Mihanović) and Russia (Mate Matišić).
The Colony also operates as an essentially valuable and constructive programme through which the Croatian Centre ITI materializes its agenda in cooperation with other national ITI centres as well as with the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Arts and ArtsAcademies from Osijek and Split.
The accomplished interaction between Croatian and foreign playwrights and directors in the Colony helps build bridges of theatrical cooperation and partnership.
PROGRAMME
July 5, 2008.
4 pm
Ariane Buhbinder (Belgium)
WHERE DID MOZART DISAPPEAR?
Translated from the Frenchby
Milena Bekić Milinović
Directed byFilip Povrženić
Cast: Petra Težak and Antonijo Franić
6 pm
Ugo Chiti (Italia)
THEY
Translated from the Italian by: Iva Grgić
Directed by Nenni Delmestre
Cast: Zdenko Botić and Goran Smoljanović
8 pm
Sofia Fredén (Sweden)
HAND IN HAND
Translated from the English by
Stephanie Jamnicky
Directed by Tea Gjergjizi Agejev
Cast: Ana Gruica, Matea Elezović, Matija Kačan, Marko Petrić, Duje Grubišić, Nikša Arčanin
GUESTS: Valerie Cordy (Belgium)
Emma Jansson (Sweden)
Paola Ciccolella (Italy)
Lina Vengoechea (Venezuela)
WRITERS
ARIANE BUHBINDER (Belgium)
Born in Belgium in 1961. She graduated in literature, music and direction at 'Institut Supérieur des Arts et Spectacles' in u Brussels. This director, writer and composer has devoted her theatrical engagement to children and youth for whom she wrote and directed a number of successful plays performed in Belgium, France, Switzerland and Québec.
She has worked in Québec for ten years as an artistic director in Théâtre de Carton. After her return to Brussels, she founded a theatrical group for the young L'anneau, and she has been managing it from 1996.
UGO CHITI
Ugo Chiti, drama writer, scriptwriter and director was born in Tavarnelle Val di Pesa in 1943. He is one of the founders of Arca Azzurra Teatro in Florence. The cooperation between this theatrical company and Chiti is based on a dramaturgical text in Tuscan language that manages to rise above the purely folk art aspects, and abundantly uses the enormous abilities of sound and gesture, characteristic of dialect. Among his texts the comedy Nero Cardinale and trilogy La recita del popolo fantastico must be mentioned. As a film scriptwriter Chiti is one of the authors ofthe script for the film Gomorra, by Matteo Garrone, the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Festival.
SOFIA FREDEN
Born in 1968 in Sweden. She studied writing for film and theatre at Dramatiska Institutet, graduating in 1995. Since graduation she has written prolifically for the theatre and also managed to write for film and radio. Her plays have been produced in most of the city and regional theatres in Sweden, as well as at the Royal Dramatic Theatre. In 2005, Sofia received the critics prize for Children and Youth Theatre.Sofia is playwright in residence at Stockholm Stadsteatern.
DIRECTORS
FILIP POVRŽENIĆ
Born in Rijeka, 1979. Senior undergraduate at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb.
He has worked as assistant director at several productions in Zagreb, among others he was assistant to Rene Medvešek.
NENNI DELMESTRE
Born in Split, Croatia, where she lives until she turns eighteen and receives a scholarship to study abroad. In 1981, she graduated from FloridaInternationalUniversityas a Bachelor of Science in Communications Technologyand in 1984 as a Bachelor of Fine Arts inTheatre, both with highhonors. Since then she continuosly directs in Croatia and Slovenia, and also Venezuela, Mexico and Italia. She has translated several plays from English, Spanish and Italian, and publishedessays on theatre in Croatia and abroad. Since 1997 she is Croatian National Theatre in Splitdirector in residence, and from October 2002 to 2004 she was Artistic Drama Director of CNT Split and Drama Director for the Split Summer Festival. Almost all her plays have participated in national and international festivals where they have received numerous awards.
TEA GJERGJIZI AGEJEV
Graduated at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in ZagrebShe directed her first outstanding play Nemreš pobjeć od nedelje (You Cannot Escape Sunday) by Tena Štivičić, while she was still studying, in 2000. Afterwards she has directed in Mala scena (Small Stage), the Habunek Stage of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, The Marin Držić Theatre in Dubrovnik, The &TD Theatre, The Croatian National Theatre in Varaždin. Some of these plays were awarded prizes at domestic festival. She also directs children's plays, radio dramas and writes drama texts as well.
THE ORGANIZER
THE CROATIAN ITI CENTRE was founded in 1994 as a non-profit, professional organization functioning as a theatrical information service. To date it has built a respective database on Croatian theatre (also to be found on On the one hand, it offers its members an insight into international theatre events, while on the other, it works on the promotion of Croatian theatre throughout the world. For that purpose it publishes a magazine entitled Croatian Theatre which is the only informational publication on Croatian drama and theatre in English. A new program of the Centre is the Croatian Showcase, a festival of the best theatrical performances from the last season designed for foreign selectors of festivals, producers, theatre critics and journalists. The Centre organizes annual promotions of International Theatre and International Dance Days in Croatia, as well as panel discussions, seminars, and symposia, while in its Library Mansioni Editions it has already published some forty works of drama theory and literature. The Centre edits and publishes two magazines: Kazalište (Theatre) and Kretanja (Movements), the latter focusing on the art of dance. The Centre also publishes the Guide to Croatian Dance which gives a comprehensive overview of the Croatian institutional and non-institutional dance scene.
Managers:
Željka Turčinović, president of Croatian ITI Centre
Tajana Gašparović, program co-ordinator
INTERNATIONAL
DRAMA
COLONY
FROM TEXT TO PERFORMANCE
MOTOVUN 2008