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NEW DRAMA 3D!

Preparations for the 6^th year of the festival of contemporary Slovak and world plays Nová dráma/New Drama 2010 are at full speed. After first five years of its existence the organizing team comes with changes in selecting criteria and with new motto. The Dramaturgy Board started working already in December 2009. Nová dráma/New drama festival will take place between 10 and 15 May 2010 in Bratislava.

6^th year of Nová dráma/New Drama festival comes with new motto: 3D - DRAMA, DRAMATURGY, DIMENSION.

Drama means theatre texts, plays; dramaturgy includes dramaturgy in theatres - selection of plays for the repertory, proportion of classical and contemporary plays, dramaturgy within a perfomrance together with adaptation, dramatization, interpretation; dimension represents an attempt to create a plastic picture about theatre, opening to new tendencies and impulses. The third dimension of theatre is the audience.

Comparing to previous years the most significant change at the festival is widening of criteria for selection of performances for the main programme. The basic criteria in previous years was the focus on performances of contemporary Slovak and world playwrights. The bottom line for the „age" of plays was 1990, so the plays should not be written before this year. The festival motivates Slovak authors to write new texts, theatres to stage them and to stage also foreign contemporary plays. The experience shows that the amount of contemporary texts staged in one theatre season is not enough for covering a festival with one year periodicity. Moreover, the selecting criteria were limited only to written text, which excluded theatres staging performances with minimum of text or without text, based only on a libreto or a script, but still considering it drama theatre, not dance or physical theatre.

Another fact is that Slovak dramaturgs and directors usually reach for dramatizations of prosaic works, or they themselves prepare the dramatizations. Rewriting of prose into theatre plays can be considered as a newly written text, especially if the creators change and interpret the original.

These are the reasons why Nová dráma/New Drama festival changed the selecting criteria and observes not only performances of contemporary Slovak and world plays, but also dramatizations and performances with significant interpretation and change of original text (even if the plays are older than from 1990).

Members of Dramaturgy Board are: theatrologist Dáša Čiripová (Theatre Institute Bratislava), dramaturg Martina Filinová (Cultural Centre Stanica Žilina-Záriečie), theatrologist and translator Romana Maliti, director Jozef Koleják, dramaturg Martin Ondriska (Academy of Performing Arts Bratislava).

Performances in the selection must be premiered between 1^st March 2009 and 28^th February 2010. Based on the decision of Dramaturgy Board the main organizers of the festival - Theatre Institue Bratislava and Aréna Theatre - will announce at the beginning of March around ten performances for the main programme section.

This year festival offers usual events of accompanying programme: section Focus will this time introduce contemporary Finnish drama, The Triathlon is reading of final texts from the competition Drama 2010, theatre experts can attend an international conference Dramatic Challenges Today. The festival will be ended by a ceremony to the 10^th anniversary of competition of dramatic texts Drama.

More information:

Ján Valter, jan.valter@theatre.sk

Dária Fehérová, daria.feherova@theatre.sk

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