Aurora Drama Award for new plays

 

Prapremiery Festival, which has been organized for 20 years by Teatr Polski in Bydgoszcz, wants to return to his roots and focus on new dramatic texts that set the directions of contemporary theatre development. Among new dramatic texts we want to search for a new language and new forms of theatre.

 

We believe that today, 30 years after the political change, Poland may become a specific centre of contemporary drama and theatre, which is why we are establishing an international drama award – AURORA - the Dramatic Award of the City of Bydgoszcz awarded for outstanding contemporary drama. Aurora is on the one hand the symbol of the Aurora Borealis, the dawn and renewal, and on the other a symbol of revolution - ideas close to Teatr Polski.

 

Over the past twenty years, the Polish theatre has been looking up to Western theatre - inspired by its aesthetics, themes and texts, while ignoring its roots and inspiration coming from the region. In the new formula of the Prapremiery Festival, we want to turn our interest towards the other side - to the east, where there is a lot going on in theatre, but also socially and politically. We understand "East" in two ways - territorially and geopolitically, but also as a beginning, a renewal, a calling to life. The East means ferment, penetration of cultures, religions, political systems.

 

Finally, the East is a melting pot in which national rations, traditions, often mutually exclusive ideas mix together, it is finally a place where questions about human condition, nationality, and affiliation, historical and social truth are still alive and become a topic for theatre artists, especially playwrights.

 

Authors from the following countries are invited to take part in the competition: Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Armenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Albania, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Romania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. Authors can send in their texts in Polish, Russian or English.

 

In the first stage of the competition, a three-person jury composed of Davit Gabunia (acknowledged Georgian writer and playwright), Julia Holewińska (Polish playwright, deputy director of Teatr Polski in Bydgoszcz) and Agnieszka Lubomira Piotrowska (Russian drama translator, member of the Board of Section C of the Society of Authors ZAiKS) will select five final texts, which will be presented as stage sketches during the Prapremiery Festival. A chapter composed of: Svetlana Alexievich (Belarusian writer, Nobel Prize winner), Davit Gabunia, Julia Holewińska, Marius Ivaskevicius (outstanding Lithuanian playwright), Agnieszka Lubomira Piotrowska will choose the winning text and grant AURORA - the Drama Award of the City of Bydgoszcz in the amount of PLN 50,000.

 

We hereby open the call for texts, we invite you to read the regulations of the Award and to send in drama texts until 15 April 2021.

 

Please find the application form on the website of the theatre.