The winner of this year's Slavko Grum award is Maja Šorli

The Slavko Grum Award for the best new Slovenian play has been annually awarded at the Week of Slovenian Drama Festival since 1979. This year’s winner is Maja Šorli for her play You Have Never Tried This Taste.

The jury report stated: "The contemporary drama about university intrigues and power games is written pragmatically, portrays a good understanding of the dramatic material, while delivering a cogent characterization of people. The characters experience personal and sentimental difficulties behind the institutional transformation and are subjected to unclear charges on overstepping the pedagogical enthusiasm and with the suspicion of student harassment. The play is fully engaging, it is clearly in favour of student protests and demands as we have known them since the late 1960s. In this respect it propagates some of the former politically engaged and matter-of-fact written plays from ten years ago, as in the case of the Cossack Affair. You Have Never Tried This Taste uncovers numerous opposing social forces by way of the higher education system example. There is an understanding that each point can prove to be a turning point and that it is difficult to maintain a fragile and long-lasting balance during neoliberal appropriation; our rights are not acquired for an infinite amount of time and they must be constantly defended and broadened."

The Young Playwright Award winner is Nina Kuclar Stiković
Eleven texts were submitted in the category for the Young Playwright Award. The jury was convinced by the text Tomorrow Looked Different in a Dream by Nina Kuclar Stiković. The jury report stated: "Tomorrow Looked Different in a Dream is a family drama, designed through pragmatic experiences and is thus written in such a manner. On the outside it almost appears as a documentary: it is written exactly according to the dates that denote 'the time we lived between four walls', from 13 March 2020, 13:43, till May 7, 2020, 22:49, as it is stated in the didascalies. The drama does not lack extensive comic elements which serve it rightly. Due to this some structures are easier to accept and do not risk the fundamental virtue of the play -it confronts the currently most omnipresent theme, that, surpassing its relevance, drags along civilization’s abundant baggage, and attacks it frontally, directly, with youthfully relentless creative optimism and some naivety, without which it cannot exist."
 

The biennial Grün-Filipič Award winner is Milan Ramšak Marković
The Week of Slovenian Drama Festival has been awarding the biennial Grun-Filipič Award for achievements in Slovenian dramaturgy and theatrology since 1979. This year, the winner of the award is Milan Ramšak Marković.

"When Marković, as a playwright, re-reads such prominent artists as Cankar, Semenič, Krleža, Müller, Pasolini or Fassbinder - when he makes stage adaptations of plays, novels and movies - he dares to put their dramaturgy in a prominent place. Through work processes and performances, he reveals directorial, sometimes even creative acting processes in surprising ways. /… / As a creator, he is interested in ideological frictions, he consistently and studiously devotes himself to them, setting the viewer many mental riddles that delve into the fabric of current social problems," wrote the jury of experts that consisted of Matej Bogataj, Srečko Fišer (the president) and Amelia Kraigher.

The awards will be presented in November at the closing ceremony of the 51^st Week of Slovenian Drama Festival.
We sincerely congratulate the winners.