Slovenian director shakes Europe with “dangerous” theatre

Slovenian director Nina Rajić Kranjac has been listed one of the top five up-and-coming European directors by Natasha Tripney, international editor for The Stage, the UK theatre newspaper founded in 1880, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.

For a small country Slovenia "punches above its weight when it comes to theatre directors", Tripney writes in her 10 June article, describing Rajič Kranjac, 34, as "one of the most exciting directors of her generation".

Her MA play, The Conference of the Birds, won her the award for best young director at MESS Festival in Bosnia in 2015. Equally comfortable directing Slovenian classics as more experimental, collaborative work, she has continued to pick up awards throughout her career.

Tripney mentions the show Solo, "a messy essay on theatre and the role of the director", and Angels in America, "a wild six-hour ride", as two of the most prominent examples of Rajić Kranjac's work. Both were produced by the SMG theatre, the former in co-production with Maska.

"Her work has been programmed by most of the main stages in Ljubljana and she's amassed a slew of awards, including best production at last year's Maribor Festival, the biggest theatre festival in Slovenia, for Angels in America. Although she's still not widely known outside the region, her work is intoxicatingly theatrical and committed to the principle that theatre should be dangerous," Tripney writes.

Apart from Rajić Kranjac, the list of top up-and-coming directors in European theatre includes Polish director and co-founder of the interdisciplinary collective Identity Problem Group, Lukasz Twarkowski, the Greek director of Albanian roots, Mario Banushi, whose works are praised as intensely intimate and often very personal, Belgian writer and director Lisaboa Houbrechts, who focuses on both drama and opera, and Austrian-German director Fritzi Wartenberg, who focuses on distinctly feminist themes.