"Alamut", a drama adaptation of Vladimir Bartol's 1938 novel on radical Islam, won the competition section of the Salzburg Festival, which is termed "Young Director's Project".
Its director Sebastijan Horvat received EUR 10,000 and a Max Reinhard pen worth EUR 12,000, STA was told by artistic director of the Ljubljana National Theatre Drama SNG Janez Pipan on Thursday.
This co-production of the Salzburg Festival and the Ljubljana Drama SNG premiered in Salzburg on 28 July, with its Slovenian premiere to follow on 8 October.
Managing to create fatal theatrical characters, Horvat took the audience for a dangerous ride, the jury said as it justified its decision to award him.
The show is an experience of "how people can be manipulated and how a deeply-moving current issue can be approached", the Austrian press agency APA reported.
"Alamut" competed with three other productions: the Italian project "La Scimia - Carnezzeria", directed by Emma Dante; "Phaidra" by Hungarian director Arpad Schilling; and "The Confusions of Young Toerless" by Czech director Dusan David Parizek.
It took the four-member jury a long time to decide on the winner. Its chair Peter Simonisek said: "Alamut was the only production that made consensus possible. Three of us would prefer to promote another director's project, but we reached a compromise with Alamut."
As Horvat told the daily Dnevnik before the premiere, the play focuses on the story of the main character entering the fort of Alamut to fight foreign invaders and becoming a spiritual follower of the head of the Ismail people.
The author of the adaptation Dusan Jovanovic believes the play's strength lies in the fact that unlike most media it does not present terrorism in black and white.
More articles from this issue:
Archive
|