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Ivana Sajko

Ivana Sajko

area: Literature

Key Facts

nationality

Croatia

area

Literature

residence

Pula

recommending institution

BMEIA

time period

December 2017 - December 2017

IVANA SAJKO studied Dramaturgy at Academy of Drama Arts, after which she obtained M.Sc. in Humanistic science at Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. She was a visiting lecturer at Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb until 2009. In 2000, she founded the theatre group BAD co. where she worked as dramaturge and director until 2005. when she started to direct and perform as individual artist collaborating mostly with the musicians.

Her plays and prose work are translated into English, German, French, Spanish and Italian and staged in theatres and radio broadcasted throughout the world. She has presented her literary and theatre work through lectures and stage readings at Centre Pompidou, Comedie Française Paris, Theatre Festival d'Avignon, Magasin3 Stockholm etc., while her plays were staged in venues such as Schauspiel Frankfurt, Malthouse Theatre Melbourne, Tristan Bates Theatre London, Centre Dramatique National Montreuil etc. Her recent plays were commissioned by Steirischer Herbst, Konzert Theatre Bern and Staatstheater Braunschweig.

She won several prizes for playwrighting and literature, and in 2013. she received the medal Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et Lettres by French Ministry of Culture.

Her books include collection of plays Executed Faces (Smaknuta lica, 2001), trilogy of monologues Woman-bomb (Žena bomba, 2004), novel Rio bar (2005), theory book Towards the Madness (and Revolution) (Prema ludilu (i revoluciji)), 2006), novel History of my family from 1941 till 1941, and beyond (Povijest moje obitelji od 1941 do 1991, i nakon, 2009), collection of plays Trilogy on Disobedience (Trilogija o neposluhu, 2012), Love Novel (Ljubavni roman, 2015).     In 2004. she published CD Mass for election day silence together with American composers David Simons and Lisa Karer.

Books in German translation: Rio bar, (trans. by A. Bremer), Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin, 2008; Archetyp: Medea. Bombenfrau. Europa: Trilogie, (trans.  byA. Bremer), Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main, 2008; Trilogie des Ungehorsams, (trans. by A. Bremer), Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main, 2012; Auf dem Weg zum Wahnsinn (und zur Revolution) – Eine Lektüre,  (trans. by A. Bremer), Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2014; Liebesroman, (trans. by A. Bremer), Voland & Quist, autumn 2017.

Ivana Sajko

Projectinfo

I am applying for this residence, so to provide the period of focused and dedicated work on the cycle of theatre texts. Being a professional writer, means I am primarily using the residences as intensive periods of writing, allowing myself to be influenced by the new surroundings. Being interested in contemporary art and often using many references from different artistic medias, residency at MQ allows me to be as close to many sources of inspiration and incentives for my own writing project.
I intend to work on a new cycle of theatre texts that would question the position of the actor/actress as a concrete political position that can break through the membrane of theatricality by ignoring its conventions. What are the conditions and, even more importantly, what are the consequences of his/her speech? I am interested in the difference between a personal exposure on the scene and a written theatre role, in confronting these disparate realities by building the tension between their unsynchronized desires. Reinforced by my own acting and previous playwriting, this idea is an attempt to search for the further points of fluidity and uncertainty embedded in the very core of theatre event, for the edges of its fiction and for the conflict behind the presentation. To do this with language means to insist on the poetry as the tool which undermines any stable discourse, and to do this with the conventions means to disintegration a simple, yet crucial stage situation of uttering, turning it into an act of radical intimacy once the wall of illusion has been diminished.

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