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The Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb announced novelties in its Drama ensemble that will bring exciting projects and additional events that comply with the needs of a wider audience and that will stimulate new artistic expressions and collaboration.

The general manager of the CNT in Zagreb Iva Hraste Sočo at the beginning expressed her satisfaction with the upcoming changes in Drama that announce a new approach to the theatre. I believe that after the successful opening night of King Gordogan, the rest of the Drama season will offer our visitors a lot of inspiration, and we shall focus on bringing our programs to a diversified audience. Through initiatives including new programs, interviews with artists and guest performances all throughout Croatia and abroad, we shall strive to connect the audience and art even more intensively, said the general manager Iva Hraste Sočo.

The existing planned repertoire of the Drama director Tena Štivičić will be complemented with a final drama premiere in the season 2024/2025 that will take place in June next year. It will be an adaptation of the magnificent novel of the Nobel prize winner Annie Ernaux.

This season, that is dominated by some magnum opuses of Croatian and world literature, the three great, powerful and permanently inspiring and influential authors Krleža, Dostoevsky and Ivšić, we shall conclude with an adaptation of the autobiographical novel of one great, continuously inspiring and influential woman, the Nobel prize winner Annie Ernaux. The Years is considered a masterpiece of autobiographic prose, that interweaves personal and  public, private and collective, memories, photographs, fashion notes, language, popular culture, but also all social shocks, transformations and paradigmatic social changes from the 1940s onward, and tells the story of the greater part of the 20th century, the story of France, Europe and the world, said the director of Drama Tena Štivičić.

The Years will be directed by Jovana Tomić, a stage director from Belgrade whose interest and focus lie in female stories within a wider social context. She directed the following performances: Urnebesna tama (Atelje 212), Lolita (Madlenianum), Lisistrata (Narodno pozorište, Subotica), If twice rotates the weather vane / Waiting for future (Paolo Grassi, Bussole rotte), Izlaženje (Drugstore, 20/44), Natan Mudri i Moj muž (Jugoslovensko dramsko pozorište), Livada puna tame (Narodno pozorište, Beograd), Kretanje (Bitef teatar), Boli kolo (Narodno pozorište, Užice), Bludni dani kuratog Džonija (Novosadsko pozorište – Újvidéki Színház).

From this season, the CNT in Zagreb will commence with drama residences that will include the development of drama texts, and this will enable the Drama ensemble to seek, cherish and work on new texts or those of established drama authors.  Residencies will provide financial, dramaturgical and logistic support to selected authors for the development of their new project with a goal to observe and cherish projects closely related to the needs of the repertoire of the CNT in Zagreb.

In the initial phase there will be two residencies per season by invitation only, but our goal is to expand the program to a more comprehensive drama studio in which more drama texts would be created during every season, by both local and international authors,  spoke the dramaturge Mirna Rustemović and presented the residents Sanja Milardović and Ivan Vlatković who will write texts for the Sound Hall and a possible coproduction of the CNT in Zagreb and the Landestheater in Salzburg.

The season will also bring the world opening night of the text Drvene ptice (The Wooden Birds) written by Lidija Deduš that will be coproduced with the CNT in Varaždin. in November 2019, the CNT in Zagreb initiated a Call for contemporary drama texts. The Wooden Birds won and will be directed by Ivan Plazibat.

Dramaturge Dino Pešut presented a large European project, DoSel- drama in smaller European languages. The project includes eight partners. Along the CNT in Zagreb, others participating institutions are Sala Beckett from Barcelona, Estonian Theatre Agency, National Agency for Performing Arts from Malta and the National Theatre Ivan Vazov from Sofia. The project is led by the Prešern Theatre from Kranj. The project focuses on translations of contemporary drama texts not only into major languages but also into languages of partner countries that will result in an extensive drama collection. Two showcases are planned in Kranj and in Malta where the CNT in Zagreb will give a guest performance.

The CNT in Zagreb will continue with its interactive program Theatre Breakfast and the next edition will take place at the end of January, just before the premiere of Krleža's The Flags directed by Ivan Planinić. The editor and moderator of the Drama Theatre Breakfast is writer Ivana Bodrožić.