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Tena Štivičić, a multiple-award-winning dramaturge and writer will take over the post of the Director of the Drama of the CNT in Zagreb on June 10, 2024.

I am honoured that our renowned writer and dramaturge Tena Štivičić has accepted my invitation to become the Director of the Drama and I believe that our brilliant drama ensemble under her leadership will successfully, along the classical repertoire create innovative drama works with an emphasis put on the development of drama project and original productions said the general manager of the CNT in Zagreb, Iva Hraste Sočo.

It is my great pleasure to have been invited by the general manager Iva Hraste Sočo to take over the position of the Director of the Drama of the CNT in Zagreb. ON this job I will dedicate myself to creating an inspirational and stimulating environment for all members of our ensemble as well as associates. I am truly looking forward to challenges and future achievements, said Tena Štivičić. She graduated dramaturgy at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb and in 2004 acquired her master's degree at the Goldsmiths College in London. She won international acclaim in 2014 with the world opening night of her drama Three Winters at the Royal National Theatre in London and for it she was granted one of the greatest theatre acknowledgements, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award.

She wrote her first drama Can't Escape Sundays in her fourth year of study. The same year the drama had its world opening night at the ZKM Theatre and was granted the Rector's award and the Marin Držić award. A series of reruns, productions and translations of this drama followed in the theatre and on the radio, in Croatia and throughout Europe. Can't Escape Sundays is one of her most performed dramas.

Her drama The Two of Us had its world opening night at the Belgrade theatre Atelje 212 in 2003. It was the first new Croatian play to be performed on a Serbian stage after the break-up of Yugoslavia. This performance received the audience award at the Days of Marulić Festival in Split and the play had several other stagings in the region, including the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. The text was published by Profil in a collection of dramas along The Two of Us and other works.

Inspired by her first year living in London, she wrote the play Fragile! The world premiere at the Mladinsko gledališče in Ljubljana was pronounced the best annual performance at the Borštnik Festival in Slovenia. Fragile! was staged in several European countries, including Great Britain, Germany, Austria and Turkey and on Radio Channel 4 of the BBC. It was translated into several languages and received numerous awards, among which is the best European Play and Innovations Award at the Heidelberg Stückemarkt in Germany in 2008.

As part of The 50 – a Royal Court Theatre and BBC initiative to mark the 50th anniversary of The Royal Court Theatre, Tena Štivičić was nominated as one of the fifty most promising young writers in Great Britain.