Georgian writers named joint winners of playwright competition

Two Georgian playwrights have shared top honours after being named joint winners of the Talking about Boundaries playwrights’ European competition.

Minister of Culture Guram Odisharia jointly awarded Data Tavadze and Basa Janikashvili as the competition winners at an awards ceremony last night.

This was the first time the top award was shared between two playwrights. Tavadze was recognised for his play War Mother and Janikashvili was recognized for his play Angry Birds. The winners will share the cash prize for first and second place, and will each receive 3 500 Euro. 

War Mother will be performed in the Gorlitz-Zittau Theater and Angry Birds in the Nuremberg State Theatre. Both winning plays will be translated to German, 11 000 copies will be printed and distributed in German-speaking countries. They will be publicly presented at the Leipzig book Fair in March 2014.

Last night’s celebration also recognized Lasha Bugadze as the third-place winner. Bugadze was acknowledged for his play May 26. He was rewarded with 2 500 GEL and his play will be shown at the stage of Hungarian theatre.

The author of the project, Christian Papke also participated in last night’s awards ceremony with the Minister of Culture. Papke said the contest had developed in a very interesting and positive way.

"I have a feeling that Georgia is a country of poets and writers,” he said.

The contest to reveal the best play was announced on July 22, 2013, by the Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the Ministry of European and International Affairs of Austria and Mikheil Tumanishvili Theatre and Arts Development Foundation.

Twenty-seven theatre writers participated in the contest and presented plays about boundaries but in particular, how life in Georgia was in the era of social and economic changes. The top ten plays were selected then the winning three plays were chosen from an international jury consisting of three Austrian and two Georgian experts.

Under the initiative of the Tumanishvili Foundation, all the selected plays will be published as a collection of essays, which will include the play Rendezvous with the Past written by an inmate in Rustavi Women’s Prison. 

The award ceremony was attended by German and Austrian theatres representatives, British director Guy Masterson and Asia Geographic journalists.