ETC is happy to introduce for one more year the scholars of Artists in Residence programme. Seven emerging directors and dramaturgs from all over the world have been chosen to assist on one or several specific productions in ETC Member Theatres.
This year, Slovensko Narodno Gledalisce Nova Gorica (Slovenia), Slovak National Drama Theatre (Slovakia), Göteborgs Stadsteater (Sweden), Divadlo Jána Palárika v Trnave (Slovakia), Cyprus Theatre Organisation (THOC) (Cyprus), Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe (Germany) and Schauspielhaus Graz (Austria) are offering scholarship placements as assistant director, second assistant director or dramaturg of their stage productions. Young, emerging artists will travel across Europe to share their fresh artistic vision and experience as well as to explore new perspectives on artistic process and creation. Enriching both themselves and the performance!
Meet the 2023 Scholars and discover their takeaway from this experience in this video summary.
Adrija Rašović
Herceg Novi/Montenegro
Adrija is doing his Master's in Theatre Directing at FDA Cetinje, and is currently working on a production of The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh. His last show was Emmigrants by Slawomir Mrozek, in the basement of Royal Theatre Zetski dom Cetinje as part of his final exams in the academy. Andrija's work also extends to writing and electronic music. Adrija has written several short stories that have been adapted into comics and published in regional comics magazines, and has also self-published two albums of experimental electronic music. He will assist the creative team at Slovensko Narodno Gledalisce Nova Gorica as Assistant Director on the production of Antigone by Luka Marcen.
Mira Mańka
Warta/Poland
Mira is a director, dramaturg and playwright. She is a fifth-year student in the Drama Directing Department of the National Academy of Theatre Arts in Cracow. She has directed performances at the invitation of the National Stary Theater in Cracow (Czartoryska. Artifacts, 2019; The Little Mermaid, 2020), Contemporary Theater in Szczecin (Picnic at the Hanging Rock, 2020), the Opera Rara Festival (Enoch Arden, 2020), the Shakespeare Festival and the Dance and Movement Theater Rozbark (Shakespeare: mock-up, 2021), Dejmek New Theater in Łódź (For my revolutionary grandmothers, 2021), Kochanowski Theater in Opole (Kamizelka, 2022). Furthermore, Mira is the author of texts for some of her own performances, and recently created the script for The Secret Garden directed by Tomasz Fryzeł, Łaźnia Nowa Theater, 2022. For “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, she has received the Grand Prix for the best director of the Koszalin Confrontations of Young Directors Festival (2020), and “Shakespeare: mock-up” was recognised with the 1st prize of the ShakespeareOFF competition and the Audience Award at the International Shakespeare Festival in Gdańsk, 2021.
She has also successfully completed art residencies as part of the SopotNonFiction and Scena Nowej Dramaturgii programmes. Mira will assist the creative team at the Slovak National Theatre (Slovakia) as Assistant Director on the production of Franz Xaver Kroetz: The Concert on demand by Kamila Polívková.
Fleur Snow
Llandysul/United Kingdom
Fleur grew up in West Wales where she attended a state secondary school through the medium of Welsh. As a young musician, she sang, composed and competed in piano competitions and accompanied all the local choirs. In academic work, her passion was literature, which led her to the University of Oxford where she studied English and French. She was also an organ scholar at Brasenose College, and organised the college music events and performances. During her year abroad, she worked as a radio presenter in France, living in Nantes. After university, she wanted to work in opera so moved to Florence to learn Italian. She lived there for a year and worked as an organist in a local church. The next step was to complete formal theatre training, so she went to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where she studied an MA in Opera Directing for two years. After this, she was assistant director with the British Youth Opera before moving to Australia for six months in search of work. In May 2022 she came back to the UK to continue her career there. She started a placement at Welsh National Opera on their new opera, Migrations, and returned as staff director for the revival this Autumn. Fleur then assisted Victoria Newlyn on L’Elisir d’Amore (2022) at West Green House Opera before heading to Weimar to work as an assistant for Damon Nestor Ploumis on Die Fledermaus (2022) at the Lyric Opera Studio Weimar. After that, she went on to the Staatsoperette Dresden as Regiehospitantin. In January 2023 she will join the creative team of Göteborgs Stadsteater– Backa Teater (Sweden) as Assistant Director of the production Du är min nu - våld i nära relationer (You are mine now - domestic violence) by Gerard Watkins.
Martha Kent
Leicestershire/United Kingdom
Martha is a freelance Theatre Director specialising in Musical Theatre and Youth Theatre. She has experience in directing, assistant directing, theatre facilitation and also works and has trained as a musician and enjoys bringing these two art forms together. She has a First-Class BA degree from the University of Hull in Music, Theatre and Performance and is now working as a theatre freelancer across the UK. Her original musical ‘Angel Shot’ premiered in May 2022 as part of her studies and she continues to work towards creating theatre with music. She has directed and assistant directed performances at Buxton Opera House (Reimagine, 2022. Matilda Jr, 2022), worked alongside Hannah Chissick with the National Youth Music Theatre (Ragtime, 2022) as well as working as a director and creative in her local area of the East Midlands. She has worked extensively with and for young people; working with young people is what excites her most, creating work that speaks to and inspires the youth. Her experience has been wide set from large musicals in London, to youth theatre workshops in the back of a theatre to street performance. As part of ETC Artist Residency programme she will join the creative team of Divadlo Jána Palárika v Trnave (Slovakia) as Assistant Director of the production Shapes and Patterns in Nature by Barbara Malecka and Alicja Morawska-Rubczak.
Syeda Farwah Rizvi
London/United Kingdom
S. Farwah Rizvi is an inquisitive, multilingual MA Theatre Arts student at Middlesex University in London who has completed her BA in Sociology from AMU, India. She enjoys working in multicultural, collaborative environments and being open to all kinds of learning curves. She hopes to establish herself as a director and therefore trusts her abilities as a professional working in creative environments - having worked in many public events and exhibitions as a member of the production team at various art, literature, film and theatre festivals. As part of ETC Artist in Residence programme she will assist the creative team of Cyprus Theatre Organization (THOC) as Assistant Director of the production Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov directed by Athina Kasiou.
Manon Ayçoberry
Strasbourg/France
Manon Ayçoberry is a French theatre director and performer. She has a master’s degree from the Paris Political Studies Institute (Sciences Po), and studied acting and directing at the Conservatoire Erik Satie in Paris. She believes arts and politics are inevitably intertwined and her work is deeply influenced by this duality. Manon is attached to experimentation and pluridisciplinarity in the performing arts, and develops her own scenic language, mixing theatre, sound, documentary and literature. In 2019 she directs Protection, a theatrical poem by Anja Hilling, and works with both actors and jazz musicians. In 2020 she founds her own theatre company L’ONDE, and is Créart’up Laureate, a springboard for cultural entrepreneurs. In 2021, she creates her second project, Entre les deux il y a Gênes, and receives the Jury’s and Public’s awards at the Propulsion Festival (Paris). This radiophonic play paints a documentary and yet autobiographical portrait of repression and police violence in Europe. It has been performed all across France and is still touring. Manon is currently working on a new project questioning sociological systematic violence in the class struggle and gender minorities. She also has professional experience in production and administration in various theatres. She will join the creative team at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe (Germany) as an Assistant Director on the production "Mephisto" after the novel by Klaus Mann directed by Nils Strunk.
Beatrice Benedek
Aylesbury/United Kingdom
Beatrice Benedek is a multifaceted theatre practitioner and freelance artist.
With a theatre experience spanning over a decade, she’s performed, directed, and facilitated theatre workshops in the UK and Romania. Beatrice’s creative interests are wide‐ranging. These can be best seen translated in her directed work. Using smart colour & lighting design, movement and choreography, slick and clean set‐designs, and non‐verbal communication, Beatrice delivered gripping and thought‐provoking plays, which left audience members eager to better understand subject matters out of their daily reach. Her in depth theoretical knowledge gained during her BA studies in European and International Relations, paired with a praxis‐orientated MA in Performance Making, and hands‐on backstage experience in UK and European theatres, have equipped Beatrice with necessary skills, knowledge, and experience to reimagine classical, contemporary, and new theatre work for today’s audiences. Curious by nature, Beatrice has recently expanded her work in the British movie scene, producing her first short film in collaboration with UK, German and Romanian filmmakers, enhancing thus her artistic ambitions. Her future work will focus on the processing and understanding of difficult historical episodes in Eastern Europe, enabling a better appreciation of these through the platform of performing arts. Her ultimate goal is to create dynamic places of remembrance through the means of theatre, folklore and musical storytelling, leaning heavily on her Transylvanian heritage. She will join the dramaturgical team at Schauspielhaus Graz (Austria) for five weeks.
