Expert Jury

Melita Forstnerič Hajnšek

Author, editor and journalist. She was the editor of the culture section of Večer and its supplement, V soboto. She has written a series of portraits of the Slovenian diaspora and has done extensive research on Slovenian emigration. She was a contributor to the monograph V vrtincu nasprotij published to commemorate the 80th anniversary of SNG Maribor theatre. She is currently participating in two projects: Leksikon kulture in družbe v Mariboru and Po poteh slovenskih književnikov. Her articles have been cited in various encyclopaedias of emigrant literature. She has recently hosted round table discussions about culture, new music, library science, the European Capital of Culture, and conversations with renowned people from the world of culture. She has been a member of various juries, including the Večernica Award jury, the Veronika Award jury and the jury that gave the award for a debut book at the Slovenian Book Fair. She is the Chairperson of the Book Committee with the Office for Culture of the City of Maribor.

Thomas Irmer

Dramaturge, theatre critic and editor. From 1992 to 1996 he taught at the University of Leipzig, and since 2003 he has been teaching at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University in Berlin. From 1998 to 2003 he was the editor in chief of the monthly Theater der Zeit, and from 2004 to 2008 a dramaturgical advisor for the international theatre season at the Berliner Festspiele. His books include Frank Castorfs Volksbühne (2003) Die Bühnenrepublik – Theater in der DDR (2003) and Luk Perceval – Theater und Ritual (2005). He is the author and co-director of four documentaries on theatre: Die Bühnenrepublik – Theater in der GDR (2003), Europe in Pieces (2004), Born 1968 (2008) and Heiner Müller (2009). He is a regular contributor to Theater heute (Germany), Didaskalia (Poland), Shakespeare (Norway) and Maska (Slovenia).

Amelia Kraigher

Art critic and journalist, also works as a dramaturge, editor, copy editor and translator. Since 1997 she has been writing primarily for daily newspapers (Dnevnik, Večer), radio (Radio Študent) and professional periodicals (ČKZ). She was the editor on the culture and the humanities desk at Radio Študent (2000-02) and a co-founder and member of the editorial board of Maska (1997-2006). She has participated in several professional theatre gatherings, symposia and round table discussions. She is co-editor or author of several entries related to theatre and dance in the Veliki slovenski biografski leksikon (2008). From 2000 to 2004 she edited the publications for and organized professional meetings at the Week of the Slovene Drama and was the leader of the international symposium, Umetnost, kultura, mesto, at the Maribor Theatre Festival (2009). She was  a member of the Grum Award jury (2006, 2007) and the Šeligo Award jury (2010), worked as a dramaturge for Drama SNG Maribor (2003/04, 2004/05), and as the program director for the fourth Gibanica Festival of Slovene Dance (2009),  the fifth Slovene Biennial of Puppet Artists (2009) and the Puppets international festival (2010). She is a member of several expert committees for theatre arts at the Ministry of Culture of the RS (2002–05 in 2009–11), the City of Ljubljana (2004 and 2007–09) and the European Commission program, Culture 2000 (2005).

Katarina Pejović

Dramaturge and an intermedia artist. She is also the author of several videos, documentaries and audio works, a writer, a pedagogical expert  and a translator. Her works and works of which she is the co-author have been shown or produced by Kunstkanaal, the Netherlands Theatre Institute, Felix Meritis, De Balie, Galerija Kapelica, Plesni teater Ljubljana, Inštitut Egon March, DUM – Društvo umetnikov, Muzeum Ljubljana, Teater Cinema Lux and Fabbrica Europa and Bacači Sjenki; these works have been shown at various festivals, including the London LIFT festivl, the Austrian Wiener Festwochen, Ars Electronica, New Moves, Eurokaz, Urbanfestival, FIAT, Teatro festival Parma, Stagione di Caccia, BITEF and MESS. She has collaborated with various directors, artists, producers and program creators, including R. Ciulli, L. Ristić, D. Živadinov, D. Jovanović, D. Klaić, S. Austen, L. Bouws, M. Košnik, M. Bučar, V. Čabro and B. Šeparović. In collaboration with Boris Bakal, she co-founded and co-created a series of projects entitled Bacači Sjenki/Shadow Casters. Since 2001, this art organization and interdisciplinary platform has produced many projects dealing with urban cultural memory.

Marko Peljhan

Director and intermedia artist. He lives between Los Angeles, Riga and Ljubljana. In 1995 he founded the technological branch of the Atol PACT SYSTEMS project and co-founded Ljudmila. He is a coordinator of the INSULAR TECHNOLOGIES international initiative and the MAKROLAB project, and of zero-gravity flights conducted as part of artistic projects in collaboration with the Jurij Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre and the MIR network. He conceived and coordinated the mobile media laboratory project, Transhub-01, first implemented as MOBILATORIJ and still in operation. Since 2002 he has been a professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Peljhan has unconditionally committed himself to the boundary spaces of modern integral, conceptual and interdisciplinary art. His tools – and at the same time his weapons – are communication technologies, politics, education, civil action and provocation, and his working area is located at the intersection of the arts and sciences. Peljhan carries on the rich tradition of modernism and avant-garde movements of the 20th century in an original manner while heavily relying on theoretical reflection.

The Borštnik Ring Jury

Aleš Jan

Theatre and radio director and a professor at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television and the Academy of Music. He has been working as a director in Slovenia and abroad since 1965. He has directed more than 600 radio plays of all genres, 60 plays for various audio media, and more than 50 theatre plays and operas. In addition to his work in arts and education, he has lectured at professional gatherings in Slovenia and abroad, published articles in local and foreign professional journals and has been an EBU coordinator for radio plays and a member of international juries and various other bodies. He has received more than 30 awards for directing at various international radio and theatre festivals, among these the PRIX RAI (Italy), PRIX OIRT (Warsaw), the award delivered by the Association of Polish Artists, an award for theatre directing in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Borštnik Diploma,  the IRIB Award (Iran) and the Mediamixx Award (Bulgaria). He has also been awarded the Borštnik Gold Badge. For his radio directing, he received the most prestigious Slovenian awards in the field of culture – the Prešeren Fund Award and the Župančič Award.

Mateja Koležnik

Theatre director. She began her career in the Ljubljana Drama theatre. She later directed for professional theatres in Slovenia and abroad. She has received several awards, among them the Prešeren Fund Award (2001) and the grand prize at the Maribor Theatre Festival for the best performance (2001). Along with the stage designer Jože Logar, she received the award at the Maribor Theatre Festival for stage design (2004), and the award at the SKUP festival in Ptuj (2008). She received two Grand Prix awards at the Zlati levi festival in Umag, in 1999 and 2000, the award for the best directing at the ASSITEJ festival in Čakovec (2005) and the award for the best performance at the 22nd Gavellini večeri (2007).

Tone Partljič

Writer and dramaturge. He began his career as a teacher, soon moved to theatre. He worked as a dramaturge for the Drama SNG Maribor theatre, the artistic director for the Ljubljana City Theatre and SNG Drama Ljubljana theatre, but throughout this period his main preoccupation was play writing. He has been recognized as the best Slovenian comedy writer, but he also writes prose and children’s literature. Twenty-two of his works have been staged by various theatres in Slovenia and abroad. Parallel to his work in theatre is his social engagement: during the tumultuous period between 1983 and 1987 he was the Chairman of the Slovene Writers’ Association, which was one of the most exposed forums of civil society at the time. After Slovenia became a sovereign country, he served as an MP for more than ten years. He has been connected to the Maribor Theatre Festival for more than 40 years now, serving in different roles: as a member of the Audience Jury in 1970, as the editor of the program brochure and a member of the organizing committee in 1971,  as a member of various MTF bodies ranging from the executive to the main board, as the vice-chairman of the MTF Council, and as its chairman from 2004 to 2010.  He has received the Prešeren Fund Award, the Grum Award, the Sterija Award, as well as the Glajzer and Ježek awards for his life work.

Alja Predan

Dramaturge, translator, editor and theatre researcher. In the past she was the artistic director of PDG theatre in Nova Gorica, a dramaturge for the Ljubljana City Theatre, and the director of the theatre and dance program for the Cankarjev dom. She became the artistic director of the Maribor Theatre Festival in 2009. Working as an editor for the Library of the Ljubljana City Theatre, she oversaw the publishing of thirty fundamental works on the theory and history of drama and theatre. She has translated more than 50 plays by modern British, American and Polish playwrights as well as Marvin Carlson’s Theories of the Theatre. Since 1984, she has been a contributor to the Austrian-German publication, Gregor/Dietrich Der Schauspielführer, writing articles about modern Slovenian drama. Between 2002 and 2005 she was the chairperson and a member of the Grum Award jury and in 2008 and 2009 the program director for the Week of the Slovene Drama. In 2008 she was the curator of the Slovenian focus at the 7th Contemporary Drama Festival in Budapest. She is a member of the Slovenian Association of Literary Translators, the Slovenian Association of Theatre Critics and Researchers, ITI Slovenia and the Slovenian Association of Dramatic Artists. She received an award for her work at the 17th triennial of theatre books and publications at the Sterijino pozorje festival in Novi Sad, and received the Grün-Filipič Award in 2005.

Milena Zupančič

Theatre and film actress. Her two roles in the films directed by Matjaž Klopčič are indelibly impressed in the memory of Slovenes:  one was that of Presečnikova Meta in Cvetje v jesni (Flowers in the Autumn), and the other was that of Žašlerca in Vdovstvo Karoline Žašler (The Widowhood of Karolina Žašler). During almost forty years of her theatre, film and television career, she played many roles and received the most prestigious theatre and film awards. Among these are the Borštnik Ring (1999) and three Borštnik Awards for the best actor: in 1992 for the roles of Ase, A Green-Clad Woman, Anitra, A Strange Passenger and A Button Moulder in Peer Gynt , produced by SNG Drama Ljubljana; in 1989 for the role of Lidija in the performance Zid, jezero (The Wall, The Lake) by SNG Drama Ljubljana, and in 1970 for the role of Caetana in the performance Osvajalec (The Conqueror) by Mladinsko Theatre. In 1993 she received the Prešeren Award for her enduring contribution to the development of Slovenian culture.