The Mark Ravenhill Award is part of the Centre for Contemporary Drama project, which has been implemented by the LETÍ Theatre since 2010, has been awarded for the ninth time already. The eight-member independent jury could choose from more than 80 premieres in 2018, with five of them making it to the final round.
Apart from The Agent staged in the Švandovo Theatre Studio, other nominees included the Dejvické Theatre with The Elegance of the Molecule, Viktor Tauš’s independent production Heaven’s Gate and Amerikánka, the South Bohemian Theatre with Almost Perfect Love and the amateur company Ty-já-tr Hrobeso with the production The Golden Dragon.
The award was given out by the internationally acknowledged French author of the Romanian origin
Alexandra Badea, whose play Europe Connexion has been staged by the LETÍ Theatre in the VILA Štvanice since this year’s February. The LETÍ Theatre has worked with Badea in the European project
Fabulamundi – Playwrighting Europe, with the aim to stimulate the exchange of contemporary drama across Europe, which perfectly correlates with the Mark Ravenhill Award initiative.
The Mark Ravenhill Award for the production of the new text is the acknowledgement of Czech authors for their work in staging contemporary drama. A new text is a text, which was written in the period of ten years before the corresponding award. The award-winning production is elected based on the consensus of the Mark Ravenhill Award Advisory Board, who take into consideration the symbiosis of a high-quality text and high quality of the production. The Board also monitors the results of authorial or collective production, with the decisive factor being the final text and its ability to be transferred outside the context of the specific production and poetics of theatre it was designed for.