Theatre with No Home, Studio 12 and wiener wortstaetten present

Danube Drama or Awful Coffee, Cheap Cigarettes

Written by: Kerstin Specht (Germany), Robert Woelfl (Austria),

Ákos Németh (Hungary), Anna Grusková (Slovakia), Ugljesa Sajtinac (Serbia), Nina Mitrovič (Croatia), Peca Stefan (Romania), Jurij Dačev (Bulgaria), Pavel Paduraru (Moldova), Oleksandr Irvanec (Ukraine)

Ten authors – 10 Danubian Countries – 1 play

Theatre, photos, film, sound and social mix

An aging man and a woman, local media stars, a meditating Austrian clerk and a Serbian guy walking under water, tabloid journalists, sisters who lost their father, a Moldavian prostitute or a watchdog – their stories talk about life in countries from Germany to Ukraine. The Danube river connects and separates them at the same time. They are people just like us – longing for happiness, but are they able to live happily?

The Danube Drama project is inviting all of you to a multimedia trip trough the Danubian countries. The main glue of the mixture of theatre, documentary photographs, sound and film is the river what symbolically specifies the cultural space and memory of the region. The original photographs show the contemporary atmosphere on the Danubian banks and spaces where the plays are located. The authentic pictures are in contrast with the fragments from the optimistic film From the Black Forrest till the Black Sea from 1957. Original electronic music is an echo of the future. Another outstanding feature of the project is the first cooperation of professional actors and actors who sale the Slovak streetpaper Nota bene.

The drama project Danube Drama was initiated by the literary organization wiener wortstaetten in 2008. 9 plays were written by the authors of all the Danubian countries. A year later the plays were presented as a scenic reading during the International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra. Danube Drama or Awful Coffee, Cheap Cigarettes is their first staging.

Concept of the Dramatic Texts Collection Donaudrama®: Bernhard Studlar a Wolfgang Stahl, wiener wortstatetten

Literary advisor and producer: Martina Vannayová

Photos from the Danube countries: Pavol Vojtko

Original Music: Mrkva

Set Design: Slavomír Bachorík

Editing of Visual Design: Róbert Šulák

Special advisor: Patrik Krebs

Cast: Edita Borsová, Juraj Hrčka, Juraj Igonda, Juliana Johanidesová,

Joshua, Uršula Kovalyk, Zdenek Langer, Vlado Zboroň

Concept, Translation, Direction: Anna Grusková

Opening 17. October 2010, Štúdio 12, Bratislava, reprises 21. October, 21. November, 2. and 3. December

Supported by: Nadačný fond Slovak Telekom pri Nadácii Intenda, program Kultúra bez bariér Nadácie Orange, Goethe Institut, Rakúske kultúrne centrum, Slovenský filmový ústav, Rumunský kultúrny inštitút,  Drift

Special thanks to: Laci Blažek, Hans Escher, Vladislava Fekete, Peter Varga, Juraj Johanides, Eva Gajdošová, Martina Herbst