Brücke Berlin Theatre Award 2018

The Brücke Berlin Theatre Prize, awarded for the first time and endowed with two prizes of 5,000 euros, goes to the Serbian author Iva Brdar and her translator Alida Bremer for the play "Daumenregeln" (Rowohlt Theaterverlag), which received its German premiere at Schauspiel Stuttgart in June.

Jury member Jürgen Jakob Becker (Literarisches Colloquium Berlin) explains: „(...). In her play "Daumenregeln", Iva Brdar follows the hitchhiking tour of two young women to southern Eastern Europe. In a largely deserted landscape, the protagonists encounter figures that are as bizarre as they are sharply delineated, as they piece together a new existence from fragments of former life plans. The result is a surreal road movie; everyone is on the road, no one knows where from, no one knows where to. The haunting piece is written in vibrant verse, translated into evocative German by Alida Bremer.“

The award ceremony will take place on 25 September 2018 at 7 pm at the Deutsches Theater Berlin.

The Brücke Berlin Prizes are awarded every two years by the BHF BANK Foundation in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut, the Literary Colloquium Berlin and the Deutsches Theater Berlin. The patron is Herta Müller; Jürgen Jakob Becker, Sabine Berking, Wilhelm Burmester, Ulrich Khuon, Patricia Klobusiczky, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann and Peter Michalzik were members of the jury.

With the Brücke Berlin Prizes, the BHF BANK Foundation would like to draw attention to the current fiction and dramatic literature of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, whose voices help to shape cultural exchange and the process of further European understanding. In addition, the artistic achievements of the literary translators, who play a significant role in the important work of mediation, are to be honoured in particular.