This year, BRIGHT VIEW will once again award the Youth Theatre Prize including a sponsorship prize and project grant for a play development with an author.

The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts, which sponsors the prize, has almost doubled the prize money this year, making the prize one of the most highly endowed drama prizes in the German-speaking world with a total of €27,500.

The main prize (€15,000) will be awarded to French author Gwendoline Soublin and her translator Corinna Popp for “Fiesta”, published by Felix Bloch Erben. In the empathetic story of Nono and his friends, who were looking forward to Nono’s birthday fiesta together on the occasion of his tenth birthday, but are faced with big decisions due to a hurricane and lockdown, the play highlights themes such as friendship, courage and solidarity in a captivating way.

The emerging artist prize (€5,000) goes to “Buddeln” by Clara Leinemann, represented by the publisher Felix Bloch Erben. Olm, Melek and Nao are a close-knit clique who do almost everything together. But Olm slowly begins to distance himself from the other two. In a sensitive and serious way, the play addresses depression and the search for hope for a young audience without oversimplifying and without losing its sense humour.

The project grant (€7,500) goes to Viola Rohner and the Junges Theater Konstanz for their project “Wie jede andere hier (AT)”, which deals with memory. The personal memories of Margot Spiegel, a Jewish woman from Constance who was able to flee to exile in the USA in 1937, meet the current voices of young people. The collaboration deals with National Socialism, political thought and cultural identity and questions the meaning of neutrality in Switzerland geography and policies then and now.

Wed June 12th, 5 pm, FITZ Studio