Artistic Team

Andrej Nosov (born on 18.07.1983) is a theater director, producer, and activist based in Belgrade. He completed his education at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and graduated at DAS Graduate School in Amsterdam – DAS Theatre Master (former Das Arts). He participated in more than 30 courses, trainings, seminars on transitional justice, reconciliation, including specific Memory School. As a theater maker, he directed plays in collaboration with major Western Balkan theaters and art institutions. Nosov created theater works based on contemporary plays as well as collaborative processes with actors, dramaturges and other contributors opening space for unusual language, forms, topics, and ways in the local context. He is director and founder of Heartefact (heartefact.org) which was established in 2009 in Serbia with the objective to support critical awareness and artistic engagement on current social and political issues. For the past 10 years, the organization has produced dozens of theatre performances, exhibitions, and artistic competitions. He is the founder of Heartefact Festival and Pride Theatre Festival in Belgrade. As the author of Heartefact’s theatre production They have already gone, he was awarded at the prestigious Ibsen competition Ibsen Scope for 2022. 

Anna Anttonen is a literary art teacher, festival director, exhibition designer and musician who loves early mornings, silence, the scent of a forest, a body tired with pilates, and swimming in outdoor waters warmed by summer.

Anttonen has worked at the Oulu Children’s Cultural Centre as the teacher in charge of literary arts since 2006. By basic education, she is a teacher of Finnish language and literature (M.Sc.). Anna has solid experience in developing literary art education and promoting children’s and youth literature: she teaches, trains and produces literature-based learning materials constantly as part of her work. Various expert positions in the field of children’s culture are also part of Anttonen’s job description.

Anttonen and her colleague Kati Inkala have acted as artistic directors of the Lumotut sanat ‘Enchanted Words’ festival for children and young people from the festival’s first year (2007). Together with their artist groups, they have written and produced several experiential literature-based exhibitions, such as Saareen ‘To the Island’ (2010), Unikudelmia ‘Dream Tapestries’ (2017) and Minä tykkään nyt ‘I like it now’ (2019).

Draško Adžić graduated and got his PhD in the field of Composition from the Faculty of Music arts in Belgrade in the class of academician Isidora Žebeljanin. He works at the same faculty as an assistant professor. His compositions have been performed in Serbia, Canada, England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Germany, Poland, Italy, Armenia, Malta and in the Balkans, on festivals such as: The Month of Contemporary Music (Berlin), Gaudeamus Music Week (Amsterdam), ISA PragWienBudapest, Music Biennale (Zagreb), Bemus… Among the halls where his works have been performed, the most notable are: Berghain (Berlin), Muziekgebouw an’t IJ (Amsterdam), Salão Nobre da Escola de Música (Lisabon), Narodowe Forum (Vroclav), Koerner Hall (Gent), Museum Mimara (Zagreb), Studio Bajsić HRT (Zagreb), Kolarčev`s legacy. He’s worked with many orchestras and ensembles, including the Belgrade Philharmonic, the Symphonic Orchestra of RTS, the No Borders Orchestra, the Metamorphosis Ensemble, Strings of the Saint Georgie, the Cantus Ensemble, the Collegium Musicum choir, the FILUM ensemble, etc. He composes contemporary music and until today he has participated in over 50 projects in Serbia, Germany and over the region. His contemporary music could be heard at festivals such as: Berlinale, Neue Stücke aus Europa (Visbaden), Raindance (London), Theater Festival Ulysses (Brijuni), Dubrovnik`s summer games, MESS (Sarajevo), Fest, Bitef festival, Sterija`s Theater. He was one of the artists representing Serbia at the 13th Prague Quadrennial. He is a two times winner of the Sterija`s award and was a member of the jury at the 51st Bitef. 

Eva Moškon. As a child, she sang in various choirs and performed at various singing festivals. She studied vocal technique with various music pedagogues (for pop and rock genre and solo singing). She developed her own singing interpretation in various pop and rock bands and in various musical collaborations (Brencl band, Sonic Brothers, Črnobelo, Prezrti, Moonart, Come Back, Nermin Puškar…). She gained her first major media experience and contact with the music industry in collaboration with Jan Plestenjak. They recorded a duet entitled ‘Iz pekla do raja’. The song became a hit in 2005. From 2008 to 2014, she devoted herself to the author’s project E.V.A. – Electric Venom Agency, in which she worked as a singer and author of vocal lines and lyrics. She is currently a member of the Slovenian jam band The Dreams and occasionally performs as a soloist and occasionally collaborates with other musicians.

Imola Julianna Szabó (born 1984, Budapest) is a “Typeandpixelstevedore”, writer, graphic designer, illustrator and multimedia artist. She studied dance theoretic at Hungarian Dance University. She had written five books: Varratok (L’Harmattan, 2014), Kinőtt szív (L’Harmattan, 2015), Lakása van bennem. Jelenkor, 2019), Rókamók és Círmacs (Cerkabella, 2020), Holtak aranya, holdak ezüstje / Złoto zmarłych, srebro księżyców (Cser, 2020). She received different literary and art prizes and fellowships: Móricz Zsigmond Literary Scholarship (2014), Beautiful Hungarian Book Prize (2015, 2016), Aranyvackor Prize (2015), 50 Young Talents Programme (2015), Írók Boltja Literary Scholarship (2016), WFA/Poland Scholarship (2020), Tengerszem Book Prize (2020), Molnár István Prize (2016, 2018), Szabó Magda Exhibition Prize (2021), Erzsébetvárosi Literary Scholarship (2022). She is a mother of three children. They are living with nine rescued animals in the countryside, Rókadomb.  

Kristóf Horváth “Actor Bob” (b. 1978) played for seven years at Bárka, five years at the Maladype Theater, he has been working with children for ten years, and he leads skills development sessions at the Karaván Art Foundation. He is a head of the Tudás 6alom campaign. With the Bob és Bobék Orchestra, he gives thematic musical poetry-theatre evenings. He is also a winner of the Slam Poetry National Championship.

Maami Snellman is a literary art teacher, children´s author and chidren´s theater performer. She finised Finnish language and literature and history of literature at the open university in Helsinki and a programme of Creative writing basic studies. She has been working in Oulu as a literary art teacher, she is a children’s author and theatre performer. She is working as head teacher of literary art in Vantaan sanataidekoulu since 2006.

Niki Szekeres is one of the founding members of the HUBBY – Hungarian Children’s Book Forum, along with Zoltán Jeney and Zoltán Pompor, and I am currently the president of the association. After graduating from the PPKE-BTK Hungarian-Communication major she started dealing with literature quite soon (reviews, criticisms, studies, interviews, etc.). She is one of the newest authors and columnists of Meseutca, who previously worked for Pagony.

Rafał Siderski (born 1984) is a visual artist working mainly with photography. He received his master’s degree at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, where he is currently pursuing a doctoral course. He is participating in the Albom.pl initiative devoted to digitisation and use of photographic archives. In 2019, he published the book Wyjedź. Zostań/Leave. Stay, for which he won a distinction in the Photo Publication of the Year 2019 competition. In September 2021, together with Małgorzata Lebda, he engaged in a literary-visual-poetic adventure, and the material created in the process was published on an ongoing basis in Pismo magazine. In August 2022, the material was transformed into an exhibition titled Przepływ(y)/Flow(s), which was a visual and literary interpretation of the relationship established with the river during that adventure.

In his spare time he goes or stays ‘somewhere’. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Poland (including Białystok, Rybnik, Poznań, Warsaw, Gliwice) and abroad (in Germany, Czech Republic, Belarus, Italy, Lithuania and Japan). His works have been frequently awarded and he has received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (Kultura w sieci). He cooperates with Newsweek Polska, Wprost, Sukces, Weekend, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, Gazeta Wyborcza and others.

Staša Prah graduated from a junior music and ballet school in Maribor (piano and ballet), an art high school in Nova Gorica and studied dramaturgy at the AGRFT. She participated in improvisational theater for 15 years, 10 of which as an actress – improviser, later as a judge and moderator. Since the beginning of her studies, she has been working with Pionirski dom in Ljubljana for 11 years as a member of the jury at the children’s theater festival Gledališke sanje and runs workshops for mentors of children’s theater groups. She is one of the four theater trainers in the European Young Theater project. As a dramaturg, she participated in drama productions The Smurf Kuzma Gets an Award (SMG), SVA. and The Horrible (LGL), Gulliver’s Travels (SNG Maribor), When a Child Was a Child (MGL), Madame Bovary (SNG Nova Gorica), Dog, Night and Knife, Horrible Beauty and Hamlet (SSG Trieste), The Man Who Tasted forms (Flota), in the operas Granatno jabelo (SNG Maribor) and La Cecchina or Nobody’s Daughter (SKGG), Beauty and the Beast (SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana), in the dance performance Red herring (Flota) and the drama-dance performance Synesthesia – opus (Fleet). Dramaturgy was a conscious decision to move from the stage boards to the most hidden corners of theatrical creation. She was interested in everything invisible, intangible, magical. She wanted to create holistically and devote herself to the breadth of the theatrical event. As a dramatist, she is very aware of the key points of theatrical life, which are: care and feeling for the audience – creating for children, childish in adults and special attention to theater sheets (the only tangible documents of a fleeting theatrical creation) – dedication and commitment to the stage – the medium , which hides and enables us the whole world – as well as awareness and humility among selected colleagues (energetic connection that feeds a harmonious creative force).

Urša Strehar Benčina graduated on Faculty of Arts Ljubljana. She is cultural anthropologist and theatre improviser, who is working with young people and exploring the social themes through artistic forms in Pionirski dom since 2008. She is a coordinator of Little impro school – national programme of improvisation for primary schools, a host of Impro league and School impro league, an impro judge and an impro mentor. She was a coordinator and a member of the jury on the Children’s festival of theatre dreams from 2010-2020. She is a part of the feministic improvisational collective Improške, where they are exploring gender roles, power structures and representation of gender on stage and beyond. She worked, performed and led workshops on various festivals, projects and countries.

Vanja Ejdus was born in 1976. She graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts of Belgrade. Since 2002, she’s been a permanent member of the National Theatre in Belgrade. During her career, she’s played more than forty roles of classical and modern repertoire of the National Theatre but also in other theatres throughout Belgrade. She has worked with the most respected Serbian directors, as well as with other artists in the field of theatre and film art. She’s won a lot of prestigious awards for her work. Vanja has many years of experience in working with children and young people. For years, she’s worked as an educator to the dancers of the troupe “Kolo” and through drama workshops she brings the dancers of traditional dance in the framework of drama and stage thinking.

Wenancjusz Ochmann (born 1969) a musician by passion and training. A music teacher, composer (i.g. Wizje/Visions with Barabara Zielińska VAN or Światło dla A!/Light for A!), pianist and vocal trainer.

By passion and by profession – mentor, researcher, trainer. He is fascinated by the idea of long life learning and the implementation of innovative educational methods for adults, especially in informal and non-formal learning contexts as well as in digital environments.

He is the creator of mentoring methods for artists and creative professionals that support them in their personal and professional lives in the world of globalisation, digitalisation and postmodernity. He is currently working on and implementing transnational educational and cultural projects, mainly financed by EU funds. A mature male – feminist, vegetarian and environmentalist. In a permanent, happy relationship with a woman. Fascinated by cultural diversity, yet proud and happy to come from and live in Central Europe, whose cultural and civilizational heritage is his inspiration. Sensitive to the needs of people, animals and the entire planet in the time of crisis.

Weronika Murek (born 1989) writer, playwright and columnist. She graduated from the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Silesia, Faculdad de Derecho of the Universidad de Barcelona as well as the Creative Writing (SLA) postgraduate course at the Jagiellonian University.

She is the author of a collection of short stories Uprawa roślin południowych metodą Miczurina (Czarne Publishing House 2015) which was nominated for the Polityka Passports, the Gdynia Literary Award for prose and the Conrad Award. The collection reached the final stage of the Nike Award and won the Witold Gombrowicz Award for the best book debut. It has been translated into French, Hungarian, Slovak and Serbian and the Norwegian translation is in progress. One of her stories was adapted to a short film Maria nie żyje/Maria is dead and a feature film Przejście/Passage (directed by D. Lamparska) that reached the final of the Golden Lions competition of the Gdynia Film Festival.

In 2015, she received the Gdynia Literary Award for her drama Feinweinblein (translated into English, French, Georgian and Romanian) and the award for the best debut in the Staging of Contemporary Art Competition for Sztuka Mięsa (staged by the Silesian Theatre in Katowice and directed by R. Talarczyk). In 2017, a TV theatre play based on Feinweinblein was also produced in the Teatroteka series (directed by M. Bednarkiewicz).

In 2019, her collection of plays with the same title was published (Czarne Publishing House). Since 2015, she has worked with Polish theatres, including the Studio Theatre, the New Theatre in Warsaw, the TR Warszawa, the Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw, the Słowacki Theatre in Kraków, the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw, the W. Siemaszkowa Theatre in Rzeszów, the H. Modrzejewska Theatre in Legnica and the Contemporary Theatre in Szczecin. She is a regular contributor to Dwumiesięcznik, the monthly magazine Pismo and the bi-monthly Książki. Magazyn do czytania.