A shower of prizes for the final year drama class for Jelinek's "The Silent Girl"

This year's national competition, combined with the 35th meeting for the promotion of young actors, took place from 7 to 13 July 2024 in Frankfurt am Main and was hosted by the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts - 180 aspiring actors and 18 studies were represented. The Federal Minister of Education and Research of the Federal Republic of Germany's sponsorship awards totalling 25,000 euros were presented on the recommendation of an independent jury consisting of Anna Böttcher (actress), Robert Gerloff (director), Angela Obst (dramaturge), Stefanie Reinsperger (actress) and Joana Tischkau (choreographer, artist and director).

The ensemble - Colin Johner, Victoria Kraft, Joseph Lang, Valerie Martin, Lena Plochberger, Joyce Sanhá, Fayola Schönrock, Payam Yazdani and Adrian Weinek (final-year drama students at the Thomas Bernhard Institute) - received several awards for its production ‘Das schweigende Mädchen’ by Elfriede Jelinek about the NSU trial:

• Ensemble Prize Switzerland/Main Prize (endowed with 10,000 euros)
  sponsored by the Conference of Swiss Universities of the Performing Arts and Literary Writing (KDKS)
  
  Excerpt from the jury statement: ‘And then you came. At the very end of this exciting, inspiring week, you swept us away, shook us up, didn't let us get away with it. And there was a lot at stake. How do you talk about silence? How do you play out something that is almost impossible to grasp, the crime of the NSU, which a society, our entire society, largely ducks away from? That, we think, is great art. Your play was as concrete as the bloodstain on the floor, precisely coordinated and special in every single moment. You were brave, you came close to us, you had impact, you had something to say. We saw a consistently excellent ensemble, with a clear tone, never moralising. You had humour until the laughter got stuck in our throats. You were an organic body that dissolved into individual strong voices, sketched concrete situations and characters and then reassembled into a whole. You climbed and roamed this complex Jelinekian linguistic structure, you thought it through consistently and played your way through it. You were mercilessly precise and all present [...]’
   
• Prize of the students (endowed with 2,000 euros)
  Selected by the student participants from the directors‘ group of the German Stage Association and the German Stage Owners’ Association (GDBA)
   
• Solo prizes (endowed with 1,000 euros each)
  Payam Yazdani and Joyce Mayne Sanhá

The Ensemble Prize goes to students of the Thomas Bernhard Institute for the second time in a row (after 2023 with ‘Tartuffe’ by Peter Licht). The two solo prize winners already have permanent engagements - Joyce Mayne Sanha at the Berliner Ensemble and Payam Yazdani at the Junges Schauspielhaus Hamburg.

The prizes are the crowning glory of the academic year, after the directing prize at the Körber Studio Junge Regie in Hamburg went to directing graduate Giulia Giammona for ‘Penelope’ by Leonora Carrington in June.

The national competition for German-speaking drama students, organised by the European Theatre Academy ‘Konrad Ekhof’ Hamburg, offers young actors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland an opportunity to present themselves, learn from each other and discuss study goals, methods and the future of theatre together. The competition promotes the students' ability to deal with professional criticism and their own judgement and provides an insight into the different training paths of the universities.