TIAGO RODRIGUES - RECIPIENT OF "GRAND PRIX ION CARAMITRU 2024"

Honoring the life and work of Ion Caramitru, the legendary figure in Romania, the Balkans, and Europe, known as the first Minister of Culture after the fall of the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime, an actor and director of the National Theatre in Bucharest, and the first President of Academia Balkanica Europeana, we're proud to announce the establishment of the "Grand Prix Ion Caramitru", an award which will granted annually to individuals with  the exceptional creative achievements in theatre.    

In collaboration with the Romanian Cultural Institute (IRC), recipients of this award are selected by the jury, consisting of three members of ABE:

Jordan Plevnes - President of ABE, theatre author (Macedonia)
Branislav Mičunović-Žaga, - Thetatre director and ex-Minister of culture (Montenegro) 
Gradimir Gojer - Thetatre director, theatrologist (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

First recipient of this award is Tiago Rodrigues,  a Portuguese actor, director, playwright and producer.
His work has been recognized by his ability to break borders between the theatre and different realities, challenging our perception of social and historical phenomenon. Throughout his career, Tiago Rodrigues has become a builder of bridges between cities and countries, at once host and advocate of a living theatre.
 
Since he started as an actor, 25 years ago, Tiago Rodrigues has always looked at the theatre as a human assembly: a place where people meet, like in a cafe, to confront their thoughts and share their time.
He crossed paths with the Belgian company Tg Stan at the age of twenty. There, he developed his acting, his writing for the theatre, and his taste for the collective. As an author and director, he founded the company Mundo Perfeito with Magda Bizarro in 2003 before becoming director of the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in Lisbon from 2015 to 2021. Combining true stories and fiction and weaving together the intimate and the political, Tiago Rodrigues’s shows are deeply influenced by the idea of writing with and for the actors, and by his quest for a transformation of our conscience through the tools of theatre. His goal is to bring us together to question our world thanks to the power of the words, of the bodies, and of the imagination of the spectators
 
Currently, he is a director of the Festival d’Avignon, an institution he knows well, having presented several shows here, including Antony and Cleopatra in 2015, Sopro in 2017, The Cherry Orchard in 2021, and By heart and Dans la mesure de l’impossible in 2023.