The jury's decision: "Giulia Giammona brings the rarely performed theatre piece "Penelope" by visual artist Leonora Carrington to the stage. The surreal text is about an 18-year-old girl who grew up in a fairytale castle and her relationship with a rocking horse. The director discovers references to the author's biography, which she emphasises in interspersed quotes and documentary images. Harp, opera singing, acrobatics, choreography, visual art - Giammona and her interdisciplinary team combine all these elements with great attention to detail to create scenes and images of haunting power that, following Leonora Carrington's own guiding principle - "Don't intellectualise!" - surprise again and again."
The Körber Foundation prize, which is endowed with a production cost subsidy of 10,000 euros, will support the winner in a new directing project at a municipal or state theatre or alternatively in the independent scene.
The festival is regarded as the most important platform for up-and-coming directors in the German-speaking world. Following the last performance on Sunday evening, the five-member jury discussed the productions shown in public at the Thalia theatre in Gaußstraße. This year's jury consisted of Anna Bergmann (director and theatre director of Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe), Naemi Friedmann (director and participant in KSJR 2023), Tobias Herzberg (dramaturge and director, member of the management group at Schauspielhaus Wien), Martin Thomas Pesl (critic, author, translator) and Mable Preach (director and curator). For personal reasons, Naemi Friedman missed one day of the festival at short notice and was therefore no longer eligible to vote. She took part in the jury discussion in an advisory capacity.
Giulia Giammona *1995 in Munich, is studying drama directing at the Mozarteum University Salzburg until 2024. From 2017 to 2019, she worked as an assistant director at the Bavarian State Opera, where she staged her first works. Further productions have taken her to the Bühnen Bern, the Crossroads Festival and the Salzburg Festival. She is interested in the interface between drama and music theatre, interdisciplinary work and the sensual dimension of discourse.
