STA, 4 January 2021 - Dramaturgist Vesna Jurca Tadel is taking over as acting director of SNG Drama Ljubljana, Slovenia's leading theatre company, on Tuesday. She succeeds Igor Samobor, who stepped down in November after eight years on the job.
Jurca Tadel, a dramaturgist, critic and translator who has worked at the Culture Ministry since 1995, has been appointed as acting director by Culture Minister Vasko Simoniti for a period of up to one year.
A call for applications to fill the post of director will be published in the meantime, the Culture Ministry has told the STA.
Jurca Tadel has a degree in dramaturgy and worked at multiple Slovenian theatres between 1985 and 1994. After a brief spell with the publisher Cankarjeva Založba, she joined the Culture Ministry in 1995. Most recently she headed the arts division of the ministry's Creativity Directorate.
She is planning to decide on her priorities based on the paperwork handed over to her by Samobor, who cited the Culture Ministry's foot-dragging over the theatre's renovation as the reason for his resignation in November, a claim the ministry has denied.
Jurca Tadel has also been on the judging panel of the Kresnik Prize for best novel for several years and in 2007 headed the judges of the Maribor Theatre Festival, the biggest such event in Slovenia.
