Organised by Sarajevo War Theatre – SARTR (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Heartefact Foundation (Serbia), Ulysses Theatre (Croatia), Para Film and Theatre (Norway), Binario Vivo (Italy) and Realstage (Bosnia and Herzegovina), the Sarajevo Theatre Showcase brings international theatre professionals to Sarajevo to discover powerful new voices from Southeast Europe and to spark opportunities for presentation, funding, touring and collaboration.
Taking place in September 2025, the Showcase is a flagship platform within The New Theatre Market (NTM) —a two-year initiative based primarily in Sarajevo with activities across partner countries. NTM advances co-production, talent development and sustainable practice, positioning Southeast European theatre on the international stage while promoting innovation, diversity and long-term resilience across the sector.
This year, more than 150 festival programmers, producers, artistic directors, venue managers and fund representatives from across Europe will meet over 100 programme participants from Southeast Europe. Through a curated programme of performances, pitches and professional exchange, the Showcase connects local talent with decision-makers and builds the foundations for future work.
Programme
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Showcase – A selection of the most compelling productions from Southeast Europe (2023–2025), foregrounding distinctive authorial voices and contemporary stage languages.
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Theatre Market – Focused 1-to-1 meetings between playwrights and international producers/selectors, highlighting finished scripts ready for staging.
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Industry Pitch – Public presentations of new projects in development seeking co-producers, touring partners or financing.
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Atelier – A year-long mentoring track for emerging authors, culminating in public readings of three new texts.
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Residency – A development residency for 20 early-career directors, producers and critics from the region, featuring workshops, peer exchange and study visits.
- Stage Talks – A conference addressing urgent themes in contemporary theatre: sustainability, mobility, authors’ rights and international collaboration.
The British Council is proud to support the Sarajevo Theatre Showcase as part of our mission to nurture cultural exchange, champion artistic excellence and create new routes for international collaboration across the Western Balkans and the UK.
British voices at the STS
Lora Krasteva
An artist, cultural producer and activist, Lora Krasteva creates multidisciplinary, devised work that sits at the intersection of art and civic engagement—connecting communities, artists, institutions and policy-makers. Her recent durational performance Becoming British examines national identity through the lens of first-generation migrants in the UK. Lora has advocated for creativity within homelessness provision with Arts & Homelessness International and founded Global Voices Theatre, a female, non-binary and immigrant-led company introducing international plays to UK audiences. A leadership group member of What Next? and a founding member of Migrants in Theatre, she works between Sofia and Sheffield and also practises as a personal and professional development coach. At the Showcase, Lora will contribute perspectives on inclusive practice, community-rooted creation and cross-border authorship.
Chris White
A dramaturg and director specialising in international collaboration, Shakespeare and new writing, Chris White works with organisations including Paines Plough (Associate Dramaturg) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (Associate Learning Practitioner). His recent production My English Persian Kitchen by Hannah Khalil sold out at the Traverse Theatre during the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe and transfers to Soho Theatre before a UK-Ireland tour. Chris has co-led Soho Theatre’s Writers’ Lab for a decade, developing many of the UK’s leading emerging playwrights, and has directed work across Europe and further afield, from Lille and Milan to Mumbai and Beijing. In Sarajevo, he will support project development and dramaturgical clinics, sharing practical approaches to text, audience and international touring.
Catherine Paskell
Artistic Director of Dirty Protest—Wales’s new-writing company—Catherine Paskell is a director, producer and dramaturg with 25 years’ experience making professional theatre grounded in communities and shown internationally. Recent work ranges from Pindstrup, Dust (a site-responsive promenade performance in rural Denmark) to the Allvalidation dramaturgy festival with integrated performers in Kazakhstan, and The Exquisite Corpse, a hybrid project linking artists in Wales with collaborators in Brazil to explore climate justice, industrial crime and shared futures. Catherine helps lead the Arts in Rural European Areas (AREA) network and serves as Vice-Chair of Tŷ Pawb arts centre and market in Wrexham. At the Showcase she will foreground community-led methodologies, rural-urban exchange and sustainable production models.
Ian Rowlands
A Welsh dramatist, theatre creator and TV director, Ian Rowlands has led a wide spectrum of companies across his career, including a project theatre company, the national community company, a building-based production company and an international touring company. While he currently works primarily in television, in recent years he has spearheaded the Aurora Borealis project—a collaboration between The Torch Theatre (Wales), Volya Theatre (Norway) and The Baxter Theatre (South Africa). It is as the leader of this project that Ian joins the Showcase, seeking to introduce this specific theatrical form to new audiences and to explore opportunities for commissioning and integrating an Eastern European narrative into the evolving text.
Through these contributions—and in partnership with the organisers of the Sarajevo Theatre Showcase—the British Council continues to build creative bridges between the UK and Southeast Europe, supporting artists to develop work, forge partnerships and reach new audiences.