About the director
Žiga Hren belongs to the youngest generation of Slovenian theatre directors. His student production Noži v kurah (Knives in Hens) by David Harrower toured to international student festivals in Sarajevo and Novi Sad in 2021, for which the actors were awarded the collective Sever Student Award in the same year. He graduated in 2022 with a production of Georg Büchner's Woyzeck, which toured the same year to the International Student Festival in Stara Zagora (Bulgaria), where Žiga Hren won the award for Best Director and actor Jure Rajšp won the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. As assistant director, Žiga Hren has worked with directors such as Jernej Lorenci, Tomi Janežič, Ivica Buljan, Janez Pipan, Žiga Divjak and others. He is finishing his studies at the second level of theatre directing with the production of Kosmač's The Ballad of the Trumpet and the Cloud.
About the author
Ciril Kosmač was born on 28 September 1910 in Slap ob Idrijci. He attended school in Gorizia and Tolmin, where he graduated in 1928. In 1929, he was one of the first Slovenians to be arrested and imprisoned for his participation in the national-revolutionary organisation TIGR. In 1930, he was acquitted of juvenile charges at the first trial in Trieste. After two years, he fled to Ljubljana, where he worked for various organisations and newspapers. During the war, he spent most of his time abroad, joined the partisans and returned to his homeland in 1944, where he was editor of the partisan newsletter Slovenski poročevalec. After the war, he worked mainly as a freelance writer and translator. He also wrote the screenplay for the first Slovenian film Na svoje zemlji, for which he received the Prešeren award in 1949. After 1960, he stopped publishing new works, but in the following years he received a number of important awards. He died on 28 January 1980 in Ljubljana. Kosmač's narrative work is one of the most important works of contemporary Slovenian prose, thanks to the individuality of his poetics and his exceptional style, which is characterised by a balance of beauty and clarity of message. His best-known works include Tantadruj (1959), Pomladni dan (Spring day) 1953, Sreča in kruh (Happiness and Bread) 1946 and Balada o trumpenti in oblaku (The Ballad of the Trumpet and the Cloud) 1956.
