Vasja Predan, the Slovenian Theatre Critic Doyen, Passed Away

The theatre and literary critic Vasja Predan passed away at the age of 91. For almost half a century he was a keen observer of Slovenian and foreign theatre productions. He was an active, prolific, reliable, and insightful critical and journalistic companion of the Slovenian theatre as well as the literary and cultural scene in the second half of the 20th century as well as in the first decade of the 21st century.

He graduated in Slavic Studies at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, worked as a dramaturge at TV Ljubljana, and was then an editor at the Naši razgledi until 1992. He wrote essays and commentaries on dramaturgical and theatrical issues, which show his openness to an updated, self-contained stage interpretation of dramatic art. He also wrote on grammatical issues and accompanying texts to book publications of plays and other texts.

He has been a member of various juries and a selector of the Sterijino Pozorje in Novi Sad. He was also the initiator, co-author, and co-editor of the monography on the director Mile Korun in 2002. Together with Dušan Moravec, he published the book One Hundred Slovenian Dramatic Artists in 2001, and his Theatre Studies and Essays in 2004.

In 1967, he received the Prešeren Fund Award, and on his 80th birthday in 2010, he received the Župančič Award for Lifetime Achievement. The City of Ljubljana bestowed him the prize for his outstanding opus of critical analysis and insightful, lively interpretations of Slovenian literature and theatre, as well as for his long-standing role as editor of Naši razgledi, which has created a high level of public intellectual dialogue within Slovenian and world art and culture. In 2016, the Association of Theatre Critics and Theatrologists awarded Predan the first Vladimir Kralj Prize for Lifetime Achievement.