For the ninth time in succession, the Montblanc Young Directors Award took place as part of the Salzburg Festival 2010. Four young ambitious ensembles from the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany were nomineed for this year’s coveted award, presenting themselves to an international audience.

The Montblanc Young Directors Award ceremony 2010 took place on Saturday, August 21st, 11:00 am, at the “republic”. Among the four nominees were:

The Swedish-born director Jakop Ahlbom, who has worked in the Netherlands for several years, with INNENSCHAU – a theatre thriller, a journey under the surface of the human psyche into a realm of secret wishes and bizarre fantasies which are revealed in layers during the performance to become more and more visible until the audience are left sitting in the dark.

Sylvain Creuzevault and his company d’ores et déjà from Paris with their production NOTRE TERREUR – a play about how the theatre can look at and contemplate the terror of the French Revolution. The play shows the incredible willpower of Robespierre and his fellow members of the revolutionary government in their attempts to reinvent democracy, but also focuses on their desperation at failing in the face of the revolution’s ideals.

Angela Richter from Germany with TOD IN THEBEN, a play written by the Norwegian author Jon Fosse, which comprises the three great tragedies about the rise and fall of King Oedipus, his exile on Colonus and the dire fate of his daughter Antigone in a terse drama of great emotional density.

Claude Schmitz from Brussels with MARY MOTHER OF FRANKENSTEIN – a piece about the old dream of creating a human being in our own image. The show presents a living nightmare which narrates the life and works of the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and also references the incredible pace of biotechnology we are witnessing today.

The jury, consisting of Dr. Helga Rabl-Stadler (President of the Salzburg Festival), Birgit Minichmayr (actress), Dr. Andrea Schurian (journalist), Klaus Maria Brandauer (actor) and Thaddaeus Ropac (Ropac Gallery), presented the Montblanc Young Directors Award 2010 for the best director to Sylvain Creuzevault and his company d’ores et déjà.

With Sylvain Creuzevault’s NOTRE TERREUR, the jury honours the impressive performance of an accomplished ensemble in which the actors are turned into co-directors and the director himself becomes a primus inter pares. The company has achieved to make the story of the French Revolution and its implications for the present accessible for youthful enthusiasm; they show the failure of the highest ideals and the dangers of a dictatorship of the virtuous. The company succeeded with sparse means and in direct contact with the audience, through clever use of the space and increasing dramatic force.