Open Call: Sharing stories of illegal immigration across borders

In collaboration with the Ivan Zajc Croatian National Theatre, the Tunisian National Theatre announces an open call as part of the Deconfining Arts, Culture and Policies in Europe and Africa project, funded by the Creative Europe program 2027-2021 by the EU. This competition seeks to curate two compelling short stories centered on the theme of illegal immigration. The chosen stories will be featured alongside contributions from our other esteemed partner countries, forming a diverse multilingual anthology that illuminates the myriad perspectives and experiences of illegal migrants in today’s post-pandemic landscape. Through these selected works, we aim to shed light on the shared challenges, experiences, and triumphs of individuals navigating illegal migration across various geographical contexts.

The authors of the winning stories will be rewarded both financially and professionally. The selected texts will be translated into French and English and published in an anthology, and presented at workshops and forums. Subsequently, the chosen stories will be adapted into a dramatic text that will be staged both in in Tunis, Tunisia and Rijeka, Croatia.

Conditions:

• The text must be a prose work in the form of an original and unpublished short story. The text must be no shorter than 5 pages and no longer than 20 pages.
• Authors must be of legal age (+18) and compete exclusively with one work.
• The text can be in Tunisian/Arabic, French or English. Due to participation in international workshops later, a working knowledge of English is required.

By participating in this competition, authors accept that in the case of selection, they will enter into a copyright agreement with the Theatre and transfer their copyright to the Theatre in a manner that grants the Theatre unlimited ownership and freedom, spatially and temporally unrestricted, without any special compensation to adapt, stage (public theatrical presentation), and perform the author’s text with or without modifications, to fragment or take only motifs from the text, to translate it into any language, to publish it in a multilingual anthology as part of the Deconfining project and in other places as needed, to use it in workshops and forums.

Submission date:

from November 4th to midnight of December 4th, 2023.

All submissions must be anonymous. Any text containing any information alluding to the author will be ineligible for consideration. Authors are required to submit A SEPARATE FILE containing personal details such as name, surname, address, telephone number, email, and a brief biography including the year of birth. This file should be sent in the same email with the subject line: ‘DECONFNING short story competition.

 For further information: contact@theatrenational.tn 

Selection:

The selection will be conducted by a jury of three professionals from the literary and theatrical scene.

The received stories are sorted and archived exclusively by the competition organizers, and they are the only ones with access to authorial information; the jury members receive information about the authors only after the selection of the winning stories and the decision on the award.

The competition results will be announced four weeks after the submission deadline, accompanied by the jury’s rationale.

The organizer reserves the right to extend the award announcement deadline if a larger number of texts than expected are submitted.

The criteria of selection include (but are not limited to) creativity, relevance to the theme of illegal immigration, and adaptability to a dramatic form (the selected texts will be treated dramaturgically to make the basis of the theatrical production both in Tunisia and Croatia.) Only the authors of the selected texts will be contacted.

Awards:

The two selected texts receive the same award.

The award consists of a monetary prize of 1.500 dt as the total cost for each selected text. The awarded texts will be translated into English and French.

Part of the award is the publication of the texts in the anthology of all project works and their publication on the project’s website and social media.

The awarded individuals will be invited to all accompanying workshops and forums within the project, as well as the premiere of the performance in Tunisia.

The awards will be ceremoniously presented to the authors of the winning works