The National theatre company Teatru Malta together with another seven established European theatres officially launched the international project ‘Drama of Smaller European Languages’ (DoSEL), part of the Creative Europe programme, co-funded by the European Union.
This initiative aims to increase the international recognition and accessibility of dramatic works originally written in smaller European languages and to encourage their more frequent staging.
The DoSEL project was conceived two years ago as part of the international cooperation of The Week of Slovenian Drama (WSD) festival, with support from the international European Theatre Convention network.
Upon a collective successful application, Teatru Malta received European funding from the Creative Europe programme for a two-year project, which represents the realisation and upgrading of the festival’s long-standing efforts to expand the international presence of Maltese drama and to expand Maltese drama beyond national borders.
The DoSEL project will be implemented through collaboration with seven other esteemed European cultural organisations, including the Arriaga Antzokia Theatre with Basque and Sala Beckett with Catalan from Spain, the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb with Croatian, the Estonian Theatre Agency with Estonian, the National Theatre of Kosovo with Albanian, the Ivan Vazov National Theatre with Bulgarian and the Prešeren Theatre Kranj in Slovenia with Slovenian.
Project activities will include translation of plays at translation workshops and artistic residencies, showcasing performances in smaller European languages at two theatre platforms. The first one will take place this year in 2025 as part of the international programme of the 55th Week of Slovenian Drama in March in Kranj in Slovenia, with presentations at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb.
Malta will host the second platform, an International Theatre Festival in April 2026, training and experimental research on contemporary European drama, as well as presentations of plays and playwrights at various international meetings and festivals. More than 200 playwrights, translators and other artists and cultural workers will participate in the project.
By the end of the project, Teatru Malta will publish a collection of 24 first translations of plays written in Slovenian, Maltese, Catalan, Basque, Croatian, Estonian, Bulgarian and Albanian into a major European language (German, French, or English) and one other, smaller European language.
These plays will also become part of a collection of contemporary European drama, compiled and curated with the support of the European Theatre Convention network.
“We hope that the DoSEL project, which will run until the end of October 2026, is only the beginning of a long-term international cooperation to promote dramatic writing in smaller European languages,” says the company.
Further information about the project will be available on our new website, www.dosel.eu.