Uglješa Šajtinac

Uglješa Šajtinac (Serbian Cyrillic: Угљеша Шајтинац; born 1 October 1971 in Zrenjanin, Yugoslavia) is a Serbian writer and playwright. Šajtinac grew up in an artistic parents home, his mother Mirjana is an actress, his father is the poet, writer and playwright Radivoj Šajtinac, he studied Dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts of Belgrade’s University of Arts and graduated in 1999. He worked as a dramaturge at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad from 2003 to 2005, then he became professor of dramaturgy at the Academy of Arts of the University of Novi Sad. He lives in his native place.In theatre history, he is the only Serbian playwright of whom a play (Huddersfield) was first performed abroad in English as world premiere. He was inspired to write this play after visiting Huddersfield in 2000, first performed at Leeds Playhouse in 2004. In 2005, a Serbian performance has been shown at Yugoslav Drama Theatre, and a German performance at Volksbühne Berlin in the same year, an U.S. American performance at TUTA Theatre Chicago in 2006 (adaptation by Caridad Svich, developed during INTERPLAY playwright exchange project of New Dramatists), a Croatian performance at Zagrebačko kazalište mladih (Youth Theatre) in 2018, directed by Rene Medvešek, and a Bosnian-Herzegovinian performance at Kamerni teatar 55 in 2018, co-produced by ASU. It has been performed as a stage reading of drama project 3D at Zlomvaz Festival 2011 of DAMU in Prague. There is a French translation by Yves-Alexandre Tripković from 2018. He received the Sterijina Award for his play at Sterijino pozorje Festival 2005, and he also participated in creating the screenplay for the same named film.Šajtinac wrote a dramatized adaptation of the novel Robinson Crusoe, which was played by Theatre Playground under the title Life On A Desert Island as family show for children in the Central Park, the Riverside Park and the Prospect Park of New York City in 2009; Serbian premiere as open-air event by Theater Playground on Ciganlija island in 2003, and his second play on a story of the novel Robinson and the Pirates was performed in the following year.In 2010, he participated as co-author in creating the play Danube Drama or Awful Coffee, Cheap Cigarettes, which was realized by Wiener Wortstaetten as international drama project, written by ten authors from ten countries, and staged by Slovak Theater without home (Divadlo bez domova) at Štúdio 12 in Bratislava.He is laureate of some major literary prizes such as the Biljana Jovanović Award 2007 for Walk on!, the Ivo Andrić Award 2014 for Banatorium, the European Union Prize for Literature 2014 for his novel Quite Modest Gifts and the Isidora Sekulić Award 2017 for his collected short stories The Woman from Juárez containing impressive narrations about individuals of global migration and its political reasons. The award-winning novel Quite Modest Gifts has already been published in Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Macedonian and Ukrainian translations.The International Youth Library added his children's book Gang Of Undesirable Pets (Banda neželjenih ljubimaca) to the White Ravens List for recommendable children and youth literature 2019. Šajtinac is a selected author of the French drama project Instant MIX which is supported by Creative Europe. In 2017, his play Banat has been introduced at Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques due to this project. In 2008, this play was already translated by Chris Thorpe under the title Borderland, and in 2012, there was a German-speaking stage reading at Leipzig Book Fair, including subsequent talk with the author.In 2003, at that time pretty young and still unknown internationally, he wrote the screenplay for the short film True Story of an umbrella, a bicycle, a bullet and an Easter bunny (Istinita priča o kišobranu, biciklu, jednom metku i uskršnjem zeki), was its co-director and can be seen in it as actor in a leading role.