Ivica Buljan


Ivica Buljan is a Croatian theater director, playwright, theater critic, and educator whose work is widely known in Croatia and performed around the globe.

Career

Buljan studied political science, French, and comparative literature at the University of Zagreb. During his studies, worked as a writer for magazines including Polet and Start. He has served as a regular theater critic for Slobodna Dalmacija, a daily newspaper published in Split, Croatia. He is also a member of the editorial boards of the theater show Novi Prolog and the theoretical theater journal Frakcija. Buljan is also associated with the international theater magazines Primer Acto, Ubu, Mask.
Buljan's work as a theater director includes both directing works and running multiple groups and festivals. Buljan's work has been performed at international festivals in more than 30 different countries. Drawing on Antonin Artaud, his theater focuses on the actor's presence.
Buljan served as the director of the Croatian National Theatre in Split from 1998 to 2002. In 1999, during his tenure, the Croatian National Theatre joined the European Theater Convention. Buljan is also the co-founder and artistic director of the Mini theater in Ljubljana as well as the founder and director of the New Theatre in Zagreb. He is a member of International Association of ETC in Brussels, the Institute of Mediterranean Theatre in Madrid, and ITI-UNESCO in Paris. Together with Dubravko Vrgoč, Buljan founded the World Theatre Festival in Zagreb in 2003 and serves as its artistic director.
As an educator, Buljan has taught in Paris, Brussels, and Moscow and as a guest lecturer at La MaMa in New York. He is a professor at the National Theatre Academy in Saint-Étienne, France.
As a playwright, he worked in Croatia, France, Slovenia and collaborated on more than twenty international projects with directors such as Vito Taufer, Matjaž Pograjc, Christian Colin, Pierre Diependaele, Jean-Michel Bruyere, Krizstof Warlikowski, Eduard Miler, Ivan Popovski and Robert Waltl.

Awards