Simona Semenič

Simona Semenič (1975) is a Slovenian playwright and performer. She completed her dramaturgy studies at the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT) in Ljubljana.

Simona is a recipient of the Prešeren Fund Award (2018), the highest Slovenian national award for artistic creation. She is also a three-time winner of the Grum Prize, the highest national award to be bestowed on a playwright in her native Slovenia. Her first award winning play 5boys.si (2008) was translated into twelve languages, staged in several countries in Europe, USA and in the Middle East and also published in several countries outside her homeland. She also won awards for 24hrs (2006) and seven cooks, four soldiers and three sophias (2014) and was nominated for 1981 (2013) and this apple, made of gold (2016). Her other plays include you didn’t forget you just don’t remember anymore (2007), feast (2010), blame it all on donnie darko (2011), sophia (2011), we, the Eeuropean corpses (2015), the last love letter (2017).

Productions of her plays won several awards in Slovenia and abroad. Simona also writes, directs and performs autobiographical experimental theatre shows, which include 9 easy pieces (2007, with artistic group Preglej),  I, Victim. (2007), do me twice (2009), 43 happy ends (2010, with artistic group Preglej), Kapelj and Semenič Under Construction (2012, with Barbara Kapelj), Bulc and Semenič For Sale (2013, with Mare Bulc) and the second time (2014). Her shows received outstanding notices from the audience and from theatre critics and Simona performed them at several festivals in Slovenia and abroad.

Her first collaboration with City of Women goes back to 2005, when she participated as dramaturge of the A.C.T. Metelkova project, directed an adaptation of the performance piece Endless Medication in 2006, wrote and performed I, Victim. in 2007, in 2014 returned with a solo performance the second time, and in 2018 with the performance To last.