Miro Gavran, a renowned Croatian writer of international acclaim whose works have been translated into 44 languages, will be our guest lecturer on November 11, 2025, as part of the course Production and Management of Performing Arts (Workshop), led by Dr. Ana Lederer.
We warmly invite everyone interested to join us!
BIOGRAPHY
Miro Gavran is a contemporary Croatian author, born in 1961.
His works have been translated into 44 languages, and he has had over 450 theatre premieres on all continents. More than four million people have seen performances based on his plays.
He is the most translated and most frequently performed Croatian playwright in the world.
Gavran has written 11 novels and 57 plays, with his books published in over one million copies. His dramatic and prose works have been included in numerous anthologies and readers in Croatia and abroad, and his writing is studied at many universities worldwide.
He is the only living playwright to have a dedicated theatre festival held in five countries outside his homeland — GavranFest — featuring productions based on his works (in Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Serbia).
Selected plays: When the Actor Dies, All About Women, All About Men, The Loves of George Washington, Chekhov Says Goodbye to Tolstoy, How to Kill the President, Forget Hollywood, Forbidden Laughter, The Secret of Greta Garbo, Wanted: A New Husband, Parallel Worlds, Hotel Babylon, My Wife’s Husband, Dr. Freud’s Patient, The Doll, Ice Cream, Beer, Every One of Your Birthdays, The Perfect Partner, The Spokesman, Coffee at Noon, The Happiness Agency…
His plays have premiered across the globe, including in Rotterdam, Washington, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Buenos Aires, Waterford, New York, Mumbai, Bratislava, Prague, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Krakow, Belgrade, Budapest, Los Angeles, Podgorica, São Paulo, Athens, Augsburg, Vienna, Sofia, Munich, Riga, Vilnius, Antwerp, Tirana, Pristina, Hyderabad, Rome, Maribor, Novi Sad, Mostar, Brno, Trnava, Bautzen, Zagreb, Warsaw, Bangalore, Bucharest, Novosibirsk, Tallinn, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Istanbul, and many more.
In 1999, he was among the few European dramatists to have a premiere (Kings and Stablemen) at the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, USA.
In February 2005, Sarajevo university professor Gordana Muzaferija published a monograph titled Theatrical Plays of Miro Gavran, analyzing thirty-four of his dramatic texts across three hundred pages.
In 2007, the German publishing house Anton Hiersemann (in cooperation with the Institute of Theatre Studies at the University of Vienna) included three of his plays — Creon’s Antigone, The Loves of George Washington, and Night of the Gods — in its prestigious selection of the world’s best contemporary dramatists.
In 2019, his play The Doll was included in a Shanghai-published anthology of eleven of the best modern Eastern European playwrights translated into Chinese.
Gavran has received around thirty literary and theatre awards in Croatia and abroad, including the Central European Time Award (Budapest, 1999) for lifetime achievement, and the European Circle Award (Zagreb, 2003) for promoting European values in literature.
In September 2018, Academia Cravatica (Zagreb) named him the first Croatian Ambassador of the Necktie.
In April 2014, he became a member of the Russian Academy of Literature (Moscow), and in May 2014 a corresponding member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) in Zagreb.
In November 2016, he joined the Slavic Academy of Literature and Arts (Varna, Bulgaria), and in June 2022, he was declared an Honorary Academician of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Mostar).
In May 2024, he became a full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb.
From 2021 to 2025, he served as President of Matica hrvatska.
Since the age of twenty, Gavran has lived in Zagreb. He is married to actress Mladena Gavran, with whom he founded Teatar GAVRAN in 2002, where he serves as Artistic Director. Their son, Jakov, is also an actor.
