Dražen Šivak
Dražen Šivak is one the most versatile theatre artists of his generation. Primarily working as an actor, he also teaches, directs and writes.
For his acting work he won numerous awards, among others, he won three times the Croatian actor’s award.
He acts in both film and stage, being able to answer different areas of performer’s art, from the theatre of classical or modern literature to the self-devised theatre work.
He is known for his work in areas of theatre that require from an actor an expressive body language. In that way, he participated in non-verbal and dance performances. In the last several years, he is involved into research of the clown work, commedia dell’arte work, also performing a famous and challenging solo piece “Mistero buffo” by Dario Fo (directed by Lee Delong), dealing with Middle Age travelling actors. For the work in that performance he got many festival awards, touring throughout the region.
He also directed in theatre, in his company “The Group”, making space for performers to research deeper into their own work. His international work includes work with film directors as Pawel Pawlikovsky and Michael Winterbottom, and theatre directors Arpad Schilling, with whose Budapest based company “Krétakör” he collaborated for several years, as well with Rafael Palacios from Colombia and his company “Sankofa”.
He was teaching movement for actors at the Academy of Drama Art in Zagreb, Croatia, for 7 years, starting as one of the youngest teachers, and together with the famous theatre artist Zijah A. Sokolovic, started an educational project for children and young, “Thearto”, where art is used as an educational tool.