Estonian playwrights to appear alongside dozens of world-renowned authors at Gothenburg Book Fair

On May 27th, 2025 the program for the 2025 Gothenburg Book Fair was presented at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweden. The two main themes of the fair are drama and love and lust. The Estonian Theatre Agency is participating as a key partner in organizing the drama program, helping to develop the international program and presenting Estonian playwrights and theatremakers on the fair’s stages. The full program for the fair will be announced at the end of August.

The book fair, which will take place from September 25th to 28th, will highlight drama as an independent literary genre and art form, drawing attention to the mastery of playwrights and the power of words on stage. The drama theme will explore what happens with a drama text on stage: how playwrights bring contemporary challenges and timeless questions to us, how written text becomes speech, and how actors approach drama texts.

The theme is organised in Nordic-Baltic co-operation by Colombine Theatre Agency (Sweden), Dramatikkens hus (Norway), Estonian Theatre Agency (Estonia), Theatre Info Finland (TINFO), and Gothenburg Book Fair, in cooperation with Latvian Theatre Workers Union and the Lithuanian Theatre Information Centre, with additional support from Danske Dramatikere (Denmark) and Performing Arts Iceland. The Estonian Theatre Agency’s partners in promoting Estonian theatre are the Estonian Directors and Dramaturgs Union and the Estonian Drama Theatre.

“The Estonian Theatre Agency is honored to be one of the main partners of the Gothenburg Book Fair alongside our Scandinavian colleagues and to introduce Estonian contemporary theatre and drama to nearly 100,000 visitors who will gather in Gothenburg at the end of September. To my knowledge, no drama event of this scale has ever been organized in the Baltic Sea region before. I hope that the fair will open many doors for our theatremakers to collaborate with Nordic theatres and that we will continue to be more and more present and visible to each other,” says Liisi Aibel, international relations coordinator at the Estonian Theater Agency.

For the first time in the history of the book fair, a theatre hall has been created on the fairgrounds, where play readings, performances, and discussions will take place. Over the course of four days, there will be 16 performances, ranging from classic monologues to staged readings of contemporary plays, offering an opportunity to discover the intersections of drama with social debates, philosophy, and poetry. The main speakers on the sub-theme of drama will be Tony Kushner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his play Angels in America, and German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig, whose texts have been translated into more than 40 languages.

To demonstrate the ability of drama to reflect current events, Mehis Pihla’s play Business as Usual will receive special attention at the initiative of Swedish partners and the organizers of the Gothenburg Book Fair. Mehis Pihla, researcher Karin Svedberg Helgesson, and journalist Axel Gordh Humlesjö will discuss money laundering and its coverage in the media.

The sub-theme of drama will also focus on the perspective of directors. The seminar “The (Un)Holy Text” will explore the director’s relationship with different types of text material, while the discussion “The Necessary Slaughter” will focus on the staging of prose. The discussions will feature directors and playwrights from the Nordic and Baltic countries, including Estonian director and dramaturg Johan Elm.

The Gothenburg Book Fair, held at the Swedish Exhibition & Congress Center from September 25th to 28th, is the largest cultural event in the Nordic countries and is taking place for the 41st time this year. The program includes a total of 327 seminars – 32 of which are in the drama theme – and a record 903 performers. In addition to the aforementioned authors, the book fair program features other world-renowned figures, such as ABBA member and songwriter Björn Ulvaeus, Nigerian writer and Mermaid Award laureate Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Swedish (play)wright and comedian Jonas Gardell, and American novelist Dan Brown.

The Estonian Ministry of Culture supports the presentation of Estonian drama at the Gothenburg Book Fair.

For more information, visit the Gothenburg Book Fair website: https://bokmassan.se/hem/teman/tema-dramatik/

In the photo the announcement of the main theme of the Gothenburg Book Fair 2025 on September 29th. From left: Linnea Stara (TINFO), Liisi Aibel (Estonian Theatre Agency), Oskar Ekström (program director of the book fair), Frida Edman (head of the book fair), Christina Friis (Dramatikkens hus), and Hedda Krausz Sjögren (Colombine). Photo by Niklas Maupoix